After reversing its position on remote work, Dell is reportedly implementing new tracking techniques on May 13 to ensure its workers are following the company’s return-to-office (RTO) policy, The Register reported today, citing anonymous sources.
Dell will track employees’ badge swipes and VPN connections to confirm that workers are in the office for a significant amount of time.
Dell’s methods for tracking hybrid workers will also reportedly include a color-coding system. From “consistent” to “limited” presence, the colors are blue, green, yellow, and red.
The Register reported today that approximately 50 percent of Dell’s US workers are remote, compared to 66 percent of international workers.
An examination of 457 companies on the S&P 500 list released in February concluded that RTO mandates don’t drive company value but instead negatively affect worker morale. Analysis of survey data from more than 18,000 working Americans released in March found that flexible workplace policies, including the ability to work remotely completely or part-time and flexible schedules, can help employees’ mental health.
Did they think that’d give them good optics or do they just not care?
So I’ve worked in business for 17ish years now, and the only consistent thing I can say about business leadership is they are there to have their egos stroked.
They do not care about money or other people until they look bad, and even then they don’t do anything until someone threatens to take away the group of people forced to listen to them.
Working from home hurts their ego. This method (RTO) doesn’t improve value and increases turnaround, which increases expenses if you are happy with the amount of people working for your company, as replacing people costs money.
So either Dell still needs to get rid of people, or a bunch of old fucks need someone to suck up to them in person.