“Many organizations that attempted to force a return to the office have had to retract or change their plans because of employee pushback, and now, they don’t look strong,” says Kacher, the president of Career/Life Alliance Services. “A lot of executives have egg on their faces and they’re sad about that.”

Well, boo fucking hoo for them.

Even the success they tout is an absolute fucking failure:

In response, EY announced a fund in February 2022 to reimburse up to $800 per year for commuting, pet care and dependent care costs for each of its 55,000-plus U.S. employees.

The fund, which is ongoing, had an immediate positive impact on employees’ in-office attendance, Giampietro adds. Since EY first rolled out this benefit in February 2022, EY has seen a 150% uptick in office attendance across the U.S.

“It didn’t take a complete rehaul of our return-to-office policies to make employees happy,” he says. “We just needed to listen to our people and understand what, specifically, was problematic for them, and offer resources to address that.”

They added a potential cost of $44 million a YEAR (55k * $800) to keep their employees in the office. So instead of just letting employees work from home, they increased their costs dramatically, didn’t solve the problems around RTO for their employees ($800 for childcare a year? And that’s supposed to cover commute costs as well? Gimme a break), and still have to pay rent or mortage on their office spaces.

And I bet every single one of their RTO “success” employees is looking for a WFH job.

JFC just admit it, CEOs. The workspace has changed, for the better, and it’s simply time to unload your empty commercial property. That’s the only smart business decision for a company trying to retain employees.

$800 a year?

I wouldn’t go for less than 120 a day (commute cost + my per hour cost multiplied by the time spent travelling)