The battle over return-to-office (RTO) policies among employers has often been a bitter one with bad blood on both sides. Some employers believe workers are less productive and tend to slack off more when working remotely. Employees often resent what they see as heavy-handed RTO mandates, some of which threaten workers with loss of promotion opportunities or even with termination for failure to comply.
PwC Takes a Stand
A recent policy implemented by “Big Four” accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) illustrates the lengths some employers are willing to go to in order to secure what they see as the benefits of RTO. In a memo sent to PwC’s UK employees in early September and shared with CNN, the employer announced a new policy to be effective January 1, 2025, which will use employee location data to track compliance with the firm’s RTO policy.
The memo reiterated PwC’s belief in the importance of face-to-face interaction with colleagues and clients.
“With that in mind, we will start sharing your individual working location data with you on a monthly basis from January as we do with other data such as chargeable hours. This will help to ensure that the new policy is being fairly and consistently applied across our business,” the memo added.
Prepared to Use a Stick
For a CNN article covering the PwC RTO tracking policy, Lianne Kolirin asked the company what would happen to employees who fail to comply with the policy. “If the monthly data shows someone is consistently breaching the policy, we’d first want to understand the reasons why,” a PwC spokeswoman answered.
PwC’s new policy of using location data to track compliance with its RTO policy is sure to ruffle feathers among its employees. Nobody likes being tracked and micromanaged.
Whether the new policy will be successful, or whether it will trigger attrition from disgruntled employees, depends to a large extent on the relative leverage PwC and its workers have in their employment relationship. While many of PwC’s staff are highly educated top performers, PwC itself is a prestigious employer, and recent labor market data suggest labor market power is shifting back toward employers as job openings show signs of slowing.
It’s certainly a situation that other employers will want to watch closely as they consider their own RTO policies and practices.
Lin Grensing-Pophal is a Contributing Editor at HR Daily Advisor.