Apple giving warnings to workers who fail to show up to its offices

Apple is giving escalating warnings to workers who fail to show up to its offices three times a week, as firms who once backed work from home now complain its harming their businesses

• Apple has reportedly begun tracking employee badges to see if staffers are coming in to the office at least three times a week 
• Those who are not will reportedly be given escalating warnings   
• The development arrives as tech CEOs across the sector attempt to call their employees back to the office following the extended work from home period 

Apple is using employee badges to track whether workers are coming into the office three days a week and delivering increasingly serious warnings if they are not.

The position is a pivot away from the COVID-19 induced work from home model that many companies still operate under, including one tech CEO who says productivity is down at least 30 percent with his employees working from home.

According to tweets from Platformer’s Zoe Schiffer, Apple is tracking in-person attendance via badge reports. Platformer is an outlet that focuses specifically on the intersection of Big Tech and democracy.

Those who are not coming in three days a week are being given escalated warnings.

Though it is not currently a direct policy of Apple’s, some organizations within the company say failure to comply with the suggestion could result in termination.

Apple’s California headquarters, where employees are reportedly being tracked by their badges to determine whether they come to work in person three times a week

‘NEW: Apple is tracking employee attendance (via badge records) and will give employees escalating warnings if they don’t come in 3x per week,’ wrote Schiffer.

Dailymail.com has reached out to Apple to confirm the report. 

She added that Twitter CEO Elon Musk is also doling out warnings to his staff about not showing up in person for work. ‘Elon Musk sent Twitter employees an email at 2.30am saying the ‘office is not option’ and noting SF was half empty yesterday.’

Early on during his tenure as Twitter CEO, Musk ordered his entire staff back to work in-person, which he had previously done at Tesla and SpaceX as well.

Other CEOs are feeling the same push to get their employees back in the office.

Allan Jones, the founder and chief executive of Bambee, a human-resources software and consulting firm in Los Angeles, said that he is concerned at-home productivity is slumping to levels his company cannot afford.

Jones told the Wall Street Journal that several executives in his professional network have concluded that ongoing remote work is unsustainable. The reality of how workers behave at home now vs. at the start of the pandemic is stark.

Now there are the temptations of lengthy lunches and afternoons on the golf course that did not exist during the height of the pandemic.

Jones said he recently told his staff of 175 that he is tempted to once again require a five-day in-person work week, but he is willing to preserve the two remote days and even add a third in the summer if the team’s productivity remains consistent. 

‘Our new subscribers today are half of what they normally are at this time,’ he said, noting that a 30 percent drop is typical when everyone is at home. The numbers, he said, don’t lie.

It is unclear how long staff will have to close that gap, but the reality may rest in the numbers. 

Allan Jones, the Bambee founder and CEO who said productivity at his firm is down at least 30 percent when employees work from home

Apple CEO Tim Cook, where employees are reportedly being tracked by their badges so the firm can see who is coming in at least three times a week

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is presiding over massive cuts being made to his company after announcing his ‘year of efficiency’

Especially at larger tech firms, many of which are now laying off employees by the thousand, remote work may have exasperated trends of unproductivity that were already endemic to the companies.

One former Meta recruiter, who was recently laid off in the company’s last round of 10,000 layoffs, said she did nothing for months while still taking home her annual paycheck of $190,000.

The recruiter, Madelyn Machado, bafflingly claimed that despite her role requiring her to seek out new employees, she was told by her bosses she wasn’t expected to do that. 

‘We weren’t expected to hire anybody for the first six months, even the first year,’ she said. ‘This is something they tell you when you start.’

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is presiding over massive cuts being made to his company after announcing his ‘year of efficiency,’ which likely includes the elimination of positions in which employees do nothing.

Source: Read Full Article