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GAFAM: what's behind the forced return to the office?
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Johanna
04/11/2024
Hybrid work
GAFAM: what's behind the forced return to the office?
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Over the past few months, a trend has been taking hold at GAFAM: the forced return to the office. Even outsiders like Zoom and Dell Technologies are getting in on the act. Earlier this year, we wondered whether 2024 would really mark the end of widespread telecommuting. Well... spoiler alert: for the tech giants, the answer is a resounding yes!
After embracing telecommuting during the pandemic - and sometimes even adopting 100% remote working - these companies are doing an about-face, now requiring their employees to return to full-time face-to-face work. Surprised? Not really, as many weak signals were already pointing to this trend.
But what's really behind this resurgence? Officially, the reasons are clear: to strengthen corporate culture, improve the quality of collaboration and optimize learning. But what if, beyond the rhetoric, other, more discreet motivations were at work? Let's decipher the real reasons, official and unofficial, for this strategic shift.
The official reasons: what GAFAM is saying to justify the return to the office
To explore this topic, let's take a look at this September's sensational announcement: Amazon has decided to bring everyone back into the fold. From January 2025, the online shopping giant will once again welcome all its employees back to the office - and on a full-time basis. Ciao hybrid work!
The news caused quite a stir, and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy didn 't mince words in justifying the decision. So, what's behind this return to open space? Let's take a look at the official reasons.
1. Strengthen corporate culture
According to Amazon, there's nothing like being physically together to learn from each other and reinforce the essence of the organization. Andy Jassy reminded us in his press release that corporate culture has historically been a pillar of Amazon's success.
Working side-by-side would allow us to better immerse ourselves in the organization's values and mission. But does this culture spread better with 40 hours of on-site presence? You be the judge!
2. Improving collaboration, innovation and learning
Amazon's CEO also puts forward a well-worn argument in pro-office discourse: improving the triptych of collaboration, innovation and learning.
It's no coincidence that giants like Facebook and Google have invested millions in futuristic campuses, complete with Fablabs, ultra-modern coworking spaces, and even art exhibitions to stimulate their teams' creativity. These infrastructures aren't there for show: they're designed to maximize the on-site presence, productivity and creativity of every member of the company. All with a clear return on investment in mind.
As well as encouraging innovation, the return to the office is also seen as a learning booster. Bringing creative and productive minds together in the same space not only allows skills to be passed on more quickly, but also enables challenges to be solved more effectively. Back to business, then.
3. Rediscover the power of informal communication
But where Jassy is particularly strong is in the power of informality. This is often where 100% remote businesses really come up against their limits.
Spontaneous exchanges (the famous coffee-machine chats) are key moments for sharing information casually and catalyzing innovation. And indeed, what telecommuting struggles to reproduce is the alchemy that emerges from unstructured moments.
4. Learning from experience
Amazon also points to concrete results to support its decision. After 15 months of partial return to the office, the company believes that the face-to-face model has proved its effectiveness.
According to managers, teams collaborate better, are more productive and, overall, the office offers a more favorable environment for performance. This feedback convinced the international firm to return to a pre-pandemic organization, with a return to the full-time office.
But behind this promising picture, there may be less glamorous reasons. What underlying interests could justify this return in force to 100% face-to-face training?
Unofficial reasons: what's really behind the forced return to the office
Behind Amazon's official arguments lie more subtle motivations - often unmentioned - but just as decisive in this organizational shift.
1. Choose the easy solution
In the post-Covid era, some companies were caught up in the "too much, too fast" trend, moving abruptly from 100% face-to-face to 100% teleworking, without adapting their culture.
For many, this has meant total disorganization: teams split up, managers at a loss and work dynamics undermined. Managers soon found themselves faced with teams that resembled a WhatsApp group rather than a real collective.
Against this backdrop, many companies are taking the easy way out and opting for a return to the past, i.e. 100% face-to-face training. They prefer to re-establish an obsolete model, rather than address the real cultural challenges and invest in appropriate rituals, high-performance tools and well-designed asynchronous communication. This forced return to the office shows the limits of a too rapid and superficial transition to a hybrid work model.
Once again, the answer is not binary. It's not "all or nothing" in terms of telecommuting or face-to-face working. It's a question of finding a balance and adapting your corporate culture to create a high-performance hybrid environment, where the collective is built differently, but just as solidly.
2. Cleaning house
Forcing employees to return to the office is a discreet way of thinning out the ranks. Not very classy when you put it that way, but let's call a spade a spade.
In these post-Covid years, many employees have reorganized their lives around telecommuting. Some have even bought homes in towns far from their offices, to make the most of their surroundings. This new requirement for daily presence at the office may no longer be compatible with the constraints and aspirations of some. Rather than conforming to this imposed way of working, some may well choose to leave the company.
In our uncertain economic climate, this return to the office takes on the appearance of a full-scale test to identify those who no longer want to play the game. It's a subtle way of reducing headcount without resorting to redundancies, and without breaking the law too much. In fact, this is what Elon Musk did in 2022 with his famous "Come back to work or leave Tesla" campaign - always subtle, dear Elon.
3. Regain control
Finally, telecommuting has reversed part of the balance of power between employees and employers. With greater autonomy over their schedules and the way they work, employees have gained in independence. For some managers, this has led to an uncomfortable loss of control. Returning to the office allows this direct control over day-to-day operations to be re-established, with closer supervision of team work. Not a very visionary approach... Could GAFAM be more old-fashioned than they'd have us believe?
In short, behind the Tech giants' official reasons for imposing a return to the office lie more strategic objectives: recreating a collective, filtering out employees resistant to face-to-face contact and regaining direct managerial control.
However, the majority of companies persist with a hybrid model. A few troublemakers, such as AssessFirst, are even continuing with full remote, with great success. Which team will you be on in 2025?
