This report on Quartz and this report on Business Insider highlight the problems that corporations are having in getting their workforce back to the office.

During the Covid pandemic, many people had to work from home and for most companies this worked well; indeed, in many cases productivity improved. Now that the Covid crisis is over, employers want their staff to return to the office, but many employees are unhappy with a return to the office because it means a return to long travel times and more annoying management oversight. For employers, it seems that the main motive is control over their staff. Things are not going smoothly with employers' back to the office plans, with unexpected resistance from staff.

In addition, it seems that many employers are not really prepared for their staff to return. The first article describes how Amazon does not have enough space for their staff to return to the office, and are delaying their plans for the return. The second article, describes how AT&T do not enough desks for all their staff to return, but it seems that their plans are continuing unabated, and staff will be expected to cope with there not being enough desks.

These problems are not entirely unexpected, as many companies reduced the amount of office space, desks, chairs and even computers to reduce costs. There is no question, however, that the lack of space for returning staff is a failure of management, pure and simple. The contrast here is striking: in the case of Amazon, the return to office is being delayed; in the case of AT&T, it is being made a problem for employees to work around, in a complete abdication of responsibility by the company's management. My oft quoted definition of the duties of a manager is to enable their staff to do their job, and that clearly isn't happening at AT&T.