Employers’ push to end remote work and return to office is stalling
WASHINGTON — Coming out of the pandemic, Bart Valdez has had the mind-set of many traditional bosses. He viewed remote work as an aberration and wanted everybody back at their desks ASAP.
“I grew up in an environment where we wore a suit and tie and showed up at the office at 8 a.m. — no excuses,” said the 60-year-old chief executive officer at Ingenovis Health, a Colorado-based staffing firm with 1,600 corporate employees.
In recent months — after hearing from his employees — he’s had a change of heart.
Younger generations have different lifestyles and pressures, he said. For many of his workers in varying parts of the country, flexibility to work from home better meets their needs.
And so far, remote work has not hurt Ingenovis’ productivity. It’s even helped with recruiting because the company is getting more job applicants as a result of its new approach.
Today a third of Ingenovis’ employees are back in the office, one-third work entirely from home, and one-third do a hybrid mix of remote and in-person work.
The evolution of thinking at companies like Ingenovis helps explain what’s happened with the back-to-the-office push by many employers as the COVID-19 pandemic has
