• AT&T's CTO told his US team there wouldn't be "one-for-one" seating upon the full office return.
• He added that AT&T would stagger its five-day-a-week mandate as more office space was constructed.
• Some teams may see their full office return delayed if construction doesn't finish in time, he said.

AT&T Technology Services employees in the US won't have "one-for-one" seating when they begin returning to the office five days a week in the new year, the company's chief technology officer wrote in a new memo.

The telecom giant's CTO, Jeremy Legg, detailed how the new in-office policy would be implemented across his US team in a Wednesday memo obtained by Business Insider.

The new in-office requirement for US AT&T Technology Services employees will begin a phased rollout on January 6 and is expected to be fully implemented for most teams by March 3, the memo said.

"Our purpose at AT&T is connecting people to greater possibility," Legg wrote. "We firmly believe that working together, in person and in proximity to our peers, is the best way for ATS employees to fulfill that purpose."

Legg oversees AT&T's technology organizations for business, consumer, IT and cloud, data and analytics, security, network architecture and AT&T Labs, and new product development. The AT&T Technology Services team has roughly 10,000 workers in the US.

AT&T told BI that organizations within the company have the flexibility to determine the right approach for their teams based on business needs and that many were staggering the return of employees.

The memo came after BI first reported that AT&T was tightening its return-to-office mandate from three days a week to five full workdays.

Legg said in the email that the company understood that not every employee could be on-site every single day because of "travel, vacations, or other reasons" and that "leaders will work with employees to provide the needed occasional flexibility."

While several expansion projects are underway in Atlanta and Dallas, Legg said AT&T "will not offer one-for-one seating per employee" and the company "will observe capacity vs. demand and make adjustments" as needed.

Legg's memo said that teams assigned to AT&T's Atlanta-area locations would be notified if their full-return-to-office date was delayed as construction on additional space progressed.

Several employees have told BI that workspace capacity has been a challenge, even with the prior hybrid arrangement.

Employees told BI it's common for workers to end up sitting in the hallways or working in the cafeteria to avoid running afoul of the company's attendance-tracking system.

One employee said their office had more than 1,200 people assigned to it but only about 150 desks available.

"I know returning to the office 5 days a week is a significant change for some," Legg said in his memo. "By coming together in person, we can strengthen our connections, foster a vibrant culture, and achieve our shared goals."

Read the full memo

Dear ATS U.S.-Based Management Employees,

Our purpose at AT&T is connecting people to greater possibility. We firmly believe that working together, in person and in proximity to our peers, is the best way for ATS employees to fulfill that purpose. By fostering in-person interactions, we can form stronger relationships, build trust and enhance our collaboration, innovation, and overall effectiveness as a team.

Full-Time Office Presence in 2025

That's why l'm asking all employees with Full Time Office designations (NFTO, MFTO CFTO) to return to the office full time, with staggered starts based on management level and office space availability. FTO employees in ATS will work in the office full-time, 5 days a week according to this schedule:

• January 6, 2025: All U.S.-based supervising level 4s and above
• February 3, 2025: All U.S.-based supervising level 3s and above in all locations except Atlanta and Alpharetta¹
• March 3, 2025²: All other U.S.-based management employees in all locations except Atlanta and Alpharetta¹

¹Construction of additional space is underway at Lenox, with an expected readiness date between April and June. As construction progresses, employees in Atlanta and Alpharetta will be notified when it's time to work in the office 5 days a week.

²Construction of additional space for ATS teams is underway at Dallas Headquarters and at 2900 West Plano Pkwy. Employees in these locations will return to the office March 3 if the space is ready. If completion is delayed, we will communicate further instructions to affected teams.

As we stagger the return to 5 days per week per the timeline above, FTO employees should continue to be present in the office 3 to 5 days per week. There is no change in expectations for Future Office Workers or virtual workers. We periodically review the needs of the business and may occasionally change an employee's office designation based on those needs.

Fostering Collaboration

Between now and early first quarter 2025, we will be working with Global Workplace Services to align teams to neighborhoods on each of our campuses.

Even with employees working full time in the office, we know that not all employees will be in every day due to travel, vacations, or other reasons. We will not offer one-for-one seating per employee. We will observe capacity vs. demand and make adjustments working with Workplace Services as needed.

Flexibility and Accountability

We know employees occasionally need to work remotely for various reasons. Leaders will work with employees to provide the needed occasional flexibility. This balance between flexibility and accountability is essential to maintaining our high standards of performance and collaboration. Senior leadership will review overall presence trends via How and Where We Work presence dashboards. With this data, we will work toward improving things like seating, availability of amenities, and parking options.

Next Steps

The How and Where ATS Works SharePoint site is your definitive source of information on returning to the office full-time, including campus and neighborhood information as it becomes available. It is currently being updated to reflect the changing expectations for our organization. Supervisors can also answer questions. We are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible for everyone involved.

Additional Thoughts

I know returning to the office 5 days a week is a significant change for some. As we outlined during Analyst and Investor Day, we have tremendous momentum in growing this company the right way. That momentum will accelerate when we reap the benefits of faster collaboration and innovation. By coming together in person, we can strengthen our connections, foster a vibrant culture, and achieve our shared goals.

Your dedication and commitment to excellence are the driving forces behind our success.

Thank you for your continued hard work and support. I look forward to seeing you all in the office and working together to create an even brighter future for ATS.

Jeremy

If you are an AT&T worker who wants to share your perspective, please contact Dominick via email or text/call/Signal at 646-768-4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Business Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a nonwork device when reaching out.

• Grace Chang occasionally commutes from Washington, DC, to NYC for work.
• She said the four-hour commute is worth it because the job is a good fit for her.
• Remote working arrangements have made it easier for some Americans to become supercommuters.

Grace Chang says the occasional four-hour commute to her job is worth it but could be unsustainable in the long term.

Earlier this year, Chang, 28, felt burned out from her finance job at a hospitality company in Washington, DC. She began exploring new opportunities but struggled to find a role in DC that would allow her to grow and be less demanding.

After expanding her search outside the Beltway, Chang accepted a financial planning and analysis position, which she started in May. The role pays $120,000 annually, but it came with a downside: a commute roughly every other week from DC to New York City. Chang asked that the name of her employer be excluded for privacy reasons.

For her journey, Chang said she wakes up around 4 a.m. on Monday, catches the 5:05 a.m. Amtrak train at Union Station, arrives in New York City around 8:30 a.m., and is at her midtown Manhattan office 30 minutes later. She usually stays in New York until Wednesday or Thursday, and since her company doesn't pay for lodging, she crashes with friends or family who live in or near the city.

"I'm not 100% sure if the job is worth the commute, but it pays the bills and is a good stepping stone for other opportunities in the future," she said.

Chang is among the supercommuters who have embraced long treks to work in recent years: A Stanford University study published in June defined a supercommuter as anyone with a journey of more than 75 miles. The study, which was conducted by Stanford economists Nick Bloom and Alex Finan, found that the share of supercommutes in the 10 largest US cities was 32% higher between November 2023 and February than between the same time period four years earlier.

The economists said this uptick was likely tied to increased remote working arrangements. For example, some Americans who moved away from cities during the pandemic — in part for lower housing costs — decided they could tolerate their commute when their employers called them back to the office.

Supercommuting isn't the long-term goal

Chang said her employer doesn't have a specific in-office policy, but her manager wants her to work in person sometimes, particularly during busier periods.

When Chang landed the job, she never seriously considered moving to New York City. She and her husband have lived in the DC area for over a decade, and her husband works locally.

"We have friends and community here and didn't want to uproot so quickly," she said. "After I started making the commute, I just got used to it."

Staying with friends and family has helped Chang save money on accommodations while she's in New York, but her commute still comes with a financial cost. If she buys well in advance of her trip, she said she can generally get a one-way train ticket for less than $100. She said Amtrak offers a 10-ride ticket pass for $790, which amounts to $79 per one-way ticket.

However, Chang said her role would likely have a lower salary if it were based in DC, in part because the city has a lower cost of living than NYC.

In recent weeks, Chang's manager said she could reduce her commute to once a month. She said she'd previously requested a less frequent commute once she was fully trained for her job: She's been in the role for over six months.

While Chang is open to jobs closer to home, she said she's enjoying her current role and is getting the career development she wanted.

"It's definitely not a long-term goal or aspiration to continue to do this, but what has made this doable is having a positive mentality toward commuting," she said. "If I dreaded it every week, I would have quit in the first month."

Do you have a long commute to work? Are you willing to share your story with a reporter? Reach out to [email protected].

• Staff at major companies have asked their leaders if there are plans to follow Amazon's full return to office.
• Firms like Meta, Google, and Microsoft have a hybrid setup — however, execs say they're eyeing productivity.
• Research findings on the subject are varied, and the debate will likely continue in 2025.

Executives at major companies are referencing a specific term to hedge when asked by employees if they plan to follow in Amazon's footsteps and implement a return to 5 days a week in the office.

That word? Productivity.

While Amazon has been the most high-profile example this year of a full return to office policy, set to go into effect in January, telecom giant AT&T has also elected to double down on in-person work with a similar 5-day policy, Business Insider first reported.

In the wake of Amazon's announcement, executives at both Google and Microsoft, which require employees to be in the office at least 3 days a week, have fielded questions from staff wondering if the days of hybrid work are numbered.

Microsoft's executive vice president of cloud and AI, Scott Guthrie, said the company wouldn't change the hybrid work policy unless it noticed a drop in productivity, BI reported in September.

In October, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company had no plans to order employees back to the office, so long as employees remain productive during their at-home work days, BI previously reported.

Over at Meta, Mark Zuckerberg said last year that "early analysis of performance data," indicated productivity increases for early-career engineers in the office at least 3 days a week. A few months later, the company announced it was requiring employees to return to the office 3 days a week.

Executives at Dell called the company's sales team back to the office 5 days a week starting at the end of September, writing in a memo, "Our data shows that sales teams are more productive when onsite."

Though Amazon did not explicitly name productivity as a reason for its full return to the office, CEO Andy Jassy emphasized a similar term: effectiveness.

Being back in person 5 days a week makes it "easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another," he wrote at the time.

For those committing to a full return to office, preparing campuses for the influx of employees in the new year is its own challenge. Amazon has since delayed the announced January 2 effective date of the new mandate for some employees because it doesn't have enough office space in some locations, BI reported earlier this month.

As CEOs and company leaders keep an eye on how employees in remote or hybrid setups perform, various studies since the onset of the pandemic have attempted to measure and compare the productivity of employees who work at home and in-office. Research studies have produced conflicting results, further complicated by the matter of how best to define or measure productivity.

Goldman Sachs, which has a 5-day-in-office policy, reviewed several analyses that used different ways of evaluating changes in work-from-home productivity, from call-center workers who were randomly chosen to work from home to comparing the productivity of randomly assigned remote workers with their in-office peers.

In short, it's hard to say for sure, and executives are deciding what their long-term setup will be after a year in which some of the world's biggest companies put a renewed focus on being "lean" and "efficient."

Meanwhile, some employees have returned to commuting in (sometimes "coffee-badging" in and returning home), others have relocated to comply with a policy change, and some have resigned to pursue a hybrid or fully remote opportunity. As companies tighten their belts and conduct layoffs, other workers have taken to workplace forums to wonder if some of the RTO mandates have been a possible "quiet layoffs" tactic.

As more major global companies revisit their policies and make changes, CEOs are likely to face more questions on the topic going into the new year.

For some, the answer is simple: Stay productive and we'll stay flexible.

Amazon announced in September that it will require workers to be in the office five days a week starting in January. Employee backlash ensued, not just because return-to-office (RTO) mandates can be unpopular but also because Amazon is using some of the worst strategies for issuing RTO mandates.

Ahead of the mandate, Amazon had been letting many employees work remotely for two days a week, with a smaller number of workers being totally remote. But despite saying that employees would have to commute five days per week, the conglomerate doesn’t have enough office space to accommodate over 350,000 employees. Personnel in “at least seven cities,” including Phoenix and Austin, Texas, have had their RTO dates delayed until after January, Bloomberg reported today, citing “people familiar with the situation." Employees in Dallas won’t have enough space until March or April, and an office in New York City won’t have sufficient space until May, per Bloomberg's sources.

RTO dates are also delayed in Atlanta, Houston, and Nashville, Tennessee, Business Insider reported this week, citing “internal Amazon notifications.”

Read full article

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Return-to-office (RTO) mandates have caused companies to lose some of their best workers, a study tracking over 3 million workers at 54 "high-tech and financial" firms at the S&P 500 index has found. These companies also have greater challenges finding new talent, the report concluded.

The paper, Return-to-Office Mandates and Brain Drain [PDF], comes from researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as Baylor University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. The study, which was published in November, spotted this month by human resources publication HR Dive, and cites Ars Technica reporting, was conducted by collecting information on RTO announcements and sourcing data from LinkedIn. The researchers said they only examined companies with data available for at least two quarters before and after they issued RTO mandates. The researchers explained:

To collect employee turnover data, we follow prior literature ... and obtain the employment history information of over 3 million employees of the 54 RTO firms from Revelio Labs, a leading data provider that extracts information from employee LinkedIn profiles. We manually identify employees who left a firm during each period, then calculate the firm’s turnover rate by dividing the number of departing employees by the total employee headcount at the beginning of the period. We also obtain information about employees’ gender, seniority, and the number of skills listed on their individual LinkedIn profiles, which serves as a proxy for employees’ skill level.

There are limits to the study, however. The researchers noted that the study "cannot draw causal inferences based on our setting." Further, smaller firms and firms outside of the high-tech and financial industries may show different results. Although not mentioned in the report, relying on data from a social media platform could also yield inaccuracies, and the number of skills listed on a LinkedIn profile may not accurately depict a worker's skill level.

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• Amazon is delaying full RTO for some employees due to office capacity issues.
• The policy required employees to work from the office five days a week, beginning January 2.
• Amazon has encountered workspace capacity issues in the past.

Amazon is delaying the start of its strict new RTO policy for some employees because the company doesn't have enough office space in certain locations, Business Insider has learned.

The company's real estate team recently started notifying employees that they can continue following their current in-office guidance until workspaces are ready with delays stretching to as late as May, according internal Amazon notifications viewed by BI.

Impacted locations include Atlanta, Houston, Nashville, and New York, the notifications showed. An Amazon spokesperson said buildings will be ready for the majority of Amazon employees by January 2.

Earlier this year, Amazon ordered employees to start working from the office five days a week. beginning January 2. The company has said this will improve collaboration and bring other benefits. CEO Andy Jassy, in a memo announcing the mandate, said Amazon the decision to "further strengthen" its culture and teams.

Some staff were upset by the change and have argued that remote work provides more flexibility. The policy five-day-a-week policy is stricter than at some Amazon rivals and, by some accounts, stricter than Amazon's office-work policy before the pandemic.

This isn't the first time office capacity constraints have delayed Amazon's RTO plans. When the company last year ordered employees to start working in the office at least three days a week, many of its buildings weren't ready to accommodate all of those employees.

In internal guidelines viewed by BI, Amazon told employees when the new five-day RTO policy was first announced in September that they should plan to comply by January 2 whether or not they have assigned workspaces.

"For the vast majority of employees, assigned workspaces will be available by January 2, 2025," the guidance stated. "If your assigned workspace isn't ready by January 2, we still expect everyone to begin fully working from the office by that date."

Are you a tech-industry employee or someone else with insight to share?

Contact reporter Ashley Stewart via the encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email ([email protected]). Use a nonwork device.

• Remote workers are slightly more likely to have side gigs than in-person or hybrid peers.
• Extra time from remote work may enable more side hustles like consulting or rideshare.
• Some data shows employees who choose where to work are more productive.

Remote workers are more likely to have side gigs than their office-based peers — 34% versus 29% — according to a new LinkedIn Workforce Confidence survey of 8,606 US professionals.

The trend toward additional income streams appears strongest among those with flexible work arrangements. While only a quarter of full-time employees reported having a side gig, the number jumps to 52% for freelancers and 46% for both contractors and self-employed workers.

Side gigs include working as consultants, rideshare drivers, and rental property managers.

Remote workers' higher participation in side hustles could stem from increased time savings from not commuting. GPS data from traffic analytics company INRIX shows supercommuting — or traveling over 75 miles to work — has been on the rise over the last few years. The same trend applies to commutes over 40 miles for the country's 10 largest cities.

The higher rate of side gigs among remote workers, though small, could also stem from some evidence that productivity slows when workers are pushed to return to the office.

LinkedIn cited a May 2024 Great Place to Work survey of 4,400 US employees, which found that workers who could choose where they work were more likely to exceed expectations and have better relationships with their bosses.

However, the data is complicated, as various remote work studies have different conclusions. Stanford economists found 10% lower productivity for fully remote work compared to fully in-person work. Meanwhile, a separate Stanford report found that hybrid work had no effect on productivity or career advancement compared to in-person work.

Dozens of employees with side hustles, particularly those in remote roles, have told Business Insider about their strategies for maximizing their income. Some particularly successful side hustlers said content creation and selling on Etsy were simple ways to grow their income while working full-time.

Some remote workers told BI they drive for Uber or DoorDash while working as accountants or analysts. Dozens of drivers have told BI over the last year that falling earnings and growing competition have made it challenging to make enough, though many value the flexibility to drive during lunch breaks or before or after their full-time jobs.

Both remote and in-person workers previously told BI that real-estate side hustles have been particularly fruitful. Jesse Singh, 29, worked two nursing roles, which he used to fund his real estate company. Once he sold a $2.2 million property, he cut his nursing hours.

Some said they quit their in-person corporate roles for full-time remote positions, which allowed them to better craft their schedules and add in other income streams. Some turned their remote reselling side hustles on sites like eBay into full-time positions.

Natalie Fischer left her corporate job in 2023 to grow her business as a finance content creator and is now bringing in over $150,000 in revenue in 2024. She's diversified her revenue through user-generated content and money workshops, and she's looking to secure speaking engagements.

BI has also reported on dozens of "overemployed" remote workers who secretly work multiple jobs to earn six-figure incomes. Many said they don't feel guilt for working multiple remote positions, even as remote roles become scarcer and harder to get.

Patrick, a millennial in California, previously told BI that because his remote account manager role didn't give him enough work for an eight-hour workday, he took on an additional full-time role and freelance work, bringing his income to nearly $200,000.

• The office — and the role it plays in companies — is at the center of workforce change.
• Neil Murray, a Workforce Innovation board member, discussed workspace purpose, leadership, and AI.
• This article is part of "Workforce Innovation," a series exploring the forces shaping enterprise transformation.

Commercial real estate has experienced a tumultuous few years, with pandemic-related office vacancies and high interest rates. The sector is also at the epicenter of significant changes to the global workforce.

"It is the most incredible time to work in this industry," said Neil Murray, the CEO of Work Dynamics at JLL. "We are at the center of some really important strategic conversations about the very nature of work."

Work Dynamics is a division of the global real-estate corporation that collaborates with corporate clients on technology, employee experience, and design strategies. Murray says its goals are to help client companies attract and retain employees and foster productivity.

In its annual global Future of Work survey, which involved 2,300 corporate real-estate and business decision-makers, some 64% of respondents said they expected to increase their head counts by 2030.

JLL's third-quarter earnings beat estimates — it reported revenue of $5.87 billion, an increase of 15% from the same period in 2023.

Murray talked about companies mulling the purpose of the office, how leaders can incentivize employees to willingly go into their workplaces, and how to harness AI for concrete breakthroughs.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

How have the priorities of your clients changed in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the changes that brought to office life?

What we do for a living changed dramatically through the pandemic. Previously, corporate real estate may have been seen as a sort of factor of production. We weren't intentional about why we had space and where we had it, what we wanted that space to do, and its function. Is it a cost line, or is it an investment?

Suddenly every chief executive in the world had a view on real estate. It brought much more intentionality about its function within the organization and its ability to contribute to broader organizational goals.

Our business now is about helping our clients navigate that complex situation where they're planning to grow their workforce over a number of years, balancing what that might look like in the macro environment we're living in. It's a very complex environment for leaders to think through.

What's the state of return-to-office you're seeing among your clients?

There's a fairly even split between companies that are embracing some sort of hybrid policy and those that want their people back full time.

In our Future of Work survey, we found that 85% of organizations had a policy of at least three days of office attendance per week, and 43% expected the number of days in the office to increase by 2030.

It's still very much an evolving scenario. The metrics of productivity that we've relied upon to make database decisions don't always capture the challenges that businesses are facing. The time people spend doing emails or logged in doesn't necessarily translate to productivity.

One client, for example, has found that while their productivity metrics looked just fine, the number of patents had fallen off a cliff from prepandemic levels.

That led to this notion that what we're missing is, as the phrase goes, people painting on the same canvas at the same time.

Now we've seen some high-profile companies coming out, wanting more time spent in the office, saying there's something lost around culture and the collective sort of personality and purpose of an organization because of remote working. Companies are finding it really difficult to balance that.

What aspects of the workplace are most effective for enticing workers to return to the office?

The overwhelming evidence is that it's not a single amenity but it's other people — and, in particular, leaders. Companies that are intentional about their leaders being present have seen the greatest results in terms of people coming back.

What people crave is proximity to leadership for personal development. So without getting leaders back into the office, you can add whatever amenities you want and you'll still have significant challenges.

Clients that enacted three-days-a-week mandates but didn't focus on leadership presence have exactly the same attendance as those who didn't have three-day mandates.

Could that be attributed to people just wanting to be visible when the boss is around?

I wouldn't purport to understand entirely the psychology of humans, but I do believe that our research and my own experience is that people enjoy other people. The most important amenity in any workplace is that notion of community and other folks to chat to.

The notion of apprenticeship in all aspects of what we do is very real. The ability to learn from others, to absorb how things are done or navigate the complexities of an organization, is really difficult to do among 30-minute slots. You don't get to sort of naturally observe through osmosis what's happening in the world around you.

You mentioned in one of our roundtables that companies need to focus on consistent, breakthrough innovation across the organization as opposed to incremental innovation from a centralized department or team. Why is that important, and how can leaders work toward that goal?

When you centralize innovation, you can get stuck in the paradigm of trying to incrementally improve a particular way of working. But the technology breakthroughs mean that it's fundamentally shifting how we do business.

In my business alone, the rapid adoption of AI tools in daily business use has surprised us all. We are an organization with 250 years of data on everything from how buildings are occupied and used to what they cost to run to their utilities to their capital values.

The tools available to us now to cut and splice and curate and make connections in that data, which we were never able to make before at scale, are driving us to think about the business in completely different ways.

Breakthrough innovation comes about when you use a large language model to interpret multiple data sets and then you start to ask the second, third, and fourth questions, going deeper and deeper into a particular topic. You find things that you could not have possibly seen or connected otherwise.