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PwC has demanded staff spend less time working from home\u2014and it\u2019s going to start tracking their location to ensure they comply.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The accountancy firm informed its 26,000 U.K. employees in a memo that from January they\u2019ll be expected to be at their desks\u2014or with clients\u2014at least three days a week, or for 60% of their time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Previously staff were expected to spend two to three days working in-person.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, to ensure staffers are not secretly working from home (or at a beach) when they shouldn\u2019t be, the company will monitor how often they\u2019re working from the office, in the same way it monitors how many chargeable hours they work.<\/p>\n
Every month, workers will be sent information about their \u201cindividual working location data\u201d which will even be shared with their in-house career coaches, according to the Financial Times.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n A spokesperson for the company confirmed to Fortune<\/em> that the announcement only impacts U.K. staff.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cFace-to-face working is hugely important to a people business like ours, and the new policy tips the balance of our working week into being located alongside clients and colleagues,\u201d Laura Hinton, Managing Partner at PwC UK, said in statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis feels right for our business and right for our people, given our focus on client service, coaching, and learning and development,\u201d Hinton concluded while emphasising that this doesn\u2019t mark the end of flexible working at the firm.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe continue to offer flexibility through hybrid working.\u201d<\/p>\n PwC wouldn\u2019t confirm whether the new measures have been brought in to clamp down on worker\u2019s dodging the company\u2019s current mandate.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, Hinton\u2019s memo suggested that there are currently inconsistencies in how worker\u2019s are interpreting the company\u2019s policy and that by tracking who\u2019s in\u2014and who\u2019s not\u2014management can ensure it\u2019s being applied \u201cfairly and consistently\u201d across the business.<\/p>\n \u201cWe all benefit from the positive impact of a hybrid approach, but the previous guidance of at least two to three days a week was open to interpretation,\u201d she wrote in the memo seen by the FT<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The new policy comes as research<\/a> shows that London workers are in the office just half the week\u2014less than many other major global cities.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is partly because workers are resisting their bosses\u2019 in-office mandates: While employers in London are asking staff to come in 3.1 days a week on average, employees are actually showing up only 2.7 days.<\/p>\n Although a return to face-to-face working in the U.K. capital is particularly \u201csluggish\u201d, according to the report from Centre for Cities\u2014Toronto is the only major city measured to do worse\u2014employees dodging RTO requests has become a global phenomenon.<\/p>\n Even in Sydney, where workers face the most demanding RTO policies at four days per week, they\u2019re still only heading to the office for 2.8 days.\u00a0<\/p>\n Likewise, in Singapore workers are being asked to work from the office for 3.6 days of the week\u2014but are only showing up for 3.2 days.<\/p>\n Although PwC\u2019s location monitoring measures are unusual, many major employers have started clamping down on remote working after unsuccessfully trying to convince workers to volunteer more of their time in the office.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, rival firm EY began formally keeping track of swipe-card entry data collected by its turnstiles to track how often employees were coming into the office.<\/p>\n Likewise, Dell is giving its workers literal red flags<\/a> for not swiping their badges enough. Meanwhile Amazon is putting an end to \u201ccoffee badging\u201d<\/a> by setting a minimum-hour obligation on in-office days.<\/p>\n To that end, TikTok even launched its own internal app, \u201cMyRTO<\/a>\u201d which monitors in-office attendance and asks them to explain absences.<\/p>\n At the same time, there\u2019s a growing cohort of defeated CEOs who are taking the path of least resistance: Having witnessed RTO mandates\u2019 negative impact on employee engagement<\/a>, retention and recruitment<\/a>, many are softening their stance on working from home.<\/p>\n KPMG<\/a> surveyed U.S. CEOs of companies turning over at least $500 million and found that just one-third expect a full return to the office<\/a> in the next three years.<\/p>\n That marks a complete turnaround from their stance last year, when 62% of CEOs surveyed predicted that working from home would end by 2026.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nEmployees resisting RTO\u00a0<\/h2>\n
RTO clampdowns<\/h2>\n
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