Fiona Cicconi, Chief People Office at Alphabet (parent company of Google), sent an internal email to staff on Wednesday. Reuters first reported on the story. In the email, Google announced that is has stopped its diversity-hiring goals. But this is just the latest step in Google’s steady retreat from DEI that started in 2023. Here’s the timeline. The State of Google’s DEI Policy Department Status: Active Department…
The ideas behind “Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion” (DEI) in the workplace date back to the 1960s. But the actual phrase likely first appeared in the 2000s and the public didn’t take notice until 2022. More specifically, Google Trends shows that the topic “Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion” wasn’t searched until the third week of February 2022. In just three short years, DEI fully embedded itself into…
UPDATE: Caterpillar Inc. (enterprise-wide) mandated 5-day RTO on April 9 with a start date of June 2. Read the full memo here. I received an email from a Caterpillar employee stating this: “Caterpillar Resource Industries has mandated 5 day/week return to office for all employees beginning Feb 1, 2025. It will be closely tracked and employees that do not comply will receive a ‘does not meet…
On September 16, 2024, Amazon issued its sixth publicly-shared return-to-office (RTO) policy. But on December 16, 2024, Business Insider reported that Amazon may not have enough space for some employees in some locations. Here’s everything you need to know about Amazon’s RTO policy. Latest Amazon RTO Policy September 2024: According to CNBC, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent a new memo instructing corporate employees to…
Many RTO announcements are met with public employee backlash. And a few recent surveys show the same. A Gartner survey of 2,080 knowledge worker employees from May through June 2023 found the following: Intent to stay among knowledge employees surveyed was 8% lower with strict RTO mandates Intent to stay among high-performing employees surveyed was 16% lower Intent to stay among millennial employees surveyed was…
This post was originally written on November 4, 2024. It was updated on November 5, 2024 after an email from an AT&T employee. Rumors have started circling on forums this week. AT&T most likely started calling executives to return to the office for five days per week. It’s unclear whether that has already taken effect or will take effect on January 2, 2025. I have…
Once the hub for tech companies in the world, San Francisco is now facing a wave of businesses leaving the Bay Area. An astonishing 35% of San Francisco’s workforce works primarily from home, according to a 2021 NBC Bay Area report. That’s the highest among all US cities where data was collected. And with workers staying home or moving out of San Francisco altogether, the…
This post was originally written on January 3, 2022. Every time a notable four-day work week country announcement comes out, we update the post. Most recently, this post was updated on October 5, 2024. Here are all of the countries with four-day weeks in some form. They’ve either 1) implemented a four-day work week law, 2) proposed a new bill, or 3) are trialing it…
During the Industrial Revolution, factory workers logged 80-100 hours per week. But in 1926, Henry Ford popularized the 40-hour work week after he found that working more barely yielded an increase in productivity. It was a breakthrough in how we work. But it was also nearly one hundred years ago. Just like how Henry Ford implemented the five-day work, today’s visionary companies have implemented four-day…
RTX (Raytheon) message boards have become popular over the last month about changing return-to-office plans. Based on the discussions, Raytheon management likely sent out a memo to most employees (definitely not all) requiring a return to the office in October of 2024. Although the rumors haven’t been confirmed by anyone at RTX yet, here’s what I know so far. RTX’s New Return To Office Policy…