I’ll quickly admit I don’t have all the information available to board members and executives at Activision Blizzard King. They may be looking at numbers we don’t see in the public discourse. When they consult with their analysts and factor in job market trends and industry layoffs and the cost of their lease, perhaps the bottom cell in the spreadsheet indicates a net win for the company over X months if they enact a mandatory Return To Office policy.
Could be.
I think it’s at least as likely, however, that they started with “We’ve always done it this way” and briefly passed through “We can’t know if they’re doing their jobs if we can’t see them” before landing on “Get them back in the office.”
I’m hardly coming up with new insights when describing this thought process as antiquated. It’s been disproven by the successes of Blizzard’s competitors such as Bungie and Respawn. It’s the Right Thing To Do when you even briefly consider the number of workers and families still dealing with the upheaval brought about by a global health crisis just three years ago. It’s opening up your business to more workers in more places when you don’t require them to converge on a particular building. It’s no longer performing rampant wage theft by forcing people to commute and not paying them for that time.
Were I in charge of Blizzard – or any company considering a non-remote policy – I’d do the following.
Make real darned sure your numbers add up. How certain are you to see a 7.5% increase in stock price due to a 4.7% productivity improvement based on immediate RTO when you factor in 0.6% of your workforce departing? And is that stock price worth the optics for a company that hasn’t had a good news day this decade? And is the morale damage and difficulty in backfilling positions worth it?
Poll your people before making a decision. We’ve seen pandemic stories of businesses that did this well. Asked their people, held town halls, moved forward based on enlightened discussion.
If you decide to RTO, be transparent. Every leader knows you have to overcommunicate decisions and be almost unreasonably forthcoming with information. To do otherwise invites, well, the sort of Charlie Foxtrot we’re seeing now. Tell your folks the numbers, tell them your thinking, tell them what you’ll do to assist everyone who’s just recently started to feel like they’re recovering from the upheaval of 2020.
Prepare for things to get worse before they get better. The J curve is real. When you take action to change the status quo you’ll pay a tax up front. Yes, the spreadsheet may be right that things will be better in 18 months. But next week? Maybe not. Make sure you explain this thoroughly to your folks, especially the managers who will bear the brunt. Temper your expectations of boosted productivity appropriately.
As we look at the response to Blizzard’s RTO strategy, it seems clear they skipped a few of these steps. If you’re considering enacting a similar policy because your spreadsheet says it’s a good idea, hopefully you handle it better.
image courtesy of Nacho Capelo via unsplash