Zoom's return-to-office: More than 3 days in office is 'pushing a lot,' professor says

Big Tech companies are pushing their employees to come back into the office. Zoom (ZM) recently instated a policy that would require employees to work in-office at least two days per week. Meanwhile, both Google (GOOG, GOOGL) and Amazon (AMZN) have instituted policies that track the badges of their employees to ensure that they are returning to work. Vijay Pereira, NEOMA Business School Full Professor of Human Capital Management, explains how these new policies may impact company bottom lines, stating. "unhappy employees will probably produce less, be less efficient, or may leave."

Video transcript

- More big tech companies are pushing their employees to come back to the office. Zoom which obviously is a very crucial tool during the pandemic now canceling its meeting-free days and also mandating employees to be back in the office twice a week. Both Amazon and Google have even started tracking some of their employee badge swipes at buildings to check whether or not their employees are coming back to the office.

Now it comes as the recent data from Kastle Systems here showing that offices were at 50% capacity or less last month. Here to discuss all of this, we want to bring in Vijay Pereira, a professor in human capital management at the NEOMA School, a business school in France. Vijay, it's great to see you. So just first, I guess your perspective just from a management standpoint the approach in bringing people back to the office, also this approach that we've seen from management first getting rid of meetings, now a company like Zoom getting rid of the days that they had meeting free, does that make sense to you?

VIJAY PERREIRA: Yeah. I mean, our research two years ago showed that it was very efficient both for the organization, the management, as well as for the employee or manager to have meeting-free days because it frees up your time. It gives you time to do what you do best, train for that during the periods, and also think to come back in a meeting well equipped.

But this story really about pulling it back makes little sense. But there again, it's politics. It's control that the management wants. And perhaps, that's the reason why.

- So much of this it feels like comes down to productivity. And I'm thinking back to conversations that existed during the pandemic where so many of these companies said, look, even though our employees are all working remotely, they are equally productive. What's changed in that assessment?

VIJAY PERREIRA: I don't think much has changed really. But really again, why would one want employees and managers back in? Perhaps my colleague Ben Laker wrote in a Forbes article recently that it's perhaps that human touch. But still it doesn't make sense because one day a week is very good because that's 20% of an employee's time in a five-day week.

One day no meetings is 20% of an employee's time where he or she has complete control and autonomy to do what he or she wants to do. It also prepares you better as I said before. So really at least one day, the very surprising why that one day in Zoom was called back.

- Vijay, is there a happy medium somewhere? And I guess, where does that lie as managers, as leaders are trying to figure out what exactly the meeting to no meeting ratio should look like?

VIJAY PERREIRA: Yeah, our research shows that a maximum of three no-working days in a week, a maximum. So anything between one to three is just perfect. More than three, of course, it's pushing it to a lot. So our research shows that-- 76 companies, 25,000 employees, 350 senior management we interviewed showed that the 1 2 three days a week is the optimum, the best really that one can say you should have no meetings. But one day is just perfect.

- I hope a lot of our bosses are watching this, by the way, Jacobs. Shawna as you know, there are a lot of meetings here we're no different than other offices as well. But I want to get back to this conversation about bringing workers back to the office.

I mean, we talked about Amazon in the intro to you saying they're requiring staff come back to the office at least three days a week. They're tracking the badges. It feels like we're kind of at this inflection point where employees and companies have to decide, what is that office going to look like? And are we willing, if you're the employer, to lose some of these employees because we just want to bring back the office culture that existed before? How does this all end?

VIJAY PERREIRA: Yeah, I mean, how many organizations across the world, including Zoom have actually made a cost-benefit analysis to see, OK, if we keep this, we lose. If we get rid of it, we gain.

I don't think decisions are made on these basis, and that's the problem. And so unhappy employees will probably produce less, be less efficient, or may leave, or may come into the office and not-- the classic case of presenteeism. You are present but are not efficient.

- All right, we'll see where things go. It still feels like we're in this transition period in offices and companies and employees still trying to figure things out. Vijay Pereira, good to talk to you today. Appreciate the time.