It seems companies, after begging employees to come back to the office, are now threatening employees to come back to the office. A recent example is this article from Entrepreneur stating Bank of America threatens employees with disciplinary action.
Ironically, a few days later, CNBC reports that return to office mandates are a boon to companies overseas wanting to snatch up American workers for their creativity and prowess in work ethic.
It’s getting harder to find a remote job in the U.S., but you might have better luck working from home for a company based abroad. The number of American workers hired by international companies grew 62% last year, according to the State of Global Hiring Report from Deel, an HR platform that specializes in global hiring. The report is based on 300,000 contracts between Deel customers and workers for both contractors and full-time employees, and roughly 85% of those contracts are for remote positions. American workers are most likely to be hired by companies in the U.K., Canada, France, Singapore and Australia.
CNBC.com
I have a family member that was offered a job in Europe and moved earlier this week so the trend is definitely real and people are taking advantage of it.
On a personal note, I received a solicitation for a job on Linkedin. It happens frequently and I ignore most of them but this particular job offer intrigued me except it wasn’t a remote job but a “hybrid” job. I asked the recruiter what “hybrid” meant and it meant some days in the office required. I immediately said no thanks and the recruiter wanted to know why. Normally I wouldn’t waste time explaining to recruiters why but I decided to indulge this person’s curiosity because I remembered writing this post recently.
In that post I explained how I save close to $5500/month working from home. Yes that’s not a typo it is FIVE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED dollars per month.
So here is how I will handle recruiters from now on. If you solicit me for a job, I am going to respond with the following base salary requirements:
- Work from home (remote) – $250,000/year
- Hybrid work (3 days in office) – $250,000/year + $60,000/year expenses fee = $310,000/year
- In Office (5 days/week) – $310,000/year + $50,000 lost time (commute) fee = $360,000/year
Businesses love to have tiered pricing for their services so it’s only fair that I have tiered pricing for my services. If any business had to incur additional charges for a good or service you bet they would pass those charges on to their customers so why shouldn’t the reverse hold true? By the way, the numbers above are base salary and don’t include bonus, incentives, stock grants, benefits or other perks.
Ironically, CEO’s are saying that in office work creates “better creativity and culture” which, if true, should then command a premium in pay to be in the office. Isn’t this how free markets work? And if working in the office is so great why do CEO’s keep outsourcing work to India, a country 8000 miles away in a different time zone? How are they not in the office at the same time to create that better culture and creativity? And if India employees can work independently from American employees then why bother with in office work at all?
Call Their Bluff
My advise on how to handle Return To Office is to call their bluff. The truth is that there are millions of baby boomers exiting the labor force over the next 10 years and there won’t be enough skilled people to back fill all those retirements. This isn’t a problem just in the United States, it’s a problem around the world, not enough skilled people at all levels and in most places.
If you do end up being let go, there are plenty of places to find remote work. Here is a long list I found just by using google. And don’t worry about your CEO because Artificial Intelligence will run circles around most of these people, that’s where the real huge cost savings will be found.