First It Was Quiet Quitting, Now Workers Are Facing Off With Their Bosses

More and more Americans aren’t feeling great at work.

Half of workers aren’t engaged on the job, putting in minimal effort to get by, according to research by Gallup released Tuesday. Employee engagement in the U.S. declined for the second year in a row. There is also a growing share of the workforce that is disengaged, or resentful that their needs aren’t being met. In some cases, these workers are disgruntled over low pay and long hours, or they have lost trust in their employers.

“Employers are just not as in touch with employees,” said Jim Harter, chief workplace scientist at Gallup and lead author on the report. Some of the recent shift in attitude stems from workers having unclear expectations from their managers.

Workers’ frustrations have been building since 2021, after Gallup-measured U.S. worker-engagement levels hit their highest level on record in 2020. In the spring and summer of 2020, as Covid-19 spread and there was social unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, executives at many companies had town halls and listening sessions with employees, communicating organisational mission and keeping workplace relationships strong.

This year, more companies are trying to bring workers back to offices as bosses fret about worker productivity and loyalty.

Gallup surveyed more than 60,000 people in the U.S. to compile the report, which has tracked Americans’ sentiment about their jobs since 2000, and says engaged workers are more productive and tend to stay at their jobs for longer.

“If you feel like your employer isn’t giving you what you need to do your work, you’re going to be much less loyal—and looking for other work,” said Harter.

The remote work divide

Gallup’s findings come amid backlash from workers, many of whom have recently stepped up protests against in-office requirements as companies change pandemic-era policies.

Workers at insurer Farmers Group called to unionise, and some pledged to quit after a new chief executive said he would require most workers to be in-office three days a week. Amazon.com workers demonstrated at lunch recently against a hybrid-work policy with three days in the office a week.

An employee’s relationship with a direct boss is more important to engagement than where people work, said Harter. One way to build these connections is for managers to have meaningful conversations with their employees, preferably at least once a week.

Working on trust

Many employees see shifts away from flexible schedules and remote work options as a signal that executives don’t trust them to do their jobs outside of the office. Others say benefits to remote work they experienced during the pandemic, including more time with family and cutting back commutes, are now critical to their happiness.

The employers making more in-office work a requirement are, in part, motivated by trying to bolster workers’ loyalty, which they correlate with longer retention, said Katy George, a senior partner and chief people officer at McKinsey & Co.

Kyle Pflueger, 34 years old, was hired in 2020 to work remotely as a product manager. He met his co-workers in person just a few times over the years and never felt fully connected to his work or colleagues, but as the breadwinner for his family, he needed the pay, retirement benefits and health insurance.

Pflueger left his full-time job this month to focus on his independent projects.

“I wasn’t feeling particularly happy with the work that I was doing,” he said. He now works full time for himself, building and maintaining websites for businesses.

Looking for less stress

Workers also said they were more stressed this year than last, according to Gallup’s survey. American workers are among the most stressed, tied with workers in Canada and parts of East Asia.

Workplace stressors include low salaries, long hours and a lack of opportunity for advancement, according to an October report from the U.S. Surgeon General. The report also warned that workplace stress can be bad for mental health, disrupt sleep and raise one’s vulnerability to infection.

Michele Spilberg Hart, who directs marketing for a Boston-area health nonprofit, said that she has told her staff to take time off when they aren’t feeling well mentally or physically. Their work isn’t life-or-death, and taking breaks can help people come back with more energy and better ideas, she said.

“They cannot do good work and be healthy if they’re not taking care of themselves first,” she said. “If you don’t take care of yourself, nobody else will.”

First, the good news for office landlords: A post-Labor Day bump nudged return-to-office rates in mid-September to their highest level since the onset of the pandemic.

Now the bad: Office attendance in big cities is still barely half of what it was in 2019, and company get-tough measures are proving largely ineffective at boosting that rate much higher.

Indeed, a number of forces—from the prospect of more Covid-19 cases in the fall to a weakening economy—could push the return rate into reverse, property owners and city officials say.

More than before, chief executives at blue-chip companies are stepping up efforts to fill their workspace. Facebook parent Meta Platforms, Amazon and JPMorgan Chase are among the companies that have recently vowed to get tougher on employees who don’t show up. In August, Meta told employees they could face disciplinary action if they regularly violate new workplace rules.

But these actions haven’t yet moved the national return rate needle much, and a majority of companies remain content to allow employees to work at least part-time remotely despite the tough talk.

Most employees go into offices during the middle of the week, but floors are sparsely populated on Mondays and Fridays. In Chicago, some September days had a return rate of over 66%. But it was below 30% on Fridays. In New York, it ranges from about 25% to 65%, according to Kastle Systems, which tracks security-card swipes.

Overall, the average return rate in the 10 U.S. cities tracked by Kastle Systems matched the recent high of 50.4% of 2019 levels for the week ended Sept. 20, though it slid a little below half the following week.

The disappointing return rates are another blow to office owners who are struggling with vacancy rates near record highs. The national office average vacancy rose to 19.2% last quarter, just below the historical peak of 19.3% in 1991, according to Moody’s Analytics preliminary third-quarter data.

Business leaders in New York, Detroit, Seattle, Atlanta and Houston interviewed by The Wall Street Journal said they have seen only slight improvements in sidewalk activity and attendance in office buildings since Labor Day.

“It feels a little fuller but at the margins,” said Sandy Baruah, chief executive of the Detroit Regional Chamber, a business group.

Lax enforcement of return-to-office rules is one reason employees feel they can still work from home. At a roundtable business discussion in Houston last week, only one of the 12 companies that attended said it would enforce a return-to-office policy in performance reviews.

“It was clearly a minority opinion that the others shook their heads at,” said Kris Larson, chief executive of Central Houston Inc., a group that promotes business in the city and sponsored the meeting.

Making matters worse, business leaders and city officials say they see more forces at work that could slow the return to office than those that could accelerate it.

Covid-19 cases are up and will likely increase further in the fall and winter months. “If we have to go back to distancing and mask protocols, that really breaks the office culture,” said Kathryn Wylde, head of the business group Partnership for New York City.

Many cities are contending with an increase in homelessness and crime. San Francisco, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., which are struggling with these problems, are among the lowest return-to-office cities in the Kastle System index.

About 90% of members surveyed by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce said that the city couldn’t recover until homelessness and public safety problems were addressed, said Rachel Smith, chief executive. That is taken into account as companies make decisions about returning to the office and how much space they need, she added.

Cuts in government services and transportation are also taking a toll. Wait times for buses run by Houston’s Park & Ride system, one of the most widely used commuter services, have increased partly because of labor shortages, according to Larson of Central Houston.

The commute “is the remaining most significant barrier” to improving return to office, Larson said.

Some landlords say that businesses will have more leverage in enforcing return-to-office mandates if the economy weakens. There are already signs of such a shift in cities that depend heavily on the technology sector, which has been seeing slowing growth and layoffs.

But a full-fledged recession could hurt office returns if it results in widespread layoffs. “Maybe you get some relief in more employees coming back,” said Dylan Burzinski, an analyst with real-estate analytics firm Green Street. “But if there are fewer of those employees, it’s still a net negative for office.”

The sluggish return-to-office rate is leading many city and business leaders to ask the federal government for help. A group from the Great Lakes Metro Chambers Coalition recently met with elected officials in Washington, D.C., lobbying for incentives for businesses that make commitments to U.S. downtowns.

Baruah, from the Detroit chamber, was among the group. He said the chances of such legislation being passed were low. “We might have to reach crisis proportions first,” he said. “But we’re trying to lay the groundwork now.”

First It Was Quiet Quitting, Now Workers Are Facing Off With Their Bosses

Employee frustrations impact productivity and worker retention, Gallup says

The remote work divide

Working on trust

Looking for less stress

Office owners are struggling with near record-high vacancy rates