Where to begin, I originally had a brief review but updated this when I saw AJ Bells replies to other reviews.
I started to look at other opportunities because of the return to office mandate, it's clearly nothing to do with "culture" and I was told exactly that by senior management who were being honest. I was still on the fence about it all as I hate changing jobs but the way my situation was managed and how I was treated during this time sealed the deal for me leaving. When the return to office mandate started I was raised concern but this was dismissed by multiple levels of management saying there wouldn't be an expectation to be in an office for me as it made no sense due to location. However, as time went on this changed and I was then asked to go to a different office that no one in my team worked at. I would be commuting several hours a day to teams call people at a different site.
There was no clear reasoning behind this decision, no concerns about my performance had been raised and if it was just about "culture" why was no compromise ever attempted with me?
Also if was all about "culture" surely you'd start planning events and sessions to try and help improve culture, no it was all down to individuals to make the effort.
I refused to start going into the office I had been asked to go, as there was no clear benefit to doing so and no one could give me an actual reason for doing so other than to increase a metric. I had been working without issues for months with no concerns and was bonding with my team well.
I raised a flexible working request immediately and continued working.
During this time I was essentially bullied into coming into the office, senior management tried to guilt trip me by saying I was letting the team down (because I dragged the metric below 50%) tried to sell me all the benefits of going to an office where I knew no one.
It was that bad that they point blank asked if I would hand my notice in on a teams call because I was dragging the metric down, something I'm not sure is even legal.
I tried to negotiate the office visits, offering to come to the main office multiple times a month in order to spend more time with my team. I was told it was "pointless" because it wasn't enough for the metric, but then they had the gall to say I could come to see my team once my weekly office metric was high enough.
After all this I got the results of my flexible working request, which took 2 months to be properly responded to, and was ultimately pointless as my request was unofficially rejected within days of it being received (I was told this out of common courtesy). The rejection had been written by either a HR person or third-party but with my managers name on, my manager confirmed they had not wrote the letter and knew nothing of it. It was quite clear because the letter didn't actually know what my role and responsibilities were and tried to argue how important being in the office (where no one I worked with) was.
I ended up leaving shortly after all this as I couldn't stomach working for a company who cared so little about me. I have never been so actively pushed out by a company.
I'm not sure what happened to this company, it used to be a great place. But now it has no respect for it's employees and they are truly just a number.
Before the company reply saying that it was always hybrid, this was definitely not the case and HR need to realise they weren't inline with the people doing the interviews. Until about April 2024 all new starters who I spoke to were told they wouldn't need to come into the office. I was told in my interview I would never need to come into an office due to my location. In my first weeks of joining everyone I spoke to confirmed that there was no office expectation.
I'm also not sure what positive impact they think they've seen from implementing a policy like this but it's realistically having a negative effect. Morale is exceptionally low at this point and lots of good people are leaving the company.
