"Rules for me but not for thee" has never been more accurate than when it comes to dealing with a C-suite executive pushing an aggressive return-to-office (RTO) policy, consisting of rules and values that they deem themself to not be a part of. If there's any leadership that will inspire loyalty, it's leading from the front, and policies that you yourself don't want to follow is not the way to do this. When you're just running a corporate entity, there are not many excuses for being an armchair general. It's not like there's any real risk involved—not like there would have been if you were riding into battle or venturing out into the unknown world.
This organization's work-from-home policy was pretty relaxed for the pre-pandemic era, becoming increasingly so as mandatory working from home dragged on. This tech worker even packed up and moved to another city, taking advantage of their new freedom. The company did the same, hiring workers from out of the city and well away from the office at a lower rate.
When the world began to return to normal, and employers began returning to their more traditional policies, it suddenly became trendy for executives everywhere to instate return-to-office plans. Kind of in a "monkey see, monkey do" sort of way.
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This organization was no different, with the company's new CEO seeking to follow the trend and get the entire team to work from the office, pushing it as an important initiative and harassing the tech team to work from the office more often. Well, the new policy was going to be less flexible than things were previously, and there's one thing workers hate most: it's watching flexible working arrangements going backward. Things escalated, culminating with the CTO stepping in and throwing his weight on this team.
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