Workers suffer sticker shock in return to office workspace
As the security software company KnowBe4 weighed whether to require a return to the office, executives knew to anticipate a certain set of concerns from employees. Less flexibility. More time in transit.
Then, in recent months, came a new set of worries about RTO: the rising cost of gas and food, especially near the firm’s headquarters in Clearwater, Florida, one of the areas of the United States hit hardest by inflation.
Workers advised one another on their internal messaging system where to find cheap gas ($3.25!). The company tried to ease the transition by offering free snacks (pickles, Nutella!). But some employees, partly put off by RTO expenses, including dog sitters and child care, told their managers that they preferred to keep working from home. In January, KnowBe4 informed its roughly 1,500 employees that most could stay remote indefinitely.
“If employers are like, ‘Hey, yeah, you need to come into the office, you need to spend this money on gas, you have to eat at the office,’ people are going to go, ‘This is too expensive,’ ” said Erika Lance, the company’s head of human resources.
Employers’ plans to return to the office, already strained by concerns about the spread of the coronavirus and the demands of an emboldened workforce, are now colliding with the pressures of inflation. The cost of a daily routine — travel, coffee, food — is far pricier than it was when offices shut down two years ago. Consumer prices were 8.5% higher last month than they were a year earlier, the fastest 12-month inflation rate since 1981. While office occupancy has crept up to its highest level since March 2020, above 40%, some workers have experienced RTO sticker shock.
“It’s a perfect storm,” said Becky Frankiewicz, U.S. president of ManpowerGroup, a global staffing agency. “We’re ready to get back to work, and now can you afford to get back to work?”
Average gas prices in the United States hit $4.33 a gallon last month, compared with around $2.60 in 2019, according to AAA. The Sweetgreen salad that now costs $11.95 might have been $11.20 last year. A Potbelly sandwich for $7.65 was once $7.20. An iced latte at Dunkin’ might be $3.99, up from roughly $3.70. And with the labor market still tight, employers are fielding calls from workers asking for more flexibility or raises.
The talent shortage has boosted pay, but not enough to keep pace with inflation; wages grew 5.6% in the last year. Some employers said they were planning to give raises, recognizing that their workers could easily be poached. OrderMyGear, for example, an e-commerce platform based in Dallas, another city hit hard by inflation, recently tripled the budget it had allocated for compensation increases in previous years. Other businesses said they had not yet adjusted wages as they waited to see whether inflation would cool.
But for those companies asking their staff to give up the flexibility of remote work, the pressure to raise wages has grown. “Remote work started off as a safety measure,” Frankiewicz said. “Now it’s a cost-containment measure.”
She noted that some workers her company had placed were now seeking short commute times to manage costs, and some companies were offering gas cards, transportation vouchers or ride-share options. ManpowerGroup has received five times as many comments from workers saying rising costs were affecting where and whether they worked as it did in the same period last year.
“It was: ‘I don’t want to make the commute,’ ” Frankiewicz continued. “Now it’s: ‘I can’t afford the commute.’ ”