News that the Financial Services Union is to ballot its members working in AIB over the bank’s move to bring staff back on-site three days a week is just the latest manifestation of the friction being caused by return-to-the-office mandates.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Irish Business and Employers’ Confederation (Ibec) published a survey of almost 400 member organisations, more than half of them the sort of professional services that most readily moved to remote or hybrid working during the pandemic. The survey found a significant continuation of the gradual shift back towards on-site.
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While a majority of the respondent employers still allow their staff to work at least some of the time from home, the percentage requiring full-time attendance had risen from 26 per cent to 30 per cent and those demanding four-day attendance had gone from just 1 per cent to 9 per cent.
The survey suggested more of the same is to come next year.
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Commenting on the findings, Ibec’s Maeve McElwee suggested it could be a decade before the shifting sands around hybrid working finally settle, with much work still to be done on the impact on both organisations and their various categories of workers, most obviously perhaps, women and young people.
That employers as diverse as the retail banks and University College Dublin are currently in the wars with their staff is a reminder that the issue is certainly not confined to the US-headquartered tech giants, whose leaders have been embracing the wider rollback of employment policies.
It remains uncertain what another shift in the political landscape there might do to the debate. Right now, it seems all but certain that if it does take a decade for the new norm to emerge, it will involve a lot more people making the daily commute in 2035.
