One of the biggest mistakes this “leadership” made was creating a 5x RTO policy for everyone because of the actions of a few.
The understanding has always been that the push toward 5x RTO was driven, at least in part, by concerns about a small number of people who weren’t meeting expectations under the 3x8 policy. Whether that’s true or not, those people are largely gone. The ones paying the price today are everyone who complied and remained.
Instead of holding poor performers accountable, leadership rolled out a blanket policy that treats everyone like they need to be monitored. High performers, average performers, and low performers all get the same treatment. That’s completely a$$ backwards.
Good people managers manage performance. They don’t replace performance management with one size fits all policies that punish the majority because of the minority.
So, the unintended consequence is the new 8 & skate culture.
People who used to go above and beyond now focus on just checking the box. Badge in, sit for eight hours, badge out. Time that once went into extra work is now spent commuting. Discretionary effort has simply been replaced by compliance.
The irony is that the policy intended to improve accountability has actually reduced it. When you stop rewarding results and start emphasizing attendance, don’t be surprised when people optimize for attendance instead of outcomes.
If someone isn’t doing their job, you deal with that person. You don’t build a policy that discourages the very people you should be trying hardest to keep.