As a long time employee, I have witnessed many changes in this company...Some good, some definitely not so good. I don't mind change. Change is the better part of my job. What I do mind is that once I loved coming to work, but not anymore. I loved the way people pulled together to get something done. There wasn't a "that's not my job" or "you will get the bare minimum out of me because in the end I'm just a MEETS at best anyway" attitude. People worked hard and were rewarded for their work. Managers could reward several great employees at the same time without living under the bell curve rating mandate. We actually had fun at work and production quality and quantity was high!
Now, I see this "location strategy" taking really good people, with an immense amount of knowledge, and letting them go because suddenly where they live isn't acceptable (when it's been acceptable for years). Many of those people know the nuances of this place (the people and the systems) and when they are let go it leaves the new and less seasoned people with limited knowledge and limited networking skills - and takes far longer for them to get something done. When this company says they focus on risk, clearly they do not!
Collaboration is said to be one big reason for the "location strategy". That is a joke. Many people don't collaborate at all during their day other than on Teams, which they can do from anywhere. Some don't even sit in the same city as their counterparts so they go into an office 3 days a week to sit alone and speak to no one around them. I personally witness people around me spending a large amount of time talking on their cell phones for personal calls and shopping online and not interacting at all with anyone around them. I suspect they were more productive at home not wasting the prep and commute time.
My two cents is that a lot of these technology systems failures lately aren't a coincidence. It's because the people with the knowledge and skills or those systems, the deep knowledge needed to react and address issues when they occur (and they will occur), have been let go.
The COST of the location strategy is enormous. It's costly to the company in means of lost productivity, in extended downtime for issues and in the attitudes of people. All of this leads to a huge cost to our customers!!
This once incredibly fun and vibrant workplace is so sad and depressing now. I sure miss those days.