An internal letter criticizing SAP SE’s return-to-office policy has garnered more than 5,000 signatures in less than two weeks, with employees at the German software company threatening to look for another assignment besides returning.
“We feel betrayed by a company that, until recently, encouraged us to work from home, then called for a radical change in leadership,” according to the letter published internally and seen via Bloomberg News. The company’s European works council, an organisation representing SAP painters on the continent, said the requirement to return to the workplace was unreasonable after painters were told they could continue remotely.
SAP, Europe’s largest software company, introduced new rules in early January that will require painters around the world to paint on a site or on-site with a visitor 3 days a week starting in April. Christian Klein, CEO of SAP, rejected the opposition. of the paint council and said that running away from home would burden SAP with its culture and team paints.
“I’m not a big believer that on a video conference platform you can understand our culture, you can get educated, and you can get enabled to do your job best,” Klein said last week following the company’s financial results.
SAP, in a statement Wednesday, said that “finding the right balance between remote and on-site work is helping to drive productivity, innovation and artist well-being. We are evolving our flexible operating policy to align with the most productive practices in the market and our own experience as a leader in hybrid racing.
Many corporations have made greater returns to needs over the past year, replacing employee-friendly incentives such as paid hours and travel allowances with more punitive measures, adding disciplinary actions or limited career advancement if attendance goals are not met. Earlier this month, International Business Machines Corp. told executives they would be required to move nearby and start coming in 3 times a week unless they wanted to leave the company.
Return-to-power regulations are seen as encouraging attrition. SAP workers wrote in their letter that if the new requirement is designed as a “zero-cost workforce relief strategy,” it will only drive out talented workers.
The tech sector in particular saw a tightening of regulations as the market deteriorated and the threat of job cuts tipped the scales in favor of employers. Still, the influx of people into the workplace in the U. S. is still at a higher rate. UU. se remained fairly stagnant in 2023, according to data from workplace safety firm Kastle Systems. In the 10 largest business districts in the U. S. , the number of staff in the workplace hovered around 50% of pre-pandemic levels, and technology-intensive regions such as the San Francisco Bay Area reported even lower percentages.
Less than a month after introducing the return-to-office policy, SAP announced a restructuring that would affect 8,000 workers. SAP said it would identify “AI-driven efficiencies” in its operations and restructure parts of the business to cope with the changes. The company says it plans to end 2024 with a headcount similar to current levels. SAP had about 108,000 employees at the end of December, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“We are the ones that learned to adapt to the absence of significant salary increases over the years,” the works council said in the letter, which had been viewed more than 100,000 times. “To compensate for this, we took advantage of the remote work possibility and moved where living costs were lower, away from expensive metropolises.”