The email from leadership arrives on a Tuesday afternoon. From the start of next quarter, everyone is expected in the office five days a week. There is a paragraph about collaboration and culture, and a link to a page of questions and answers. You moved further out of the city two years ago, you have a routine that works, and your first reaction is to open a job site.
That reaction is understandable. It is also worth waiting a few days before acting on it, because decisions made on the day of an announcement are rarely the best ones.
Start by finding out what the policy actually is, rather than what the email says. Read the questions and answers carefully. Ask your manager how it will apply to your team. Policies like this often arrive with exceptions for some roles, a transition period, or room for individual arrangements that nobody mentions in the first message. Sometimes the strict version softens over the following months. Sometimes it does not.
Then check your rights where you live, because they vary a great deal. In some countries you have a legal right to request flexible working, and the employer has to consider it properly and give reasons if it says no. In others, the details of your contract matter far more. If your contract names your home as your place of work, or you were hired as a remote employee, that may change things. Your union, if you have one, or an employment adviser can tell you what applies.
Work out what it would really cost you. The commute in hours and money, care arrangements, the effect on your health and on the people you live with. Put numbers on it where you can. A clear picture makes the next conversation easier, whichever way you go.
If you want an arrangement that differs from the policy, ask in writing and keep it specific. Explain what you are asking for, how your work will continue to get done, and what you have delivered while working remotely. A request that solves your manager's problem as well as yours has a much better chance.
If the answer is no and the cost is too high, you may decide to move on. That is a legitimate choice, and you are allowed to make it. Just make it calmly, with another role lined up if you can, rather than in the week the email landed.
And if you stay, try to stay properly. Give the new arrangement a fair few months before you judge it, and notice what is better as well as what is worse. You will make a clearer decision from there than from your first afternoon of frustration.
– Asael Shinder
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