Dell introduced a return-to-office mandate in February that gives remote workers negative consequences for working from home, according to a new report by Business Insider.
The return-to-work policy cracks down on remote work by making it impossible for remote workers to get a promotion or change roles, according to BI. Almost all staff will be classified as remote or hybrid starting from May, with hybrid workers required to come in about three days per week.
“For remote team members, it is important to understand the trade-offs: Career advancement, including applying to new roles in the company, will require a team member to reclassify as hybrid onsite,” the memo reads.
BI’s source at Dell pulled data about the composition of remote teams and found that the remote employees affected “are overwhelmingly women.”
“This new policy on its face appears to be anti-remote, but in practice will be anti-woman,” the source said.
Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies, is speaking at the ”New Strategies for a New Era” keynote at the Mobile World Congress 2024 in Barcelona, Spain, on February 27, 2024. (Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Other Dell workers told BI that they think the new policy is a way to quietly fire employees. Dell laid off 5% of its workforce, around 6,650 workers, in February 2023.
Dell CEO and founder Michael Dell previously weighed in on whether or not working in an office allows for an advantage when it comes to factors like promotion, performance, and engagement.
“At Dell, we found no meaningful differences for team members working remotely or office-based even before the pandemic forced everyone home,” Dell wrote in a 2022 social media post.