|
RTO’s “Troubling Double Standard”: Ready to return to the office? A new survey of 10,000 workers describes a “troubling double standard” in the realities that employees and their bosses face upon reentering the workplace. Future Forum, a research consortium on the future of work, finds employees are nearly twice as likely as executives to be required to work in the office every day and, therefore, report higher levels of work-related stress and anxiety, and lower levels of work-life balance. “Executives are embracing flexibility while they’re telling everybody else to come back to the office,” Sheela Subramanian, Future Forum’s vice president, tells Jena McGregor. “What we’re seeing is just a lot more rigidity, more top-down mandates happening, and executives are not necessarily setting that model from the top.” Do better by your employees by one, considering hybrid models, and two, leading with empathy.
Mask Up, Mask Down: Just 24 hours after a federal judge scrapped the Biden administration’s public transit mask mandate, ruling it unlawful, the Department of Justice announced it will appeal the decision—if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deem such a requirement necessary. This development comes as similar rules across the country have been dropped, and reinstated. Washington, D.C., for example, allowed its vaccination and indoor masking mandates to expire at the end of February, only for Beltway universities including Georgetown, American, George Washington and Johns Hopkins to reinstate mandatory masking. Meanwhile, rising infections in Philadelphia led officials to take similar steps last week, only to backtrack days later. As employers strive to push forward with return to office plans, such conflicting requirements only stand to complicate matters.
Florida Vs. The Mouse: Weeks after Disney publicly opposed HB 1557, more commonly known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, Florida Republicans retaliated, passing a bill last week to dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District—a special district that, since 1967, Walt Disney World has used to operate as its own municipality, controlling things like construction permits, building codes and even fire department services. If the bill passes the house and is signed into law, Reedy Creek would be dissolved as of June 1, 2023, and the ramifications would be wide ranging. Not only would Disney be forced to navigate a lot more red tape to, for example, break ground on new construction for its theme parks and resorts, but Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings has said the decision could put a “catastrophic” strain on local taxpayers. This isn’t the first time lawmakers have retaliated against corporations for opposing legislation. Georgia Republicans, for example, passed a bill last year stripping Delta Air Lines of a multimillion-dollar jet-fuel tax break after it slammed the state’s voting restrictions. Only time will tell if repercussions such as these might discourage corporate leaders—who have, in recent years, faced pressure from stakeholders to speak out on social issues—from taking a stance.
|
