Dell to color-code staff based on how hybrid they really are in RTO push

Dell has told workers it will track the onsite presence of hybrid employees – those who work part remotely, part in the office – using electronic badge swipes, VPN monitoring, and a rather creepy color-coding system. "In the latest Jeff Clarke return-to-grade-school initiative, HR will be keeping an attendance report card on …

[Mostly Irrelevant]

"The policy, which exempts field employees, is controversial because it states that choosing remote status will hinder career advancement and increase the chance of being selected for a layoff, among other downsides."

This is true of remote work everywhere, it limits your career advancement opportunities. Dell is just being honest about it.

[Joe W]

Nope. Not here.

It helps that my boss and his boss value remote working as well. Their boss is OK with it.

Unfortunately the umbrella corp would not allow a home office quota of greater than 50%.

[sedregj]

I am the MD of a tiny UK coy. Pre the recent pandemic I had a pretty standard approach to WFH (sod off you work shy noddy).

Since the pandemic, I am rather more nuanced about it. I give my employees the tools to do the job, wherever they are. If calls on the helpdesk are being fixed, I don't care where my employees physically are or what they are doing.

Define the job and define the results required. How the results are achieved is a collaborative thing. Get it right and your troops can do it their way and they feel empowered.

An unenchanted employee is a cost sink and I suspect that the big firms are deploying a lot of cost sinks without realising it.

[sabroni]

There are two sorts of leaders

Those who believe power is limited and want to keep it to themselves and those who believe it is unlimited and want to give their employees the power to deliver.

Post above is from someone who understands power is unlimited.

Dell do not understand this.

[GavanMeyer]

It depends who you work for I expect. My boss is a 4 hour flight from me but his boss is a 2 hour drive from me and everyone is happy with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to depend a bit on the size of the company. The ones with more real estate and bigger workforces (Dell, HPE, etc) seem more determined to force people in than smaller companies where teams are very geographically spread anyway.

[Doctor Syntax]

That real estate is weighting them down.

[MachDiamond]

"That real estate is weighting them down."

If they realize that, why would they compound the problem by making that real estate more expensive with HVAC, bog rolls, people using the elevators, etc?

If I'm working from home and my office chair breaks, I expect I'll be the one footing a new one (used from craigslist). If I'm working at an office, I'll put in to have the company provide me with a new chair. The same goes for light bulbs and all sorts of things. People that work from home might not even bother to get reimbursement for minor office supplies that would be expected to be stocked in an office. If you don't do much printing, using a few sheets a month for work may be no big deal. All of that adds up.

[Coastal cutie]

I doubt your average middle and upper manglement are capable of applying that level of logic to the situation - they can't raise their gaze over bums on seats

[Doctor Syntax]

"If they realize that, why would they compound the problem by making that real estate more expensive with HVAC, bog rolls, people using the elevators, etc?"

There's a big word at the start of that sentence. Just two letters but it's a big word.

The weight is just causing inertia.

[Anonymous Coward]

"If they realize that, why would they compound the problem by making that real estate more expensive with HVAC, bog rolls, people using the elevators, etc?"

Because commercial real estate is really expensive, and to be able to claim tax deductions most jurisdictions require the business to demonstrate that the asset is actually utilized. To make matters worse, leasing contracts are often covering a 10 year or longer term and have provisions that make premature termination very difficult and highly expensive.

Bringing the peons back to the office is the way to demonstrate utilization, and the costs that come with RTO are literally peanuts compared to the tax savings. And that remains true even when employees, after being forced to commute to an office they hate, are likely to return to mostly performative working practices.

[Doctor Syntax]

"This is true of remote work everywhere, it limits your career advancement opportunities."

Could you explain in a little more detail how this might apply in the company my daughter works for? It's international with an HQ in Dublin. We think there's a UK office somewhere but, being interviewed online when she was recruited, she's never visited it. The professional staff are almost entirely working at home, meeting online and in teams which span countries and continents.

The irony here is that Dell specialise in the technology that makes this possible. How odd that they don't seem to have that degree of faith in the efficacy of their own products.

[druck]

In the same way that Zoom don't believe in their own product either.

[aerogems]

What career growth? That stopped being a thing over a generation ago. You have to find a new job at a different company to get promoted or get any kind of significant raise these days.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubbish. The lockdowns have proven more than amply that home working is just fine for established staff in office and technical roles.

So much so that WFH is our corporate default. The employer doesn't necessarily pay top dollar but it's not bad, and the flexibility is worth it in spades. Offices are now almost used exclusively as meeting space. The only significant barrier is onboarding new personnel.

If Dell staff feel done over by losing out on flexibility; other employers are available. Considerably better ones...

[sabroni]

re: it limits your career advancement opportunities

That makes no sense. As a remote worker I can be employed anywhere in the world. How is that limiting my opportunity?

[Mark 85]

Re: re: it limits your career advancement opportunities

"It’s a shit show here," we're told.

I think this comment pretty much sums it all up. Their rules on this seem more about "control" than about actually getting something done. I've worked in a few places over time that had this attitude as the management didn't seem to understand how to manage so they took the easy way and because micromanaging idiots. Best thing to do is get the hell out of there as quickly as you can if you value your peace of mind and abilities as the stress this causes health (mental and physical) issues.

[Chairman of the Bored]

Not the only ones affected

Iny experience engineers working remotely expect technicians and engineers onsite to drop everything and be their eyes and hands in the lab. Then we get to play "telephone" over Teams and whatnot to pass information back and forth.

This absolutely kills productivity and morale for those actually at work

[Ace2]

Re: Not the only ones affected

When I worked in Hell I had to apply for permission to even access the lab where my hardware was located. I never succeeded in getting access to the hardware docs for the systems.

[CloudlessSkies]

Re: Not the only ones affected

Yes around Y2K a big 2 letter removed my access to the computer room housing several 'nix systems - forgetting that I had remote root level connectivity. "rm -rf /" would have been more anonymous than hitting them with a sledge hammer.

[Iggle Piggle]

Ah that's wonderful that Dell is protecting it's employees from being outsourced to India or Eastern Europe </sarcasm> Where I work the company implemented desk sharing and has been able to afford to downsize the office as a result. Now there are times that not being in the same building as a colleague can be a nuisance but we all got used to using software such as Teams during Covid and now calling a colleague for a chat is no big issue. Our teams are spread across the face of the planet, so there is no realistic way for everyone from India, Europe, and the USA to be in the same office at the same time. Do those in other countries deserve a red card because they are not in our office?

[Soruk]

At my previous job the office WiFi was often so slow as to be unusable, so I just tethered my staff SIM (unlimited data) and used the VPN. I had, however, booked a spot in the car park, and they used ANPR so it only let in those who booked.

[MachDiamond]

"At my previous job the office WiFi was often so slow as to be unusable"

I'd say the company really cheaped out by not installing hardwired networking. When I worked at a small aerospace startup the engineering office was all on wi-fi, but once I started and another engineer was brought in, it was hopeless. I got permission to spend some money and bought a 24 port switch, a roll of Cat 5e and connectors. I spend a Saturday with another one of the guys wiring the whole office up. Monday was an office full of happy people. The wi-fi was just used when we dragged a laptop out in the work area for something and since it was only used for that, it was much faster.

[UnknownUnknown]

Or buy some better Mesh WiFi.

[hplasm]

"I'd say the company really cheaped out by not installing hardwired networking."

You can lead an office drone to a network point, but you can't make the lazy fuccers use it.

They'd rather moan about Bad WiFi than plug in the network lead in front of them on the desk.

However I can't say I'm surprised, when there's no way to connect said cable without a "docking station*" that weighs ten times more than their laptop - which they would have to carry around -

But They won't plug in the provided docking station that is right in front of them either...

sigh

* Said docking station/brick does make a good cluebat, so there's that.

[ecofeco]

Re: "I'd say the company really cheaped out by not installing hardwired networking."

I've seen this literally a thousand times.

[Soruk]

Re: "I'd say the company really cheaped out by not installing hardwired networking."

Totally agree.

But at that office, there were no LAN connections to the desks. They provided monitors that connected by USB-C which also could power the laptop, but they didn't carry networking. (Whether those Dell monitors could even carry networking over their USB-C is another matter.)

[Handlebars]

That's some enthusiasm. Hope they gave you some other time off since you came in on the weekend.

[MachDiamond]

"That's some enthusiasm. Hope they gave you some other time off since you came in on the weekend."

It was a salaried post so in the US, if I show up on a particular day, that's enough to make a claim on being there. There wasn't a lot of bother about spending a bit more time for lunch or cutting out early on a Friday and most people balanced coming in early with leaving early as well. It was a small office with a group of nerds designing and building rockets. We weren't that fussed about working some overtime to make our lives easier or to get something done we could drag out to the test site and fly or run. If the company had been demanding we punch a clock and work 50 hour weeks, that would have put a different face on it.

[simonlb]

I'd go full remote...

By moving to another company. I used to do three days a week in the office before Covid but since then it's been 'only come into the office if there is a specific need to', so I used to go in one day a week just for a change from being at home. The savings on fuel and car maintenance from the mileage reduction is equivalent to a half-decent pay rise, I get an extra three hours a day for myself and family and there has been no impact at all to my productivity. Obviously, YMMV, but I still don't understand why these companies are now insisting on workers returning to the office if their roles can be performed from anywhere after working from home for four years has proven that.

[Decimal5446]

Re: I'd go full remote...

Because they are fuming about these stupid expensive buildings with bonkers leases being empty

[UnknownUnknown]

Re: I'd go full remote...

Mine exercised the 5 years break option in the 10 year lease.

[David Hicklin]

Re: I'd go full remote...

And middle managers who suddenly realise that they are not adding any value....

[J. Cook]

Re: I'd go full remote...

Same here, for the most part; Company party line is "be in the office three days a week", but they are pretty lax on "in the office", and for how long. :)

Since one of my hats at [RedactedCo] is storage and compute admin, if there's a hardware fault, I get to go into the office to fix it, along with providing access for contractors to perform monthly preventative maintenance on critical systems like the CRAC and UPS units in the data centers.

[yoganmahew]

Secret squirrels

"The Register however has been made aware of internal workforce figures that exceed 150,000. Absent a clarification from Dell, which we've asked for, we can only speculate about the reason for the discrepancy."

Contractors are not headcount. You can offshore, then bring in the arms length contractors to your office on temporary visas just fine. Lovely compliant workforce with nowhere else to go. All i's are dotted, all t's are crossed. Nothing ever gets fixed, mind you, just endlessly manually worked around. Then you need more manual work arounders.... wonder where they come from...

[jglathe]

Fire HR.

simple

[Evil Scot]

Re: Fire HR.

But first

1: Book hotel in line managers name.

2: Steal shower cap from said hotel.

3: Cover smoke alarm in HR office with shower cap.

Icon to clarify.

[cyberdemon]

Re: Fire HR.

Not so simple since they are the ones who do the firing. Do you ask them nicely to please fire yourselves?

[ChrisC]

Re: Fire HR.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMON_tgbLL4

[My other car WAS an IAV Stryker]

Re: Fire HR.

...out of a cannon. (icon --->)

For aerospace companies, make it "Fire HR out of an airlock."

[quxinot]

Re: Fire HR.

It doesn't matter how you fire HR.

So long as you get them into the volcano! The results matter, not the methodology!

[MachDiamond]

Re: Fire HR.

Sack them or douse them with inflammable liquids and toss in a match? Asking for a friend.

[PB90210]

Re: Fire HR.

Things were far simpler when they were the 'Personnel Dept'...

[Anonymous Coward]

human capital management software

Whoever coined that phrase really knows how to fit into corporate. No doubt they are ready to brief you on how to "spend that capital" and even how we can "effectively arbitrage across national boundaries".

And always remember, our units of capital control are fungible; the fiscal Best Practice is to spend money to ensure we have the efficient means to manage them at arms length utilising this software.

[J. Cook]

Re: human capital management software

BINGO! What do I get for a prize on the buzzword bingo?

[Bebu]

Colour wheel?

Blue flag indicates "consistent onsite presence"

Green flag indicates "regular onsite presence"

Yellow flag indicates "some onsite presence"

Red flag indicates "limited onsite presence"

I can see Blue + Yellow = Green - regular ~ some consistent onsite presence

so Purple = Red + Blue ~ consistent limited onsite presence (as in never :)

I suppose Orange means some limited onsite presence, or just the bloke delivering the tea room supplies* in a high vis vest.

Its a shit show here! No kidding.

Next it will be daily ink stamps on wrist and gold stars at the end of the week, and of course the naughty step. :).

*Doubtless the cheapest granulated instant instant coffee/rat droppings and teabags (resembling something even more gross) that corporate procurement could locate.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Colour wheel?

The colour wheel seems to completely ignore any measurements of performance. All they are doing is putting a nebulous reward for making indentations on a seat cushion. If they start dismissing red flag people with no regard for job performance, that's when we'll know that Dell's leadership is spending time in K-town with Elon.

[Evil Scot]

Re: Colour wheel?

But is it pantone(tm) licenced?

[Glen Murie]

Re: Colour wheel?

I can see a group of clever people tailgating each other in, or copying each other's badges and badging each other in. To the system you look like you're in the office three or four times more than you actually are. And since these policies are usually inflicted on peons only, the managers won't know because they'll be WFH all the time. Just like so many of them did pre-pandemic.

I can also see Dell getting their asses sued off applying this policy to a disabled person who has to work from home, and has specific acommodations set aside for them in their employment contract.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Colour wheel?

"I can also see Dell getting their asses sued off applying this policy to a disabled person who has to work from home, and has specific acommodations set aside for them in their employment contract."

Companies can also miss out on people that would be really good due to needing special accommodations or could be sued for dismissing an application due to that. I would expect that people that had limitations would find jobs that they could do from home where they have all of the support they might need. Another Steven Hawking is way off the right end of the graph, but he could have been pushed out at some point for reasons but smarter heads prevailed and just having him associated with the university was worth a bundle.

[Pascal Monett]

"regular onsite presence"

Hey, if I'm on site one day a week every week, I call that regular.

And great show for the expense of having programmers code and set up this color wheel thingy based on badging. That is not something you would get out of an Excel spreadsheet, so there are a few people who have been tasked with making this possible.

I hope they also made sure that their badging was blue every day, whether they were there or not . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "regular onsite presence"

On the other hand I'm sure there is going to be some badge swiping clubs set up, and if they are monitoring VPN usage setting things up so everyone can share the connection of the person who is mean to be WFH that day.

[Anonymous Coward]

Run the business

If they put the same effort into JUST FUCKING RUNNING THE BUSINESS as this bullshit, I’m sure Dell would be making better returns, have a higher market cap and be a jollier and better place to work.

It’s corporate bullying and victimisation behaviour. Simple as.

It’s like they have been acquired by IRS Internal audit .

A plague on your c-suite houses for selling VMWare too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Run the business

Not making utter garbage would be a good place for them to start.

Says me typing this on a work-issued Dell laptop that, in about 15 minutes, will be thermally throttling under low load.

[Steve Hersey]

Sounds like a good time for a union organizing drive

If not an unfair labor practice complaint. Demanding that folks return on site isn't improper per se, but if it's being used to trim the workforce in discriminatory ways, they're courting a court appearance.

[Marty McFly]

Color

I thought a person's color was a legally protected characteristic.

And aren't we allowed to self-identify as our color of choosing, regardless of our physical appearance?

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

Re: Color

Yes yes, very good J-ROC You countin my knowmsayins? Is this a knowm-census? Knowmsayin?"

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Red Shirt

How long before Dell HR get people to start wearing colour coded tops?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirt_(stock_character)

[aerogems]

How to destroy employee morale in one completely idiotic move. One that doesn't even need the benefit of hindsight to see it will end badly, the only benefit hindsight will bring is showing us just how badly it ends. The basic contract between employer and employee is the employer pays the employee to do a specific set of tasks, or provide a set of deliverables. As long as that is getting done, who gives a shit about where it's being done? What do you care if I'm doing my work at 3am in my boxers at the kitchen table? Is it getting done on time? Is the quality acceptable? Yes? Then you can fuck off about the how or where I do it! Obviously there are some jobs that need to be done at a specific location, but a great many do not.

Seriously, I'd like to see someone take this to court claiming it's a constructive dismissal effort, which, dollars to doughnuts, it is. Creating a work environment so toxic no reasonable person would want to work there in the hopes people will quit and they can avoid the embarrassing headlines about layoffs.

[Lurko]

"and they can avoid the embarrassing headlines about layoffs"

My perception is that US companies have always been proud of layoffs, and it's pretty clear Wall Street love a good workforce optimization.

I'd judge this isn't about employee effectiveness or output, nor about pushing people out through stealth, it's just Dilbert-esque PHBs who can't cope unless there's peons sitting outside their office. And there's a whole lot of low calibre PHBs around, all acting like a herd.

[aerogems]

Yes, however, with layoffs there are certain legal limitations. Like you can't hire someone new for that position for a full calendar year. This way, they don't even have to tweak the job description when they want to pull an IBM and get rid of the older workforce. You want to bring in a slave H1B worker to do the job, no problem. You just want to hire the boss' nephew who's fresh out of college with a D- GPA average? There's an open spot.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Computer is Your Friend. Trust the Computer

Did anyone else on here ever play an RPG called Paranoia? Where you lived in a dystopian hellscape, were colour-coded according to level, and nobody trusted each other? Maybe Dell are trying to play it for real.

[J. Cook]

GREETINGS TROUBLESHOOTER green032, Clone 4

Please proceed to the location that Clone 3 was vaporized in and start cleaning up the ashes. You will need a mop bucket and mop, which are in sector 10, which is BLUE access only. Any green troubleshooters will be terminated with extreme prejudice. Be on the look out for any COMMIES or MUTANTS and turn them in if found.

(It's a hilarious game, as long as you don't mind that your player has six clones, and usually ends up getting killed three or four times in the process of completing a simple task.)

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: GREETINGS TROUBLESHOOTER green032, Clone 4

SCO Xenix came with a text-adventure version of that game! I played it for a bit on a client's system while I was waiting for a QIC-40 tape backup to complete, preperatory to applying a SCO-provided binary patch to their system.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Manchester United

Things appear to be a bit more dire at Old Trafford

https://www.theguardian.com/football/article/2024/may/08/sir-jim-ratcliffe-manchester-united-remote-work-ban-email-traffic

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Manchester United

People still use email? How quaint. I refer to my corporate email as the Jenkins spam service.

[Tron]

An alternative.

They could introduce a new range of uniforms. A suit for those who always go into work, with a sliding scale of increasingly casual wear for others. A Hawaiian shirt and shorts for those who rarely gather at the water cooler. Permanent WFHs could be issued with Walmart-friendly couture.

[hplasm]

Re: An alternative.

"A suit for those who always go into work"

It's usually the Suits who are rarely in the office - and have a very limited online presence when WFH.

Just sayin'

[Groo The Wanderer]

Thank goodness I never had the misfortune of working for such a micro-managing and petty company; whether I got the job done was all that mattered.

[Ryan D]

Maybe they are trying to compete

With DHS and other 3 letter agencies?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeland_Security_Advisory_System

[aurizon]

Dell is in 'old time management' Hades baffled and has no idea WTF - they seem unable to grasp the reality of a work force that is fully remote, who log-in assess their task or managerial role - do the task and look for the next task their queuing 'AI assistance' sieves from their ether - and do that. Interim time is spent following data flow headlines, with occasional deep dives. Each of these men/women will have their own 'AI assistant', all sieving/sorting/presenting.

The old 'manglement' spends time counting fleas on sheep and tries to extract a success metric from that - as they fail, they tighten their grip on the sheep and develop better flea detectors. They need to decouple the old manglers from everything, let the system of smart people and AI assistants engage in evolutionary competition

[mevets]

Long, long ago...

Dell established itself as the leading innovator in PCs via its clever use of colours.

The unexpected appearance of mice made for an ugly user experience -- it was hard to tell which plug was for the mouse and which was for the keyboard.

Dell shone through that dusky field by introducing colour on both the receiving port and the cable.

Users no longer had to struggle with repeatedly swapping mouse and keyboard ports, forgetting partway through which of the 4 combinations they had missed.

Dell had saved the day with its enduring commitment to innovation.

It is only fitting that it has now placed its employees on the same plane as peripheral connections.

[Snowy]

TR=racking going to the offie

No mention of doing any work once there?

[Anonymous Coward]

WF Anywhere

I worked for a company that one day on a call found out that one of its long term employees actually lived in Cyprus this lead to an honest company chat where it turned out some people had emigrated and lived in Canada and others had moved to other parts of the UK.

The only people in the office lived local to the office.

In the end the boss / owner admitted the business was running really well and how could he mind about it.

That is exactly how it should be.

DELL your treatment of the employees is disgusting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: WF Anywhere

Ah, but beware of tax implications. Keep your mouths shut and all should be fine. But tell Cypriot and Canadian authorities and you may have problems.

[Luiz Abdala]

Color code their crap too?

We should color-code how crappy Dell's gear or ideas are.

Mangled BIOSES on their PCs - red.

Proprietary power supplies and motheboards that don't follow ATX code - red.

Huge alienware cases that instantly peg 90 degrees Celsius on their air-cooled chips, as tested by Gamer Nexus - red

[theloon]

let the employment law suits begin

Gonna be interesting to watch where this goes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bosses want what bosses want

We went through a covid lockdown realignment pivoting to nearly 100% remote working. During that time staff moral stayed high and profits actually hit a record high.

Fast forward to 2022, "get your asses back in the office because we like to see bums on seats when we pass those floors in the glass walled exec lift".

The company has a much yelled commitment to carbon zero but apparently that doesn't matter when it's coming out of your tailpipe when commuting. Commuting carbon is good carbon or something.

Company moral is crashing in no small part due to this policy and there is a pushback through the 'anonymous' surveys. And they are really not pleased to be told the workforce aren't happy little soldiers regarding this. The beatings really will continue until moral improves apparently.

They also forgotton that they downsized properties so there aren't actually enough seats if we obeyed the instruction.

[Anonymous Coward]

[ Dell employee ] The term "shit-show" doesn't even begin to describe it. The mismanagement is getting worse by the day, morale's in the toilet, and they're telling us exactly how we're supposed to answer our "anonymous" annual employee satisfaction survey. As far as actually going into the office -- in most locations there isn't even enough desk space, let alone parking, to cover the need if all of the blues, greens, ochres, and mauves show up. Layoffs? A good number of the experienced employees would welcome one. Unfortunately for Jeff and the upstairs gang, those are precisely the ones Dell can least afford to lose.

[Anonymous123456]

US tax deducations for companies???

So, I have heard that US introduced some laws some time ago that deducts company's tax if certain percentage of their workforce (per quarter) remains in the office. This is apparently the main reason for this move.

[MachDiamond]

Re: US tax deducations for companies???

"So, I have heard that US introduced some laws some time ago that deducts company's tax if certain percentage of their workforce (per quarter) remains in the office. This is apparently the main reason for this move."

I've never heard of anything specific, but the tax code is stuffed with all sorts of things that have added up to a deductions for a narrow group of people/companies/industries. When I had a manufacturing company, it wouldn't have made any tax difference if people did piece work from home. It was a small company so moving to a smaller building through having a smaller on-site staff wouldn't be a big savings. Rent and everything that goes into a physical building is deductible (not my building) and payroll is deductible so if I could have people work from home and lower my operating costs, I pay tax only on the difference and can trouser the rest. No extra bonus deduction for making people come in.