Employees at Meta have publicly expressed their displeasure with the Facebook parent company after it implemented a new desk-sharing policy.
It informed staff that as part of a “changing workplace,” it will be trying a “new workplace experience.” Most employees won’t have their own desks at the office; instead, they’ll be asked to order them before they come, according to Meta.
The plan and the “cheesy” and the infantilizing manner in which it was announced, however, sparked immediate outrage among the workforce.
Nobody is buying this new experience c***, so can we simply cut the bulls*** and call it cost-cutting?, wrote another.
Source: The Economic Times
The most recent declaration coincides with escalating hostilities between Meta employees and the company’s management, which has stated openly that it will want to “turn up the heat a little bit.”
Mark Zuckerberg, the business’s top executive, said in June that “there are definitely a bunch of individuals at the company that shouldn’t be here.” In order to make the company a more intensive place to work, he might be “increasing expectations and having more aggressive targets,” he said at the time.
As a result, some employees have complained negatively about the removal of several company privileges, such as additional holidays that were granted during the pandemic.
The business has been accused by employees of implementing cost-cutting measures while attempting to portray them favourably as “new experiences.”
Similar scepticism on Meta’s interior chat boards was expressed in response to the decision to require employees to share desks. As one employee put it, “I swear to god, taking something that’s functioning, replacing it with an awful, non-functional alternative, and forcing everyone to migrate, is such a Meta thing.”
Another claimed that Meta management had become “totally disconnected from reality.”
Some people said they would understand the decision to change coverage and reduce costs, but that calling the change a “new experience” was “dishonest” and seemed to treat employees like children. Similar changes were made by Meta, including the elimination of free meals and office space.
Many employees stated in the posts that they would end up coming into the office considerably less due to the added challenges involved in finding and reserving new desks, as well as setting up at them.
Desk sharing programmes have already been used by many different businesses since hybrid working arrangements make it more probable that employees won’t spend many days at their workstations each week.
Some Meta employees acknowledged that the association was more likely to be trouble-free once it was introduced in response to the outraged reaction and noted that it had been successfully implemented at other organisations.
Technology companies have been on the front lines during the pandemic and as the world has once more opened up.
As the coronavirus wave neared the UK and the US, Meta, then known as Facebook, was among the first companies to close its offices. It was also among the first to offer permanent do business from home insurance covers for anyone who desired to continue doing so after lockdowns started.
However, many of those very same technology companies are facing resistance from their workforce as they push people to return to the office.
Employees, for instance, have harshly criticised Apple’s efforts to get people back to its physical locations for work, claiming that the company isn’t paying enough attention to their needs.
