The days of empathetic bosses are over. The increasing RTO mandates, ongoing cost-cutting, and the drop in DEI programs are signalling a shift in the employment sector — work is back to being all business and no pleasure. “We have this percentage of bosses that are sort of like, ‘Oh, the pandemic is over. You had your fun being treated like humans. Now it’s time to get back to work,'” Maria Ross, a researcher and the author of The Empathy Dilemma, told Business Insider.

The big guys are wasting no time. Big corporations like Amazon and JPMorgan are forcing employees back into the office full time despite pushbacks from the workforce (but are happy to make allowances for C-Suite execs). Microsoft and Meta are saying farewell to allegedly underperforming employees to focus on and encourage higher performance.

But this isn’t exclusive to the corporate world, President Donald Trump is also ending federal DEI programs and calling federal workers back into the office five days a week to increase efficiency.

Empathy does not belong in the workplace, a large wedge of executives argue. 37% of chiefs and over 30% of HR executives want to walk back any progress made to improve the quality of life of employees, much of which was put in place as a result of the pandemic. Dan Kaplan, a senior client partner at the recruiting firm Korn Ferry, says CEOs are “fed up” with employees getting cut some slack, and believe that arrangements — such as remote work — that were made during the pandemic were never intended to be permanent… Despite ample evidence that WFH mandates benefited companies as much as they did their employees.

Some say it’s a simple power play. While there are benefits to being in-office, like interpersonal communication between colleagues that may “spark” ideas and new projects, that doesn’t seem to be the decision-maker for executives. “A lot of times, this is really about control and senior leaders just feeling more comfortable when they can see […] faces in front of screens, regardless of what’s actually being done on those computers,” said Siri Chilazi, a senior researcher at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy. When employees lack recovery time and become overworked, they start making errors in their work — a complete opposite reaction to the high performance calibers these employers seem to be after. Some may even lose interest in the job — an anonymous federal contractor told BI that the flexibility of remote work made her willing to put more effort into her job and work longer hours when required. She explained that this new system would push her into finding another job that gives her this flexibility, even if it means accepting lower pay. Kelly Mendez-Schieb, the chief people officer at Crunchbase, a remote-first company, tells BI that “employees will remember how they’re treated,” which will mark big trouble for higher-ups once the job market heats back up.

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