IBM employees who don't live close enough to commute to an office have been asked to relocate or leave the tech giant in a sign of an increasing crackdown on remote work in favor of in-person attendance.
The Armonk, New York-based computer hardware maker is immediately requiring most U.S.-based staff to report to an office or corporate hub at least three days weekly “regardless of current work location status,” according to a memo to staff from Senior Vice President John Granger. IBM plans to collect badge-swipe data to track and enforce attendance, an escalation of a return-to-office policy that was implemented in September.
The move underscores employers' growing confidence in their ability to enforce stricter rules surrounding in-person requirements, a move that can make fuller use of office property. The tech giant joins other companies such as Kroger, Amazon and AT&T in stepping up in-person requirements with warnings to employees who live far from a corporate hub that they will have to move if they want to keep their jobs.
“IBM is focused on providing a work environment that balances flexibility with the face-to-face interactions that make us more productive, innovative and better able to serve our clients,” an IBM spokesperson said in a statement to CoStar News. “Consistent with that approach, we’re requiring executives and people managers in the United States to be in the office at least three days per week.”
Unless they're approved for a remote role, employees who don't live close enough to commute and don't want to relocate must “separate from IBM,” Granger wrote.
IBM's in-office crackdown comes after the company has tried to shed some of its real estate, a reduction of office space that could complicate some employee's plans to return to the office.
In recent years, IBM has closed offices in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York and Iowa, an effort that reduced its capital expenditures by about $400 million last year. Those cost-cutting efforts mean employees who live near now-shuttered offices and depend on flexible work arrangements may have to move long distances to comply with the strengthened in-person mandate.
IBM occupies about 20 million square feet of office space around the world, according to CoStar data.
Mix of Strategies
IBM's escalated mandate is the latest in a slew of similar policies implemented by companies pushing to enforce stricter in-office schedules. UPS, Disney, Amazon, Bank of America, Meta and others have ramped up efforts to get workers back to physical office space, deploying a mix of strategies that include attendance-tracking apps, asking employees to relocate, and threats to link in-person time with annual performance reviews.
By and large, most return-to-office mandates have avoided demands for employees to relocate to be closer to physical offices. A tight labor market, ongoing pandemic concerns and an aversion by some people to working in an office led many employers to offer some flexibility for people who don't live near a company outpost, especially if those employees were hired in the early years of the pandemic on a remote-only basis.
However, that flexibility is growing more scarce as the job market cools, providing companies with more leverage to implement firmer in-office policies and make better use of their real estate.
IBM plans to keep up its restructuring efforts as it looks to further "optimize our real estate footprint," Chief Financial Officer James Kavanaugh told analysts on the company's earnings call earlier this month. That effort could include more job cuts following the nearly 4,000 positions IBM eliminated in early 2023.
IBM employed about 280,000 workers around the world at the end of 2023.
The IBM memo, earlier reported by Bloomberg, strikes a far harsher tone than the one CEO Arvind Krishna shared last year about the company's in-office policy.
While he stressed that remote work could be hazardous to employees' careers, he acknowledged the benefits and convenience of having a flexible schedule, even if it did come with trade-offs such as getting passed over for a promotion or missing out on mentorship opportunities.
“It seems to me that we work better when we are together in person,” Krishna said in May 2023 when about 80% of IBM's workforce was working remotely for at least part of the week. He described the company’s return-to-office policy as “we encourage you to come in, we expect you to come in, we want you to come in.”