Dell's sudden 5-day return-to-office order leaves parents scrambling to find childcare

• Dell informed all sales staff to return to the office five days a week with two days' notice.
• The policy panicked parents and has led to crowded offices, Dell workers told Business Insider.

Sales workers at Dell thought they'd had their return-to-office mandate for the year.

In February, the company told all US employees to choose between hybrid or remote work. Starting in May, hybrid workers were required to be in the office 39 days a quarter, roughly three days a week.

Attendance was tracked, but the system was flexible in practice, and many ended up leaving at lunchtime, Dell workers told Business Insider.

But on September 26, the company's sales team received a memo from executives: From the following Monday, they'd be expected to be in the office five days a week.

"The expectation is that ALL Global Sales team members who can work from a Dell office be on-site five days a week, regardless of role," sales chiefs Bill Scannell and John Byrne told staff in the internal memo seen by BI.

The memo cited the sales floor as a unique environment combining high energy and collaboration.

"To harness this energy and grow skills, we believe our sales teams need to be together in the office," the memo added. "Additionally, our data shows that sales teams are more productive when onsite."

It was sent on a Thursday, giving staff notice of two working days.

Some parents and other caregivers on the sales team told BI that the lack of notice sparked panic.

BI spoke to six US-based Dell employees about the policy change. All asked not to be named to protect their jobs, but BI has verified their employment at Dell.

Parents 'freaking out'

"The biggest thing that I saw from just being in the office that day was parents freaking out," said one Dell sales employee, who does not have children but has colleagues on his team who do.

"It's one thing to already have childcare set up and already having to pay that crazy amount, but having a weekend to figure it out ..." he said.

In the memo, Scannell and Byrne acknowledged that workers had arranged their lives around coming in three days a week and "may need some time to make new arrangements."

The memo did not give a timeframe for any new individual arrangements to be put in place.

One sales team member, who is a parent, said they started searching for additional childcare arrangements on Thursday night. In addition to the extra cost, the biggest issue was that day care and afterschool programs were already filled for the year, they said.

"They have to have all these finalized before the year starts, and the next enrolment isn't until December or even when summer starts," the worker said.

"I'm on a waiting list, and I don't have an option to put these kids in full time," they added.

Two other parents at Dell told BI they were facing the same issue finding day care.

Under the hybrid model, one worker was able to leave the office at lunchtime to manage the pick-up times and shared childcare duties with their partner, who worked from home. The worker said managers were flexible about signing on later from home to complete their hours.

Their productivity numbers had not fallen, they added.

When the worker raised the issue with managers and HR after the memo was sent, they were told to use PTO whenever they were not available during work hours. "It wasn't clarified if I can log back in at home after or if I'm expected to come back," they added.

A Dell spokesperson told BI the global sales team was required to make their best effort to make it into the office or to a customer or partner location while they make changes in their personal lives to get back to the office.

"We emphasize flexibility and encourage team members to collaborate with their managers to accommodate their specific needs during this transition," the spokesperson said.

Busy offices

One week into the policy, Dell workers told BI that parking lots were full and the office was packed.

Two parents from the sales team told BI that managers were trying to be lenient where they could.

One added that they would try to stretch their PTO as far as possible. However, they had already used some of their four-week allowance and said it would quickly run out.

"If we run out of that PTO, then we're facing disciplinary actions," the worker said. "It's very disheartening. It makes me really not trust the company."

Extending the RTO mandate

Multiple employees said that they had heard unofficially from managers that the policy would be rolled out to hybrid workers in other departments but did not know when.

One technical support worker said a senior leader informed them last week that the RTO might be required "because that's what Amazon is doing."

The online retailer recently told office staff to start coming in every day from next year. Stanford economist Nick Bloom, a world authority on remote work, previously told BI that Amazon's strict RTO push could be a "backdoor layoff" strategy to reduce head count without facing the consequences of formal layoffs.

A Dell spokesperson wouldn't speculate on future plans when asked if the policy would be extended.

Some also expected those classified as remote workers to be affected.

In June, BI reported that close to half of Dell's US workforce had opted to remain remote. Workforce reductions since then may have changed that balance, but BI's sources said that many of their team members were still remote and did not live near an office.

One remote worker in a technical role said she would have no choice but to quit if Dell's five-day RTO policy was extended to remote workers.

"I cannot move close to a Dell office for family reasons, and so they would be forcing my hand to quit," the worker said.

"It's very disappointing that a company such as Dell, which supposedly prides itself on pushing a good work-life balance, has instead cultivated a culture of fear of losing one's job if we don't have 'butts in the seat,'" she said.

Johnny C. Taylor, president of the Society for Human Resource Management, told BI that as more organizations have called workers back to the office, it's become clear that many employees didn't heed warnings that remote work was not here to stay.

Companies are deciding they're better together, and employees are "pissed off" — that's why this issue is creating a lot of noise now, Taylor said.

Are you a worker at Dell or another company pushing staff back to the office? Contact this reporter in confidence at pthompson@businessinsider.com.