SCC, one of Europe's largest resellers, orders staff back to their desks for three days a week

Exclusive SCC, one of Europe's largest resellers, is ordering staff to return to the office for three days a work from the start of next month, and terminating its flexible hours trial.

As is happening at many organizations in the world of tech, SCC is formally reverting to a more traditional style of working. This also applies to staff that specifically baked work-from-home clauses into their employment contracts.

James Rigby, CEO at the £3.4 billion reseller, told The Register, the three day a week office policy has "always been in place" for the last couple of years, but what has changed is that "we're reinforcing it."

He said some staff came into the office "sporadically" and SCC was now "mandating" the return. That "achieves the right balance of some flexibility and some home work… to get teams interacting together with customers, suppliers and other colleagues in the right mix."

The policy begins on November 1 "across the board" in terms of the UK, France and Spain and every trading department. The rationale is to foster a "greater level of collaboration and interaction, particularly for the younger people who need that contact to progress."

SCC employs 8,000 staff across the organization. Some have told us they're not happy about the mandate, and see no reason why sales specialists, product and solution architects and other functions need to be on site. Those that requested work from home policies are, we're told, considering forming a group to take their case to employment lawyers.

Rigby said it is a "relatively small number" of workers that specified work-from-home contractual clauses who joined during the pandemic or since. "We'll deal with those on a case by case basis, and talk to those individuals about, you know, how we can achieve the best balance."

He said the mandate is not designed as a stealth cost cutting measure as some staff fear, following a leaner fiscal 2023. UK sales grew 4 percent to £916 million in the year to March 2023, and earnings before income tax, depreciation and amortization fell 60 percent to £11.2 million, according to profit and loss accounts [PDF] recently filed at Companies House.

Business has since picked up considerably, said Rigby, and he reckons the RTO move is about a "long-term" strategy and "trying to get us back to a more productive, collaborative culture."

"I'm not looking to lose people deliberately by doing this."

• 91% of polled Amazon staff unhappy with return-to-office, 3-in-4 want to jump ship
• Study finds a quarter of bosses hoped RTO would make employees quit
• Return to Office mandates boost company profits? Nope
• Most Londoners would quit before they give up working from home

SCC sells remote working tech and services, saying in its own marketing material that the "way we work has undergone a seismic shift. Organizations have rapidly accelerated the adoption of remote working with solutions from Microsoft Teams to Town Hall events in an effort to achieve the benefits a work-from-anywhere strategy can deliver. Not only does this represent a shift in technology but also in culture, with remote working set to replace the office environment indefinitely."

The Reg asked Rigby what he'd say to customers that buy those solutions.

"I think most people would subscribe to a hybrid way of working. We've not gone all in the office, and we've not gone all remote working. And I think every customer I talk to would agree with that, they're all facing these challenges themselves with their own workforces to increase collaboration and productivity."

It is certainly correct that unlike Dell, AWS and others, SCC is still currently allowing for some flexibility. The exact days in the week to work on site are to be determined by team leaders.

Asked if SCC can foresee initiating a five-day week, the CEO said: "We'll see how this goes. At the moment no, I think this is the right balance for us and I think it can work. We're not ready to move back to four or five days… that's not for everybody."

As for moving to 9.30am to 5.30pm working hours, instead of the option to start earlier and end earlier, or start later and finish the day later, the CEO told us:

"We did have a trial of core working hours… we're stopping that trial, then we get people back full time interacting those three days a week." He said this option was not abused by staff, though we suspect there is an element of that in the decision.

With so many companies – in and out of tech – calling staff back to their desks, this is a topic that isn't going away any time soon.

The advantages and disadvantages seem debatable and no doubt we'll keep on debating them. ®