Samsung cracks down on an alarming workplace problem | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

Samsung (SSNLF) , one of the largest technology companies in the world, recently embraced a controversial workplace trend that has divided employees across the country.

Over the past few months, many companies have been ramping up their efforts to cut out remote work and usher employees back into offices to boost collaboration and innovation. Some employers have even enforced in-office mandates that require workers to work in the office five days a week.

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These efforts have frustrated many employees, who are not quite ready to break up with remote work, which became popular in 2020 during the Covid pandemic.

According to a recent survey from FTI Consulting, 70% of U.S. workers who are fully remote or work a hybrid schedule said they are likely to look for a new job if required to return to the office full time.

Also, 88% of remote workers said they would be willing to work in the office for at least some portion of the week, with 33% indicating no more than two days.

Samsung, led by CEO Han Jong-Hee, is implementing a new policy for employees.

Image source&colon; Bloomberg/Getty Images

Samsung warns employees of a harsh new reality

Samsung is one of the few bold companies that has recently pushed some of its employees to return to working in the office five days a week after allowing them to work from home up to two days a week through its “FlexWork” policy, according to a recent report from Business Insider.

Early last month, the company began requiring a group in its semiconductor business to adhere to this new policy.

In a new email sent to employees this month, Samsung’s HR team informed them that the new return-to-office policy is yielding positive results as workers adjust their personal schedules to adhere to the new rule.

“We recognize that many employees shifted personal schedules to accommodate the daily requirements to be together in the office,” said Samsung’s HR team in the email. “The first few weeks have indeed shown increased traffic on campus with parking stations staying full, cafeteria food consumption is on the rise, and more smiling faces can be seen in the hallways.”

Despite recent progress, Samsung’s HR team said it expects “greater presence across all employee populations” and will roll out a new tool to track whether employees are following the new in-office policy.

“As a means to measure the effectiveness of our attendance policy, we will launch a new compliance tool for People Managers in the next few weeks,” reads the email.

“This tool will provide each Manager with visibility to the number of days & time in building metrics for each team member. This will ensure that team members are fulfilling their expectation regarding in office work — however that is defined with their business leader — as well as guarding against instances of lunch/coffee badging.”

“Coffee badging” is when employees check into the office and stay only long enough for a cup of coffee or to attend a meeting. They then exit the office only after a few hours of attendance so that they can continue working elsewhere.

The trend allows employees to maintain control over their work-life balance while fulfilling their employer’s requirement to work in the office. According to a survey from Owl Labs last year, about 58% of hybrid employees participate in the trend.

Samsung’s HR team said in the email that the new tracking tool “is not perfect” as it does not “integrate a PTO (paid time off) designation.”

“We are investigating opportunities to potentially Integrate PTO with reporting in a future revision later this year,” reads the email. “This tool should serve as a starting point for conversations between Managers and Employees regarding physical presence to expectation.”

The company also said that “business travel, customer meetings, and approved periodic exceptions, are not expected to integrate into future tool upgrades.”

Samsung is following in the footsteps of its competitors

Samsung’s latest move comes as many of its tech industry competitors, such as Amazon, Intel, and IBM, have also scaled back remote work from their work cultures.

Last year, Dell began cutting back remote work and even started tracking its employees through their badge swipes and VPN connections to monitor how often they worked from office locations.

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If employees failed to adhere to the company’s in-office requirements, they allegedly risked losing the opportunity to land a promotion or an internal job opportunity.

However, it was later reported that this move backfired. Some Dell workers continued to ignore the in-office mandate because they weren’t afraid of losing out on job promotions, as the company allegedly lacked opportunities.

As more U.S. employers enforce return-to-office mandates, office foot traffic is still below pre-pandemic levels. According to recent data from Placer.ai, nationwide office visits last month were down just 27.4%, compared to June 2019. However, visits were up 8.3% compared to June 2024.