A public petition criticizing the advertising giant WPP over its recently announced four-day-a-week return-to-office mandate has garnered thousands of signatures.
In an internal memo sent last week, WPP CEO Mark Read told the company's more than 100,000 employees that they would be expected to spend an average of four days a week in the office starting in April.
"I believe that we do our best work when we are together in person," Read wrote in the memo. Since the policy was announced, WPP shares have fallen 8%.
In response, a group calling itself "Concerned WPP Employees" has created a petition on Change.org calling for the company to revoke the policy.
"WPP's decision seems to be a step backwards in supporting employee wellbeing and work-life balance, citing anecdotal data that either does not exist or has been misrepresented," the petition says.
It adds that "rigid work regimes" like the WPP mandate can have "extensive" mental and social impacts on employees.
The petition calls on Read and WPP leadership to "reconsider this mandate and adopt a policy that respects and prioritises the well-being and preferences of its employees."
The petition's creators told Business Insider that their goal was to "clearly demonstrate how deeply unpopular this mandate from our CEO, Mark Read, is across the global WPP network."
Avenues to take action internally were limited and associated with substantial risk, they said.
"Whilst no official response has so far been provided, we are aware that the sheer volume of signatories so far received has created substantial internal debate across our C-suite leadership population," they added.
The petition has received over 7,500 signatures in the four days since it was created.
It's not clear how many signatories are WPP employees, as Change.org is a public forum that allows signatures from people outside the organization.
"We can (and will) validate signatories if necessary should our leadership team take the unfortunate decision to challenge the reliability of thousands of employee voices," the petition's creators told BI.
One WPP employee, speaking with BI on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on company policy, said that there had been "palpable dismay" inside the company at the way the policy has been handled.
"We're in the communications business, but this could have been done so much better, a lot of people here think," the employee said. "You pick your moments to do something like this. And with a shaky economy and nervous clients, now is not the time to alienate staff."
When asked about the petition, a WPP spokesperson said that the company knew the four-day mandate would not be popular with everyone but that WPP believed it was "the right policy for the long-term interests of the company as a whole."
"We will take the time to implement it in a collaborative and pragmatic way with our teams," the spokesperson said.
The company previously told BI that it was not implementing the policy until April to give it time to address office capacity and other concerns.
Other RTO policies haven't gone without challenges. As major companies have turned away from flexible working, many have been criticized by some staff.
After Deutsche Bank mandated that staff come in for three days a week, the company faced a wave of backlash from employees who said there was a lack of office space and bottlenecks.
At the German software giant SAP, thousands of employees signed an internal letter saying that they felt "betrayed" by the company's "radical" RTO policy. There have been no reports that the letter altered the company's policy.
Legal routes against RTO mandates are fairly limited. Unless there's a protected reason under established law, such as a medical circumstance, employees have no legal recourse, Ron Zambrano, the employment-litigation chair at the California law firm West Coast Trial Lawyers, previously told BI.
Workers often have little choice but to accept an RTO push or look for another job, which has prompted some employment experts to say the wave of return-to-office directives could fuel attrition.
Losing talent is a risk some companies are willing to take to get workers back to the office, Ravin Jesuthasan, a future-of-work expert and author of "The Skills-Powered Organization," previously told BI.
These companies have calculated that they have the legroom to implement stricter policies and perhaps lose some core talent but essentially be fine, Jesuthasan said.
"Some organizations might say: You know what? We've got a really deep pipeline of talent," he said. "There's lots of people who want to come work here, and so this is our culture and this is how we're going to sustain our culture."
Do you work at WPP? Contact this reporter from a nonwork device at pthompson@bjinnox.com or on Signal at Polly_Thompson.89.
