For many, the era of work-life balance is coming to a close.
“The spillover from home life to work life is not of concern to bosses these days,” Yale management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld told Business Insider recently. “It’s not the time to talk about what makes your creature comforts so different from everybody else’s, that somehow the company has to accommodate your needs.”
Within the last year, major companies like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) enacted return-to-office mandates that required their employees to work in the office five days a week. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) followed suit, requiring employees to work in person and sending so-called “letters of education” to those who were slow to comply.
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Now, these companies and dozens of others are taking things a step further, shifting their cultures from balanced to hardcore.
Take Amazon, for example. This summer, it announced it would be emphasizing performance metrics when it came to evaluating corporate employees going forward, according to internal communication obtained by Business Insider.
Similarly, a recent memo from AT&T (NYSE:T) CEO John Stankey, which was addressed to managers and obtained by Business Insider, announced that big cultural changes were on the way.
The memo read, in part: “If the requirements dictated by [the return to office] dynamic do not align to your personal desires, you have every right to find a career opportunity that is suitable to your aspirations and needs… if a self-directed, virtual, or hybrid work schedule is essential for you to manage your career aspirations and life challenges, you will have a difficult time aligning your priorities with those of the company and the culture we aim to establish.”
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Experts tell Business Insider that those looking to stay employed or get ahead in their careers will have to adapt in this new era of hardcore work.
“If you are going to stay [at your workplace], you want to make sure that you are doing everything in your power to make it as enjoyable as possible,” Jennifer Moss, a workplace strategist and author of “Why Are We Here?” said. “It is a long life, and work plays a big role in our lifespan and our long-term health.”