Dell employees have made their choice, with nearly half opting to remain remote even at the cost of future promotions.

Dell has been one of the most aggressive companies pushing for a return to the office. The company forced employees to classify themselves as either hybrid or remote, with remote workers unable to receive promotions or be hired for new roles in the company, according to Business Insider.

Why Employees Are Pushing Back

Despite the request, nearly half of the employees have opted to remain 100% remote, with some workers citing the distributed nature of their teams as a factor.

“My team is spread out around the world. Almost 90% of the team did the same as in our case there was no real advantage going to the office,” one worker told the outlet.

Other employees cited quality of life factors, as well as salary requirements.

“I benefited a lot from being WFH since 2020 and had a lot of personal growth. I’m not willing to give that up if I don’t have to,” one employee told BI.

“The more time I have to spend in the office, the less time, money, and personal space I have for all of that,” said another worker, speaking of family time, hobbies, and other qualify of life benefits they have enjoyed..”I can do my job just as well from home and have all of those personal benefits as well.”

“With the salary that we are receiving, a return to the office would leave a huge hole in our budget,” said another employee, saying the cost of commuting and purchasing meals would push it over the edge.

Still other employees said they didn’t have an office to go back to as a result of Dell closing locations, or would end up spending all their time in the office on Zoom anyway.

“Dell closed down the facility in 2020 that I worked at, so I have no office to return to,” one worker explained.

“The particular work I’m doing now means I don’t really have a ‘team,’ and the people I work with most are at different sites,” one employee told BI.

The Status Quo Has Changed

The challenges Dell is facing illustrate the fundamental way in which the workplace has changed post-pandemic. Unfortunately, some employers have yet to grasp the extent of the change, leading to the kind of problems Dell is experiencing and causing its employees.

To make matters worse, Dell previously promised that many of its staff would be able to remain remote forever.

“After all of this investment to enable remote everything, we will never go back to the way things were before,” COO Jeff Clarke said at the time. “Here at Dell, we expect, on an ongoing basis, that 60 percent of our workforce will stay remote or have a hybrid schedule where they work from home mostly and come into the office one or two days a week.”

Nowhere in that statement did Clarke say workers who took advantage of that promise would be penalized by having their advancement possibilities eliminated.

Dell is learning first-hand how difficult it can be to try to return to the pre-pandemic normal when hybrid and remote work is the post-pandemic status quo.