It’s no surprise that the two most reviled gaming companies for their toxic treatment of employees are also forcing employees back into the office… without vaccine mandates. This dramatically increases the risk of exposure and infection. While the vaccine with booster dose is great at preventing serious cases of COVID-19 in most people, it can’t guarantee someone won’t get COVID-19 if exposed. Someone who is immunocompromised, that is, their immune system doesn’t work as well as most people’s, or people with autoimmune disorders, are especially vulnerable. While a workplace with only vaccinated people isn’t perfectly safe, it’s far less likely to allow COVID-19 to spread throughout the office.
That’s why most offices asking employees to return to the office do so with a vaccine mandate. Now two gaming companies, already known for their incredibly toxic environments, have decided employees can return without a vaccine. Riot is actually asking employees to be in the office at least three days a week on top of that.
Mistreatment of employees at both companies has lead to a number of problems, and potentially even one death. If the wrong person gets sick because of this decision, they could face serious and long lasting heath problems, including death. We still have over 1,000 Americans dying every day from COVID-19. While we’ve largely gone back to our lives, this virus is still killing at an alarming rate.
Would you risk “long COVID” or death for a job? Should employees have to make that choice when it’s such an easy problem to fix? Work from home has proven productive, but many in leadership want to be able to see their employees working. They want an excuse to continue to have the large office space because, while employees’ work can be done from home, executives’ work isn’t as easy at home. But to end work from home in the most dangerous way possible? That’s just cruelty for the sake of cruelty.
Riot and Activision Blizzard’s Unvaccinated Offices
Photo: Chris Yunker under CC 2.0 License
Both Riot and Activision Blizzard will ask employees to return to the office. For Riot, that return has already begun. For Activision Blizzard, it will be this June. Activision Blizzard polled employees, asking them about return to the office conditions. Employees overwhelmingly pushed for a vaccine mandate for in-person work. However, despite that, the company decided to forgo the safety measure.
1. An immediate reversal to lifting the vaccine requirement
2. Remote work should be offered as a permanent solution
3. The decision to work remote or in office should be made by each individual employee— ABetterABK 💙 ABK Workers Alliance (@ABetterABK) April 1, 2022
After an employee walkout, Activision Blizzard stepped back their policy slightly, allowing individual studios to decide whether or not they’d have a vaccine mandate. Many, so far, have added a vaccine mandate, including Blizzard and a few quality assurance offices in the U.S., QAMN, QALA, and QATX. Blizzard has also stated that employees who don’t feel comfortable coming in can work something else out with their managers.
At Riot,things are a little more dire. Employees will have to return to an office without a vaccine mandate. Riot made an exception for those with medical needs, but this will require disclosing personal medical conditions with Riot, like HIV, cancer, autoimmune disorders, people who have donated organs, and other long-term illnesses. It could open employees up to discrimination. Clearly the better solution is just to allow employees to stay at home for their health, regardless of whether or not they have what Riot would consider a qualifying preexisting condition.
A Better Return to Office
As an aside, I believe we need to re-think the office. Smaller places with meeting rooms, spread out desks, dividers, plant life, and plenty of natural sunlight. Make the office feel like a better place than your home for safe focusing and collaboration. Never make it mandatory. If office work is truly more productive than home, employees will come in. Going to the office, for an employee, could mean an hour and a half out of their day for commuting, longer times getting ready, and needing to grab lunch instead of making it. It’s more expensive, takes precious hours out of your day, and exposes you to COVID-19, especially in population-dense areas and workplaces. The annoyance of a commute and office lunches was already problematic, but add a deadly disease on top of it, and many people just want to stay home.
via NBC News
Before the pandemic, you likely got sick a few times a year as a result of that big open office, which can spread germs (and decrease socialization) more than many other kinds of layouts. Now companies are asking employees to come back with little change. However, most are at least requiring vaccination, which can halt the spread of COVID-19 and keep employees safer. This is especially important now, as cases have begun to increase in the United States thanks to the BA2 variant. However, it’s no surprise that two of the most toxic tech companies in the news, Activision Blizzard and Riot Games, don’t care about employee health and actively put them in danger. When your workplace is that toxic, how can you even tell when it’s sick?