The tug-of-war between workers and employees has been intense in the past decade, with pandemic and post-pandemic conditions helping to redefine what both parties want out of the working world. But now companies, especially those in Silicon Valley, where employees can be a little bit more, let’s be nice and say, freewheeling, are trying to figure out how to make their employees not hate office life. A whole slew of startups are going shoeless, encouraging employees to ditch their sneakers at the door as they would at home, and instead wander around in socks or slippers.

The idea is that if workers were comfortable at home, sitting on their couches wearing sweatpants, but now being forced out of the home and into an office, maybe the office can bend to their desires a little by offering at least one of the comforts of home. It’s really a part of a larger trend of modern corporate America realizing they may have made a small tactical error by forcing people back into offices that they didn’t want to be in the first place, and certainly don’t see a reason to go in when they were working well from home. 

This is an excerpt of an article from vice.com. Read the full article: Would You Work Harder If You Were Barefoot? These Companies Hope So.