An internal letter criticising SAP’s back-to-office policy has attracted more than 5,000 signatures in less than two weeks, with the German software company’s employees threatening to look for other jobs rather than return, reports Yahoo and Bloomberg. “We feel betrayed by a company that until recently encouraged us to work from home, only to ask for a radical change in direction,” according to the letter, which was posted internally and seen by Bloomberg News. The company’s European works council, a group that represents SAP’s employees on the continent, said the requirement to be back in the office was unreasonable after employees had been told they could continue working remotely.

SAP outlined a new guidance in early January that will require employees globally to work in an office or on site with a customer three days a week from April. SAP Chief Executive Office Christian Klein has pushed back on the works council’s opposition and said that working from home will cost SAP its culture and teamwork. “I’m not a big believer that on a video conference platform you can understand our culture, you can get educated, and you can get enabled to do your job best,” Klein said last week following the company’s financial results. SAP, in a statement Wednesday, said “striking the right balance between remote and on-site work helps drive productivity, innovation and employee well-being. We’re evolving our flexible work policy to align with best practices in the market and our own experience as a front runner in hybrid work.”

The works council said in a letter, “We are the ones that learned to adapt to the absence of significant salary increases over the years. To compensate for this, we took advantage of the remote work possibility and moved where living costs were lower, away from expensive metropolises.” Many companies have increased return-to-office requirements over the last year.