When COVID-19 shut down offices worldwide, the shift to remote work was fast and complete. Homes were quickly reorganized and retrofitted for workspace and privacy, desks and ring lights were purchased, and everyone learned how to increase their bandwidth and navigate Zoom. Life and work, as we knew it, no longer existed—and it was incredibly difficult. But, after the chaos subsided, and some normalcy resumed, people got comfortable…and got to work.
In 2024, four years after that initial shutdown, 98 percent of workers say they want the option to work from home, at least some of the time.
And for good reasons. By eliminating commutes, people had more time to spend with their family and friends. They could walk their dog or start a load of laundry on their lunch break. They could work in sweatpants. Life was good.
Companies aligned with the positive response—and many of them developed more permanent work-from-home policies. In August of 2023, one in five Americans was working remotely.
Now, some say the post-pandemic remote work era is coming to a close. Amazon recently announced that all corporate employees must return to the office five days a week starting in January. Goldman Sachs, Boeing, UPS, and Tesla also announced full-time return to office (RTO) mandates this year.
Several leading Fortune 500 CEOs cite concerns over culture, productivity, and innovation when employees work from home. They say RTO mandates will fix these issues.
But are their claims legitimate, or is something else going on here?
After all the time and energy that went into the adjustment to remote work—and the benefits of reducing overhead costs and attracting top talent with WFH perks—why are they now choosing to reverse course on popular policy?
And, if companies refuse to listen to their employees concerns around these policies, what message are they really sending?
CEOs claim work culture and productivity are suffering.
In a message to employees on September 16, Andy Jassy notes Amazon’s “unique culture,” and that “keeping your culture strong is not a birthright. You have to work at it all the time.” He goes on to announce the company is returning to a pre-COVID policy that requires corporate employees to report to the office five days a week.
Culture comes up a lot in these announcements and in criticisms of remote work.
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, has said “There are huge weaknesses to the Zoom world, so it’s hard to inculcate culture and character and all those things.”
Company culture is a difficult thing to build and to measure. Anyone who’s sat through a Zoom call with muted speakers and stuttering connections can attest to the limitations of collaborating online. It’s also a surmountable challenge—and one that managers can overcome by properly training their teams on remote work technology and processes.
Jassy says to his employees that “the last 15 months we’ve been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits.”
But it’s hard to believe those remaining two days at home really hindered company culture. It seems that if productivity is also a goal, then workers could easily connect with teammates on in-office days and focus on head-down work at home.
There is, indeed, evidence that productivity suffers in fully remote companies, with a 10% reduction compared to fully on-site operations. But in hybrid environments, where workers have the option to work from home for part of the week, there is no impact to productivity and retention rates dramatically improve.
What does improve workplace productivity, no matter the location?
Employee happiness.
Research shows a 13% increase in productivity when workers are happy at work. Amazon workers have made their discontent clear. In an employee-commissioned survey, the new five-days-in-office policy received an average rating of 1.4 on a scale of one to five, with one being strongly dissatisfied.
If CEOs are genuinely making this decision to improve productivity and profits, they should consider that in 2023, unhappy, disengaged employees cost the world economy $8.9 trillion.
So what are these RTO mandates really about?
“Any leader who ever had teams scattered in remote offices will tell you that org culture is unrelated to location,” Chris Williams, a leadership consultant and former vice president of human resources at Microsoft, wrote on Linkedin last week. “RTO as a culture change is BS.”
The data seems to agree.
Research from the University of Pittsburgh shows that RTO mandates are more likely to come from companies with poor stock performance. The research did not find any improvement on stock returns or profitability, after those RTO mandates were implemented.
Additionally, “We found that return-to-office mandates are more common among male and more powerful CEOs,” said Mark Ma, an associate professor of business administration at the University of Pittsburgh, in an interview with NPR.
Sadly, these full-time RTO mandates seem to signal a refusal to prioritize employees’ work-life balance over profit—even when there’s no evidence that profit will increase with employees back at the office.
It seems the greater challenge here is not workplace culture or profit but workplace trust. Do managers trust their employees to get their work done when they can’t see how many hours a day they’re at their desk? If not, that’s a hiring problem—or a managerial one.
In order to build trust, both parties must be willing to listen. And with an overwhelming number of employees expressing frustration at full-time RTO mandates, it’s clear who’s not.
Losses ensue when leadership doesn’t listen to employees.
Gen-Z and Millennials have made their desires known: they want flexibility. By next year, Millennials will make up 75% of the workforce. If employers want to attract the best employees, they’re going to have to listen—or lose them and the war on talent.
These RTO mandates will hurt employees who have rearranged their lives for the last four years of remote work. People have made home and family decisions based on the ability to work remotely. To take that away for the supposed sake of company culture is to say that work-life balance and employee well-being is not part of that culture.
In order to retain their best workers, companies must demonstrate how they can strike a balance between everyone’s best interests. If it’s easier for managers to manage in the office, but it’s easier for their employees to work from home, hybrid schedules are the obvious answer.
These leading companies implementing inflexible RTO mandates are the exception, not the norm. The remote work era isn’t over, because, for so many people, it’s still working.
Leaders who refuse to value the significance of employee satisfaction will eventually realize the impact to their bottom line—lost top talent and lost trust. Turnover is expensive.
The new era of remote work will have to be responsive to workers at every level of an organization. If CEOs want to increase innovation, they should apply that creativity to better policies that reflect the wide range of needs and preferences of the people on whom they depend.