- Nearly 75% of executives said in a survey that they would mandate at least three days a week at the office by 2025.
- Many companies cite collaboration, productivity and culture as reasons for returning to the office.
- RTO mandates can lead to greater turnover, especially among women and skilled workers.
Many bosses with an RTO policy in place plan to ask employees to spend more time in the office next year.
In a recent study by Resume.org, nearly three-quarters of executives at companies that have already implemented some form of an RTO policy said they would require workers to be in the office at least three days a week by the end of 2025. .
The November survey of 900 business leaders underscores a general trend of bosses looking to see more heads bobbing atop cubicles in the new year.
Some of the companies that demand more face time instead of FaceTime are large employers like Amazon, AT&T and Starbucks.
In the Resume.org survey, 73% of respondents whose companies already have an RTO rule said they would require workers to report to the office at least three times a week by the end of 2025. Nearly one in three expect to require workers to come in every workday, while only 2% expect to allow workers to come in once a week or less.
While many employers who call workers into the office show productivity — as respondents to the Resume.org survey did — being in person doesn’t necessarily increase how much can be done, said Nicole Kyle, who researches the future of work.
She told Business Insider that many studies suggest that productivity and performance don’t change drastically when workers aren’t side-by-side. Instead, such metrics can remain stable or even increase if an organization allows more remote or hybrid work, said Kyle, the co-founder of CMP Research.
Different studies have reached conflicting conclusions about how remote, hybrid, or fully office-based work affects productivity—and a complicating factor may be the question of how best to define or measure productivity.
Bosses may not care if you leave
Employees have, on several occasions, challenged – often unsuccessfully – the mandates of the RTO. However, many business leaders do not consider these mandates to be asking too much of the people they are paying to do a job.
In the survey, about a third of bosses said they were concerned that workers would leave because of RTO policies, while 49% said they were not very concerned or not at all concerned. Of the respondents, 18% were unsure.
About seven in 10 executives said the reason to bring workers back to IRL is to promote collaboration and teamwork. Nearly six in 10 said the measure was aimed at improving communication. And about half noted a desire to strengthen the organization’s culture and increase productivity.
Lisa Walker, a managing partner at executive search firm DHR Global, told BI that some employers can benefit from bringing back workers because it allows more experienced people to mentor younger workers. She said it’s often harder to do when workers aren’t in person.
“To get young people into office, you have to get old people back into office,” she said.
In the Resume.org survey, four in 10 respondents said they wanted to use office space that might otherwise sit idle.
It’s understandable that bosses wouldn’t want to ever let expensive real estate go unused, although strict office rules can also come at a cost.
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and other academic institutions recently reported that S&P 500 companies that require workers to return to the office subsequently experience “abnormally high” attrition rates and have a harder time filling roles. open.
The researchers found that those who leave are often female, older or more capable. The findings are based on the employment histories of more than 3 million technology and finance workers, as reported on LinkedIn.
“Back-to-office mandates are having very specific and negative impacts and causing a brain drain from companies,” said Kyle, who was not involved in the research.
Perhaps with these kinds of concerns in mind, some leaders have said they are likely to tighten the RTO’s screws if productivity suffers. Among them, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in October that the company would not require workers to come into the office as long as they remain on duty when working from home.
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