Return to Office: What You Need To Know

August 2024 research from ResumeBuilder shows that 87% of organizations expect to return the office by 2025. 

However, these RTO mandates are highly unpopular. According to a 2024 study, 38% of workers would decline a job offer if they had to work in an office full-time.

One case in point: Amazon’s return-to-office mandate in September 2024. After a firestorm of headlines in the media, the reality quickly came to light: 91% of Amazon employees rejected the mandate, and 73% are now open to a new job. 

This data highlights that employers and employees still haven’t reached a consensus on the right approach. 

Employees seek flexibility and autonomy over their work schedules and location. On the other hand, many organizations prioritize in-office presence to strengthen culture, team bonding, engagement, and productivity. 

In the years following the pandemic, hybrid work looked to be “the best of both worlds,” but recent moves, like that of Amazon, may have your leadership rethinking the topic

This guide is to help inform you of critical points about RTO that you, as HR leaders, need to know to attract and retain your top talent:

• What is Return to Office (RTO)?
• The Pros and Cons of Return to Office
• Different kinds of Return to Office 
• Successfully implementing a Return to Office

What is Return to Office (RTO)?

Return-to-office (RTO) is a coordinated effort by companies worldwide to bring employees back to the office following the widespread shift to remote work during the pandemic

Remote and hybrid work have allowed many employees to feel less stressed by giving them more control over their lives—whether that means having more time to care for school-age children, plan meals, exercise, or save money by reducing transportation and clothing costs.

Losing those benefits can be disempowering and increase stress, potentially leading to lower performance and worse mental and physical health. Employers may do more harm than good if they don’t acknowledge and plan for these factors, especially without a well-thought-out approach to a return to the office.

The Pros and Cons of RTO

The Pros:

Improved Collaboration: In-person interactions encourage spontaneous conversations and enhance collaboration, often leading to more innovative solutions. Face-to-face communication tends to be richer and more nuanced than virtual interactions.

Separation of Work and Home: Remote work can blur the lines between professional and personal life. Returning to the office helps create a clearer boundary, which may reduce burnout and improve mental well-being. Remember being stuck inside during COVID? That wasn’t exactly fun!

Technology and Resources: Especially well-designed ‘hybrid offices’ are equipped with specialized tools, technology and different spaces for different working purposes that may not be available at home, which can enhance productivity and help employees perform tasks more efficiently.

The Cons:

Commute Hassles: Returning to a daily commute can be stressful and time-consuming. Traffic congestion, crowded and often unreliable public transportation, and the financial cost of commuting can negatively affect employees' work-life balance.

Lost Productivity: Many employees found they were more productive working from home, thanks to fewer distractions and the comfort of their personalized workspaces. A shift back to the office could result in a productivity dip, especially when the RTO policy is rigidly implemented by the employers. 

“Besides the obvious cost of maintaining a physical office space, RTO mandates can lead to increased levels of employee dissatisfaction, negatively impact an organization’s ability to retain top talent, and even lead to potential decreases in productivity, as some studies have suggested that workers are actually more productive in a remote environment,” said Kellie Hanna, a career expert at MyPerfectResume.

In an MIT SloanMITSloan article, best-selling author of How The Future Works Brian Elliott wrote that the “combination of executive anxiety, monitoring, a lack of trust, and having employees perform to the metric of being in the office all contribute to lower performance,” which he called a “doom loop.” 

Top Performers Leaving: What happens when employees feel frustrated, unmotivated, and disengaged after a forced return to office (RTO) mandate? They start looking for the exit. According to Future Forum research, 75% of workers unhappy with the lack of flexibility say they would seek a new job. In fact, 73% of the 2,585 Amazon employees surveyed by Blind said they are considering looking for a new job following the company’s move.

If this isn’t enough to capture your attention as an HR leader, another 2024 study by Garner found that the group most likely to leave are high performers, where “intent to stay” in the face of a mandated RTO dropped 16% — compared with 8% for the average employee.

Different kinds of Return to Office

The term “Return to Office” is used in various situations but can mean different things. Technically, any move back to the office from a remote work model is considered a Return to Office. But whether that’s one or five days, that’s where things get interesting:

• Office-centric: People work (almost always) in the office
• Remote-first or fully remote: People work (almost always) elsewhere
• Hybrid (also called Hybrid Remote): People blend in-office and remote work

Within hybrid itself, there are various hybrid work schedules to consider:

• Weekly Hybrid Schedule. The vast majority of hybrid companies use this schedule, which includes the common variations Fixed Days Hybrid, Partial Choice Hybrid, and Full Choice Hybrid. 
• Alternating Week Schedule. In this model, the varying teams are one week remote, and one week in the office.
• Shift Hybrid Schedule. This means that beyond deciding on which days to work, you or your team also chooses timeslots to work.
• 50:50 Schedule. In this schedule, we leave workweeks behind and look at office vs. remote over the course of a month. 
• Cyclical Schedule. In this schedule, which can include Hybrid + Events, there’s a set cadence in which you work remotely and then in person.
  
  

To establish which kind of Return to Office model works best, start by surveying employees (see our recommended employee engagement survey providers here.) 

Then, consider what type of approach best suits your needs, from hybrid to full-time in-person, and how it should vary depending on the department or job class as a  one-size-fits-all won’t work. To support all roles and preferences, a tailored approach often makes the most sense. 

Factors such as customer expectations, typical tasks, hiring and retention for indispensable roles, and limited office space should all be considered. For example, IT team members may be able to work remotely, whereas in-person sales teams may need to be face-to-face with clients.

Successfully implementing a Return to Office

When implementing a hybrid approach, consider who is in the office when. Scheduling in-person days for each team increases collaboration by ensuring everyone is in the office on the same day rather than a scattershot approach. 

Additionally, to avoid coffee badging, ensure office days are meaningful. Tiffany Owyang Lam, who I interviewed about Grammarly’s hybrid model, said “the ultimate metric is the quality of time your employees spend in the office.”

Second, whatever type of return you decide upon should be documented and announced in a written return-to-office policy.

The policy should clearly explain return-to-office expectations, enforcement, and the disciplinary consequences for failure to return to the office. The policy should be equally enforced to avoid claims of discrimination based on a protected class.

Return to Office: The Bottom Line

The latest statistics and research have reached the same conclusion: flexibility is not only a baseline expectation or a perk, but a win-win formula for companies and employees.

As HR leaders, it’s crucial to note, especially after the last few weeks, that quickly implementing a rigid full-time Return-to-Office policy like the case of Amazon could cost you your most valuable resource: top talent. In an age where we’re all optimizing for talent density, that’s something to avoid at all cost.

If you need anything else or would like to leave a comment about this topic, feel free to reach out to me here.

‍For more on this topic, check out our 2024 guide to hybrid work, the top desk booking software and room scheduling software , and our guide to hybrid office design 

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