Return-to-work mandates are struggling

Many US employees became accustomed to working remotely amid the pandemic, while some employers began ditching office space they no longer needed.

Now, however, some companies are calling workers back — and the results aren’t great.

Take AT&T…

… which, per Business Insider, kicked off its five-day RTO mandate on Monday. Employees said there weren’t enough desks, parking spaces, or working elevators at its Atlanta offices — though there were motivational signs suggesting employees take the stairs.

Meanwhile, Amazon has experienced delays in its RTO mandate as its offices lack the space to accommodate employees. Per Bloomberg, workers who did return cited limited desk, conference room, and break room space.

The AT&T workers who spoke to BI — as well as some experts — suspect some companies may be using RTO mandates to reduce head counts, hoping frustrated workers will quit.

If that’s the case…

… it might work — a survey on job review site Blind found 73% of corporate Amazon workers would consider quitting over its RTO mandate — but perhaps not in a beneficial way.

• A University of Pittsburgh report found that companies with RTO mandates experienced “abnormally high turnover,” especially among skilled, senior, and women employees, and took longer to replace them.
• The same report also noted that tech and finance companies that enacted RTO mandates lost top and senior employees, whom they later struggled to replace.
• A report from workforce analytics firm Revelio Labs found remote and hybrid companies are able to grow faster.

And then there’s “coffee badging,” when workers rebel against mandates by showing up briefly, then leaving.

Bottom line?

People who can work remotely prefer it. Buffer’s 2023 State of Remote Work report found that 98% of respondents want to work remotely, at least some of the time, for the duration of their careers.

And while studies may show they’re 10%-20% less productive than their in-office counterparts, productivity is hard to quantify and doesn’t account for the costs a company might rack up in real estate, retention, or recruitment.

Either way, nobody’s gonna be productive in a packed, noisy office.