Do Return-to-Office Mandates Help or Hurt?
As we navigate the evolving world of work, return-to-office (RTO) mandates have again become a major point of discussion. Trend research showed that the proportion of mostly in-person workers doubled from 34% to 68% across industries from 2023–2024 (De Smet et al., 2025). In early 2024, many companies stated their intent to enact a full return to the office by 2025. Now, high-profile organizations like Amazon, AT&T, Boeing, and JPMorgan Chase are following through. The call for federal workers to return to in-person work is also thrusting the issue back into the spotlight. Given the ongoing discourse, it’s worth considering what some of the survey and research findings can tell us about how these efforts are going and whether remote or in-person models work best.
What problem is a return to office meant to solve?
Organizations have implemented RTO mandates with several key objectives in mind. Half of managers say that the main goal of their company's return to office mandate was improving employee development, followed by improving customer interactions, and improving company culture (BambooHR, 2024). The rationale goes that by working in person, employees should have more opportunities to learn from more seasoned peers, communicate more efficiently, and build stronger relationships that lead to better business results.
Some employers may see RTO as a way to increase control and visibility over their workforce. Close to a third of surveyed managers indicated that the desire to track employees was a main goal for their company’s RTO mandate (BambooHR, 2024). While the use of employee monitoring software has expanded since the abrupt and large-scale shift to remote work began, employee resistance to monitoring and creative workarounds limit the ability of managers to determine exactly how engaged remote workers are.
Other leaders are leaning into a commonly seen negative a side effect of RTO: employee resignations as a desired outcome. A survey of full-time salaried office workers in the US found that 25% of VP and C-suite executives and 18% of HR professionals indicated that they hoped for some voluntary turnover during an RTO (BambooHR, 2024). The same survey found that 37% of managers, directors, and executives believe their organization enacted layoffs in the last year because fewer employees than they expected quit during their RTO. This usage of RTO mandates to facilitate planned downsizing has been referred to as quiet firing, which is a new term for the old practice of deliberately pushing employees to quit rather than laying them off or terminating them outright.
The Impact of RTO Mandates
Due to the variety of desired outcomes from RTO mandates, it’s not possible to give an overarching answer about how RTO mandates are working out for companies. There are, however, common and predictable employee responses that affect how well desired outcomes are achieved.
Jumping ship
RTO mandates contribute to "brain drain," a phenomenon where organizations lose valuable employees (Ding et al., 2024). High-performing workers are more likely to seek and accept opportunities with competitors that offer the job flexibility that RTO mandates deny. Poorer performers with less marketable skills and experience may disproportionately remain. Those performers often struggle to improve, because they miss out on the professional development opportunities that their more experienced colleagues would otherwise have been able to share.
This loss of talent can also negatively impact organizations that are using RTO as a tool to intentionally reduce headcount. Nearly half (45%) of surveyed employees reported significant and regrettable talent loss within their organizations after RTO implementation (BambooHR, 2024). Repairing these talent gaps can also become more difficult. For example, one study found the time it takes for an RTO firm to fill its job vacancies increases by approximately 23%, and the hire rate decreases by 17% after RTO mandates (Ding et al., 2024). This loss of high-performing talent coupled with increased difficulty in replacing them may negatively impact current operations, cause disruptions in customer service, and stifle future growth and innovation.
Productivity theater
The implementation of RTO mandates has increased the pressure for employees to be more visible. That can be a good thing if those behaviors are truly value-adding, like sending helpful and proactive project updates to stakeholders. My colleague Dr. Judy Agnew’s blog discusses how savvy leaders can use these instances of “productivity theater” as opportunities to provide more positive feedback and reinforcement.
Productivity theater can also backfire, especially when employees primarily do it out of fear. Employees report engaging in behaviors that make them visible, even if those behaviors aren’t necessarily helpful for the business. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of remote workers in our survey admit maintaining a constant online presence, even when they may not be actively working (BambooHR, 2024). When in the office, 37% of workers reported walking around just so others could see them. Leaders may be lulled into a false sense of productivity by these actions, and they may contribute to a gap between leader perceptions of employee engagement and what’s really going on.
Which working model is best?
Given the potential benefits of in-person work and the costs associated with mandating it, leaders may find themselves wondering which model has been shown to work best. In a survey of several thousand US employees across industries, researchers asked in-person, hybrid, and remote workers about their perspectives (De Smet et al., 2025). Respondents indicated that their overall work experience needed improvement, regardless of which working model they fell into. Both in-person and remote employees said that their organizations did a poor job of supporting the underlying behaviors that drive performance, like collaboration, connectivity, mentorship, and skill development. This suggests that employers may be placing too much emphasis on where people are working and devoting too little attention to creating an environment that facilitates high performance.
The bottom line
While RTO mandates aim to improve employee development, culture, and company control, they often lead to unintended consequences like talent loss and productivity theater. The key takeaway for employers is that focusing solely on where employees work misses the bigger picture: creating a supportive environment that fosters collaboration, skill development, and meaningful connections is what truly drives performance, regardless of work location. To maximize success, organizations must prioritize a culture of engagement and empowerment over rigid in-office requirements.
References
BambooHR. (2024, June 6). The new surveillance era: Visibility beats productivity for RTO & remote. https://www.bamboohr.com/resources/data-at-work/data-stories/2024-return-to-office
De Smet, A., Weddle, B., Hancock, B., Mugayar-Baldocchi, M., & Taylor Lauricella. (2025). Returning to the office? Focus more on practices and less on the policy. The McKinsey Quarterly. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/returning-to-the-office-focus-more-on-practices-and-less-on-the-policy
Ding, Y., Jin, Z, Ma, M., Xing, B., & Yang, Y. (2024). Return-to-office mandates and brain drain. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5031481
