Editorial
Amazon reignited the return to office debate when CEO Andy Jassy notified employees they must come into the office five days a week as of January 2. Meanwhile, fellow Seattle company Starbucks' new CEO Brian Niccol told employees they needn’t come into the office more than three days a week.
Salesforce and Disney have also issued mandates requiring workers in the office up to four days a week, while Apple requires that employees work in the office just three days a week. Amazon appears to have gone the farthest of any major employer outside of finance and banking, and the backlash has been swift.
Jassy is not alone in his wish for all employees to return to the office. The latest KPMG CEO survey found 79% of CEOs said office workers will fully return to the office within the next three years, up from 34% earlier this year. And just 17% of CEOs said they envision traditional office roles being hybrid over the next three years, as opposed to 46% earlier this year.
Is this a case of wishful thinking on the part of CEOs? Maybe. "All our research shows that employees prefer the flexibility to decide when they need to be in the office, and productivity is also higher with flexible work," Josh Bersin, CEO of The Josh Bersin Company, told Newsweek. A recent FlexJobs study found that 57% of remote workers would look for a new job if they had to return to the office.
I’ve been working with global hybrid organizations for close to 25 years, so I have pretty strong opinions about RTO mandates, especially those that I see as extreme or ill-advised. In fact, I frequently criticize organizations that impose strict mandates on LinkedIn, and most commenters seem to agree with me.
But an outlier named Markus started to respond to my posts over the last few months with a very different perspective. He suggested that company owners should get to decide when and where people work and that in general, companies benefit when people work in the office instead of remotely. He also noted the deleterious effect empty offices are having on downtowns, something I admit I hadn’t thought about as much as I probably should have.
We agreed to meet up over Zoom to discuss our different perspectives as the basis for a “point-counterpoint” article. We had a mutually-enlightening conversation that I think readers can learn from. Here’s an excerpt of that interview.
Different Experiences Lead to Different Perspectives
Markus has lived in the San Francisco area for the last 30 years, and has witnessed firsthand the dramatic changes the city has undergone. He’s the manager of a large commercial real estate brokerage firm in the company’s San Francisco office. Here he manages leasing in office, retail, industrial and investments, supervising the work of six employees, all of whom come to the office most days. He’s also been a member of San Francisco’s Chamber of Commerce for four years, meeting regularly with other business owners and managers who brainstorm ways to bring businesses back to downtown San Francisco.
Markus takes a wide-ranging perspective of the impact that remote work has had, including on the businesses themselves, office leaseholders, retail shops, transportation systems, the quality of city services, the overall health of main streets and downtowns, and effect of the city’s falling tax revenue.
I have been working from my home office in a small leafy suburb of Boston for 30 years, doing about 80% of my work remotely, with occasional visits to client sites or conferences. Throughout this time, I’ve worked with hybrid organizations, so the onset of COVID didn't make much of a difference in my day-to-day work. My work typically focuses on team collaboration and communication within a given organization, which means I have little exposure to the effects of COVID on a downtown ecosystem.
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Who Gets to Work Remotely?
Knowledge workers who create, access and move information by the internet, phone, virtual meetings or some other method tend to have more remote work options open to them. These tend to be college-educated workers who have access to the right technology and a space to work from. Markus cited a Harvard Business Review study found that most remote job postings require a college education and seven to 10 years of experience.
A more diverse and larger segment of the workforce must do their jobs in person — think maintenance crews, service personnel in restaurants, hotels, gas stations and retail stores, laboratory workers, and others whose roles are customer-facing, such as bank tellers and real estate agents. This tends to be a more diverse group of workers. Even though many would like the choice to work remotely at least some days, they rarely have that option.
This disparity, especially within a single organization, can breed resentment. Markus favors a consistent hybrid policy and approach for all employees, regardless of role, in part for this reason. I believe that different policies can be implemented successfully with careful management of expectations and clear communications, but admit it’s not easy. Even if some people must do all of their work onsite, employers can give them some measure of flexibility in other ways, such as by shifting their hours or days worked or providing onsite daycare.
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How Does the Advent of Remote Work Affect Employment Rates?
It depends on the demographics. Some people have lost their jobs altogether (mostly in service-oriented jobs, and most of these are women) and some continue to thrive in their current roles. Resume Builder found 37% of the 1,250 remote workers they surveyed said they had a second full-time job that most of their bosses don’t know about. Of these, 60% reported that they get both of their full-time jobs done in less than 50 hours a week. In effect, they’re being paid for 80 hours of work while only working up to 50 hours. These tend to be college-educated workers and overwhelmingly white.
While I’ve thought that remote work might especially benefit women, especially those who are primary caregivers, Markus shared a stat that surprised me: The overall workforce participation rate for women is lower in 2024 than it was in 2019, probably because many service workers tend to be female. So while it’s true that the flexible work schedules have allowed women in certain roles to thrive, it is not the case for all.
Workers in certain industries, locations and roles may carry more weight than others when requesting or requiring a flexible work policy. Many employees who aren’t offered opportunities for remote work can easily find work elsewhere, while others have little choice but to accept the prevailing policies.
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Who Should Make RTO Policy Decisions?
Most hybrid work policy decisions are made at the top, with varying degrees of input from employees and managers. If you want employees to buy into these decisions, in my view, a representative sampling should be polled about the likely impact of any decisions on their teams, functions and to them personally. While employees may not be part of the decision-making process itself, the decision should reflect their input. Very often, senior leaders are unaware of the impact their decisions will have on people doing the work, and are surprised by the backlash.
Markus believes that the role of leadership is to assess, evaluate and determine the best way forward for their company. Being aware of detrimental consequences to the company will influence such decisions, but the overall responsibility still lies with leadership.
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How Strictly Should Hybrid Work Policies Be Enforced?
We both give the same answer here: “It depends.” Markus believes there’s such a thing as giving too much latitude, especially when different managers within the same organization reinforce mandates while others do not. If senior managers believe that the mission of the company is best served by having people in the office for a certain number of days, then it’s important for all managers to enforce those policies, with few exceptions. A recent EY-sponsored poll showed that many hybrid workers prefer defined guidelines (X of days in the office), versus policies that are left to interpretation. If you run a company into the ground by having inconsistent work schedules and locations, said Markus, hybrid work policies become irrelevant, as layoffs will come next. Some people have a definite need to work remotely, while for others it’s a matter of convenience. It’s important for managers to discern between the two when deciding whether to make exceptions.
For my part, I’ve seen strict RTO mandates backfire, with some people leaving for more flexible organizations, or simply ignoring the mandates altogether when they can. I’ve also seen employees taking advantage of flexible RTO policies, which often leads to managers enforcing stricter policies. I’d like to be able to say that as long as the work gets done, it shouldn’t matter where or when it takes place. But in reality, I’ve seen many people benefit from being back together in the office, even if it’s just a few days a month. For me, the ideal scenario would be to leave it up to teams to decide when they need to be together to get shared work done or make needed connections. At the same time, I like the idea of establishing a few “anchor” days each month where everyone works in the office on the same days, with activities designed to foster interaction, such as training, all-hands meetings, or social gatherings.
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What Are the Broader Impacts of Remote or Hybrid Work?
Markus said the pandemic's work from home policies hit San Francisco especially hard because the same high-tech workers who once crowded the city’s office buildings adapted easily to working from home. The once-vibrant city became desolate. Many of the downtown streets in San Francisco have shuttered stores, restaurants, banks and office buildings. In fact, up to 40% of downtown stores have closed since 2019.
Landlords, business owners and workers aren’t the only ones to suffer the consequences. Before COVID, San Francisco had a stellar job market, high rents and low vacancy rates. Robust tax revenues could easily fund sanitation, transportation and other vital city services. But that has changed. The city lost $400 million a year in tax revenue since 2019, leading to vastly reduced services for the needy. Many former retail workers are still out of work, especially those without degrees, and mass transit ridership is down 30%, with corresponding cuts to service levels, making it harder to find work.
Here in Boston, the office vacancy rate is only about one-third as high, at 13%, in part due to a mix of industries, including bio tech and pharmas, which have a heavy reliance on lab workers who work onsite. Since I rarely venture into Boston except on weekends, the effect of remote work on the downtown community has been largely invisible to me, leading me to imagine that remote work is an overwhelmingly positive choice for almost everyone. I could not have been more wrong.
But the question I ask myself is: Whose responsibility is it to “fix” the downtowns left downtrodden by office vacancies? Should employees be forced to return to offices even when their work might be better done remotely? Will employees who resist returning to the office or employers who don’t force people back to the office be blamed for the closure of nearby retail establishments? That seems both unreasonable and unfair.
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Summary
There is no scientific proof to the question of what is best overall. Data and polls can easily be construed to make a case for each scenario. However, Markus contends that many of the statements regarding the overarching benefits to society can easily be challenged. The benefits to individual employees who can work remotely full or part-time is clear: flexibility has advantages. But a true cost-benefit analysis is difficult until we have a full accounting over the potential damages these advantages may cause. At the end of the day, every company will assess their own pros and cons and act accordingly — and leverage in the labor markets will determine the outcomes.
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