Back-to-office mandates are about to backfire
Back-to-office mandates are about to backfire
By Inc. | Published: 2025-10-27 08:00:00 | Source: Fast Company – leadership
In 2025, Amazon, Dell, Apple, Google, IBM, Meta, Salesforce and dozens of other companies will double down on requiring employees to return to the office (RTO) at least three days a week, if not all five. And they get exactly what they want.
Now, when I say “exactly what they want,” you might expect me to paint a picture of workers happily returning to their daily commutes, congested highways, cavernous or stuffy offices, constant interruptions, and extra expenses, all of which lead to exorbitant costs. productivity§ Gains.
That’s not happening, the productivity gains part. The longer this is played, the more “it” becomes.Productivity TheaterI have become. The truth is that the science behind productivity is still out there.
So you have to go with your gut. Or your experience. What 30 years of intuition and experience tells me is that the real question is not whether people are more productive at home, but whether companies can afford to lose their best talent to this.
Right now, tech workers are desperate. Companies know this. That’s why Amazon can demand five days in the office and get compliance instead of resignation
But the labor market is not static; It was never like that. In fact, it tends to swing back and forth every few years. Do you remember 2022? Companies were begging people to accept their jobs. “Signing bonuses, remote work, unlimited PTO — whatever it takes. Candidates were fantasizing about the interviews. This shoe was in a whole other situation, and it was Doc Marten.”
But if we look at history, even recent history, a lot of companies that enforce RTOs are now writing future resignation letters to their best employees, to be delivered in the nanosecond that the tech job market stops being the worst in history.
Let me tell you how common sense dictates the RTO calculation.
How did we get here?
I don’t want to defend remote work. I really don’t. But I’m a big fan of common sense
Ironically, remote work accelerated with the advent of another mandate — that of us all staying home for most of 2020 and much of 2021. I personally still can’t believe that happened, but it’s what happened next that matters.
With pandemic restrictions lifted almost universally by 2022, natural calls by employers for their employees to return to their offices have been met with unexpected backlash.
“No, thanks.” We are more productive, our work-life balance is much better, we feel better, and anyway I said we could do it.
This backlash came to a head in 2024, when a group of Dell employees, shockingly, They choose to take a hit on the future of their company rather than return to the office.
“This is good.” We prefer to do better in a more comfortable environment. By the way, we have moved to New Zealand
Yes, it’s getting ridiculous. Corporate technology could not tolerate this absurdity. Employees need to return to the office due to… . . Well, because it’s always been that way. Does it matter that in the post-pandemic world of online business, such physical proximity no longer matters? It doesn’t matter
When employers started sticking to mandates, I started talking common sense. First, the long-term hits these companies have taken The pool of talent candidates and their employee morale and productivity when measured from the employees’ perspectivethe costs would have far outweighed the sunk property costs in the short term.
But then corporate technology got smart. Kind of. Employers began to make the misguided assumption that the employees who were about to not return to the office were the ones the company could live without. RTO has become a norm, albeit a completely illogical one Weeding mechanism.
This kind of worked. But it kind of didn’t. Sure enough, the rioters all found the door and pointed their fingers out, but the crowd stopped and did better, and the rest of the tech workforce Prepared for the revolution.
The employers were then bailed out by  The worst tech job market in history.Â
When there is Job seekers are more than jobstechnology companies could enforce company loyalty by singing every morning, and the entire workforce would begin to warm up their vocal cords.
What’s next for the job market and the RTO?
Well, what does common sense tell us?
Productivity is in the eye of the beholder. In any position where creativity, innovation, or even decision making is important, I would argue that there is no consistent measure of productivity that goes beyond correlation to causation when it comes to employee performance.
So you have to follow simple and logical concepts. Evolution does not come with introductory manuals. There is no title card for the next phase of the future of work. It happens, you evolve or you die.
And if we cannot connect the dots that the Internet has brought physically close Irrelevant in every case as it is not mandatory (e.g. surgery, construction, airline pilot) Ironically, pandemic lockdowns have highlighted this point.
As an evolutionary concept, the productivity argument is no longer relevant. It’s the same productivity argument that was made when we were deciding whether everyone should still do this Wear suits and skirts to work.
But if that kind of common sense doesn’t sway naysayers, I can make this argument more plausible.
Yo. 2022.
The labor market was supposed to be recovering by now. But this did not happen, and this encouraged many employers to rely on their influence by providing rare and valuable jobs. But the market He will recover.Â
When this happens, the first questions you will need to answer are:
“Why am I on Zoom with the person in the room?”
“Why can we only hire within a two-hour commute of some of the most expensive properties in the country?”
“Why am I wearing this three-piece suit with a matching fedora and pocket watch?” I am a database administrator
Because when an employee has influence, questions like this no longer make sense. The same companies demanding RTO will now likely have to offer remote work again to compete for scarce and valuable talent.
They will return to where they started, while their talents go to those smart companies that see remote work as an evolutionary concept, and work to create solutions that accommodate remote and in-office employees.
If you are also a fan of common sense, Â Please join my email listÂAnd I’ll give you a quick heads up when I say something close to it.
-Joe Procopio
This article originally appeared on Fast companyMy sister’s post, a company.
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