5 years into the remote work boom, the return-to-office push is stronger than ever—here’s why

The Covid-19 pandemic ushered in a new way of working remotely, but even companies that initially championed the model are changing their tune.

In recent months, staffers across corporate America, from Amazon to Dell to Walmart, as well as federal government workers, have been told that their days of working remotely are over — at least, with that employer. Instead, select employees have been called back into offices five days a week, a reversal of conversations in 2020 that touted remote and hybrid options as the future of work.

But those who’ve come to appreciate the newfound flexibility aren’t giving it up easily.

While remote job opportunities are down, the competition to land one is fierce: Just 20% of LinkedIn postings are for remote or hybrid jobs, but they’re getting 60% of applications on the platform.

And nearly half of employees who work remotely at least some of the time say they’d be unlikely to stay at their job if they were called back to their offices full time, according to data from BambooHR.

If employees do choose to stay, some rebel against the mandates by only making brief appearances in the office, also known as coffee badging. Or they may stay but be less engaged in their work, which translates to lower productivity and performance.

In the now five-year debate between remote work and returning to offices, what can people expect next?

Indeed, a 2024 study of S&P 500 firms found businesses were more likely to mandate RTO after their stock prices dipped, hoping that in-office time would spur productivity and therefore boost the bottom line.

Certain types of leaders are more likely to want people back in offices, says Mark Ma, an associate business professor at the University of Pittsburgh who led the research.

“We found return-to-office mandates are more likely in firms with male and powerful CEOs,” Ma says. “They are used to working in the office for five days a week. And they feel that they are losing control over their employees who are working from home.”

It’s not surprising to see more RTO mandates take shape as power has shifted in the labor market, from employees during the Great Resignation back to employers in a new layoff environment.

It’s basic economics: With new job creation and hiring down, employers have more job-seekers than they have open roles, and therefore less incentive to offer perks like flexible work.

Meanwhile, some experts say companies are issuing RTO mandates as a so-called “back channel layoff,” where they hope the policy will drive people to quit.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in an employee town hall that this was not the goal of the tech giant’s five-day RTO policy after its cloud boss Matt Garman said staffers who don’t agree with the rule could leave.

But are in-office workers more engaged and productive? The results are inconclusive.

There isn’t much firm research as to whether companies with a five-day in-office policy perform better as a business or on the stock market. “But we do find significant evidence that return-to-office mandates hurt employee job satisfaction,” Ma says.

His research analyzed millions of Glassdoor job reviews among companies that issued RTO mandates. One correlation: Job satisfaction ratings dropped “significantly.”

And RTO led to higher turnover among certain staff including women, highly skilled and senior tenured employees — “not the people you want to lose,” Ma says.

Companies with fresh RTO policies also took longer to hire new employees.

Still, some workers welcome more in-office time, like Clinton Stamper, 29, an Amazon software engineer in Austin, Texas.

Like many with desk jobs, he worked entirely remotely for three years during the pandemic, but felt disconnected from his colleagues. It also enabled his procrastination.

In the office, though, “You can have small conversations in an elevator. You can randomly run into leadership and do an elevator pitch of your idea,” he says.

Stamper says working from an office helps him stay focused and collaborate with his colleagues better.

He acknowledges that remote work can be beneficial to others at a different life stage, like parents and caregivers, or those who have different working styles.

Ultimately for him, “I was excited to get in there and just do some work in person with all my teammates,” Stamper says.

Office workers can also boost the local economy and support small businesses located near corporate buildings.

“Food trucks, laundry services — there are a lot of businesses that depend on workers in the office,” Kantenga says. “And when workers are not in the office, these businesses don’t do well.”

Professionals may be spending more time in offices today than they did in the last five years, but the spread of remote flexibility has left a permanent mark on the way work gets done, experts say.

More than 1 in 4 paid workdays in the U.S. were done from home in 2024, up from just 1 in 14 from pre-pandemic days, according to data from WFH Research.

Most companies with remote and hybrid policies don’t intend to change them in the next 12 months, according to new survey findings from Stanford and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

Ma agrees that hybrid is here to stay — he believes that big companies can afford to lose employees and candidates by scaling back on remote options, but smaller employers won’t be able to follow suit.

“The smaller firms are actually providing talent flexibility as a way to attract talent from the bigger competitors,” he says.

Some businesses may even reverse course after adopting RTO rules.

H&R Block first called corporate staffers back to offices three days a week in 2021, but a Covid-19 surge, hiring of more remote workers, and employee feedback against the attendance requirement led the company to scrap original plans.

As of 2024, the tax services giant did away with a company-wide RTO policy and now allows individual teams to set their own office attendance policies.

Changing demographics within the workforce could lead to a more favorable job market and working conditions for employees, Kantenga says. “The population is aging, and our workforce is set to shrink,” he says. “As that shrinks, employers are going to have to do more to attract employees, and offering flexible work might be the thing that they have to do.”

Sam Spurlin advises companies on how to handle remote, hybrid and in-office work, and, most importantly, how it all impacts the people who make businesses run.

“And at the end of the day, there’s a lot of people talking about RTO as a very simple answer for fixing a lot of very complicated and complex problems within organizations,” Splurlin says.

“So maybe it has a role in certain environments and in certain cases done thoughtfully. But if we think we’re going to kind of wave the magic RTO wand and fix some really fundamental problems in our organizations, we’re going to be pretty disappointed.”

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