Here’s how employees feel about return-to-office mandates

Many employees hate the prospect of returning to the office five days a week – so much so that they would quit their jobs if told to come back to work full-time.

Until then, 46% of employees currently work from home at least occasionally would be somewhat or very unlikely According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, they could stay in their jobs if their employers eliminated remote work.

Still, employers have restricted remote work.

About 75% of workers were required to be in the office a certain number of days per week or month starting in October 2024, up from 63% in February 2023, Pew found.

“There’s been some uptick in return-to-the-office policies,” said Kim Parker, director of social trends research at the Pew Research Center.

Companies like Amazon, AT&T, Boeing, Dell Technologies, JPMorgan Chase, UPS and The Washington Post have called at least some employees back to the office five days a week. President Donald Trump signed an executive action on Monday calling federal employees back to their desks “as soon as possible.”

Similar to the Pew survey, a Bamboo HR poll found that 28% of employees do this would consider quitting due to a return mandate.

The data “underlines how comfortable people are with this arrangement and how it really fits into their lifestyle,” Parker said.

Employees consistently cite better work-life balance as a “major benefit” of remote work, Parker said.

They even see the financial value of hybrid work as equivalent to an 8% increase, according to research by Nick Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University who studies workplace management.

Many economists believe that the higher prevalence of remote work, compared to the pre-pandemic era, has become an entrenched feature of the U.S. labor market.

“Remote work is not going away,” Bloom previously told CNBC.

That’s largely because it increases profits for companies: Employees quit less often, which means employers save money on recruiting and other functions related to employee turnover, Bloom said. Meanwhile, data shows that productivity does not suffer under hybrid work arrangements, he said.

More from Personal Finance:
How do you know if a rental ad is a scam?
This is an ‘ideal time’ to reassess your retirement savings
How climate change is changing the cost of home insurance

More than 60% of paid, full-time workdays were done remotely in early 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic – up from less than 10% before the pandemic, according to WFH Research, a project run jointly by researchers from MIT, Stanford , the University of Chicago and Instituto Tecnológico Autonomo de México.

That share has fallen by more than half. However, according to data from WFH Research, the percentage has been between 25% and 30% for about two years.

About 31% of employers reduced remote work options in 2024, up from 43% in 2023, according to a ZipRecruiter questionnaire. Still, another 33% expanded remote work, up from 32% the year before.

Companies that have imposed RTO mandates have annual employee turnover rates that are 13% higher than companies that have become “more supportive” of remote work, according to ZipRecruiter.

“The ability to work from anywhere remains a top priority for many professionals,” according to a 2024 survey poll by consulting firm Korn Ferry with 10,000 employees in the US, UK, Brazil, Middle East, Australia and India.

Some companies are forcing employees to return to the office precisely because they want employees to quit, experts say. It’s a stealthy way to reduce workforce without explicit layoffs, they said.

“Requiring federal employees to come into the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary layoffs that we welcome,” wrote Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who were tapped by Trump to lead a new advisory board called the Department of Government Efficiency. a November op-ed. On Monday, Ramaswamy told CNBC he was leaving DOGE to run for governor of Ohio.

Of course, there are also disadvantages to remote work for companies and employees.

According to ZipRecruiter, about 59% of employers are concerned that remote work is damaging company culture.

About half of workers — 53% — who work from home at least part time say it “hurts” their ability to feel connected to colleagues, Pew found in a 2023 survey poll.

“It’s the one major downside we’ve seen consistently,” Parker said.

“That seems to be a trade-off: You get work-life balance, but you lose some connectivity with colleagues,” Parker said.

Even if employees resign, they may not be able to find a job.

The labor market remains strong, with low unemployment and few layoffs, which economists say means workers have good job security. However, companies have also pulled back on hiring, making it a challenging environment for job seekers.