The yearslong return-to-office battle has seen corporate leaders use layoffs and productivity-tracking software as a pretext for accountability against fears that remote employees are hanging out in their pajamas doing nothing. More recently, major companies like Amazon and JPMorgan have instituted five-day-a-week attendance mandates, even when they know those announcements will face significant employee and public backlash.
"It's disappointing that so many companies are mandating return to office," Brittany Pollari, talent partner at Awin Global, an affiliate marketing platform, wrote in a post on LinkedIn. "Remote working isn't necessarily life-changing itself, but the flexibility is."
Despite the RTO pronouncements of some high-profile employers, the majority of companies seem to have landed on a hybrid model, according to Gallup. Recent research also suggests that organizations are continually adapting—a survey by Lucid Software found that 74 percent of companies have changed their policies in the last four years. Stanford economist Nick Bloom recently found that 38 percent of workers have experienced at least two distinct return-to-office policy changes since 2020.
"While certain companies are laying down these mandates for employees to return to the office five days a week, the truth is that most are not. It's hard to keep high-potential employees who don't want to work that way anymore," Kate Duchene, CEO of RGP, an HR consulting firm, told Newsweek. "Largely, we see companies enjoying a hybrid approach of two or three days a week in the office where employees can collaborate and learn together, while giving workers some flexibility—that's what high-performing talent wants."
Multiple business leaders have told Newsweek their office attendance is high, near or surpassing 50 percent (the national average is around 54 percent, according to Kastle Systems) without having a mandate.
Just like the business leaders enforcing a mandate, the ones who aren't see value in being in the office together. They feel strongly about the development and collaboration opportunities of teams working in the same location, but they are acknowledging the reality that employees have a choice today and it's never going back to the way it was.
"If an organization does want employees to spend more time in the physical office, workers need to feel like it is an open and safe space for positive interactions with their peers and they are having meaningful, purpose-led collaboration that is furthering their work," Duchene said.
Yes, It's Possible
Jennie Rogerson, Canva's global head of people, expressed her philosophy for driving office attendance while sharing some data in a recent conversation with Newsweek.
"At Canva's Sydney campus, the home of our global headquarters, over half of our team, 57 percent, comes into the office one or more times per week, and a quarter, 25 percent, attend at least two days per week. While attendance varies globally, this reflects our team's flexible approach to balancing in-person collaboration with remote work," she said.
Rogerson said their philosophy is to trust employees to figure out the best mode of working for them.
"We don't have a mandatory companywide amount of time to spend in an office, and we trust our team to choose the type of environment that works best for them, whether it's in a physical space, at home, or a mix of both," she explained. "Four years into this way of working, we've found this to be the most effective way to empower our team to balance in-person team collaboration with time working at home."
Consistent employee feedback along with strong team and company performance has allowed Canva to keep this policy.
"We hear the impact that our combination approach of flexibility and connection has on our team often," Rogerson said. "Parents and caregivers, in particular, often share how much they value our hybrid approach, which enables them to balance their personal and professional responsibilities."
Rogerson credits updated design, in-office programming and added amenities for the company's success in embracing a flexible arrangement while still valuing time in the office.
"We've designed our offices to be hubs of creativity and connection, with intentional spaces and activities to maximize collaboration. From team workshops, volunteering, goal celebrations or Canva Club events—we're intentional about making in-office time meaningful," Rogerson said. "Our spaces are also equipped to inspire and foster a connected culture—whether it's through beautifully designed communal areas, chef-cooked meals, parenting rooms or garden rooftops."
Annie Dean, vice president of Team Anywhere at Atlassian, a software company where she's in charge of a research group, real estate and workplace policy and design, told Newsweek that business leaders enforcing attendance mandates may be missing the point in focusing so heavily on where people are working.
"A lot of the conversation is still stuck thinking about the office as the primary way to organize or get work done," she said. "I would encourage [managers enforcing mandates] to think differently and then to really just start experimenting with tools that make workstreams more visible across the organization, and ways of communicating that are clearer."
She added that Atlassian has robust attendance without a mandate, and the office experience is valued by leaders and employees alike.
Atlassian's policy is that "people can choose where they work every single day," Dean said, adding that "40 percent of our company works at a place that is not convenient to an office, and yet our 12 global offices are well-attended, despite the fact that nobody is forced to go there."
Real Estate & Management Considerations
Employers can also consider opening suburban offices or sponsoring coworking memberships for colocated employees to remove the barrier of a long commute for people who have migrated far from city centers over the last five years.
"There is rapidly rising demand for local coworking space or offices close to employees' homes, which allows employers to unlock the benefits of in-person collaboration while still giving employees the flexibility they need and desire and reducing long, costly commutes to faraway city-center offices," Mark Dixon, CEO and founder of International Workplace Group, a commercial real estate firm, told Newsweek via email. "These commutes continue to serve as a major point of friction for employees; employers are finding by eliminating or reducing them, employees are much less resistant to in-office work."
Pollari cautions that employers are risking harm to their employment brand by hastily putting out mandates in hopes of boosting productivity.
"It's an employer-market right now, but as time has always shown us, it won't be forever," she wrote. "When that pendulum swings back to a candidate-market, candidates will look for a company who continued to offer flexibility of a hybrid/remote working model."
Even with a "work anywhere" policy in place, Atlassian is building a new headquarters in Sydney as part of a new tech district in partnership with the city government. Business leaders need to rethink how they organize and measure work, and how they lead meetings, rather than focusing on presenteeism, Dean said.
"Our key thesis as an organization is that it really is not about where people work. It's about how people work and the opportunity that modern technology brings to every team," Dean previously explained in a conversation with Newsweek. "A lot of our workdays are dedicated to sharing information with one another, and it's just not necessary anymore, because we don't need to spend that amount of time and we don't need to wait for a meeting for it to happen."
Dean, Rogerson, Duchene and others interviewed for this article all emphasized the need for clear, consistent communication and transparency from leadership, and to model whatever policy the company does choose while also making themselves available for questions.
"Managers have to spend more time being intentional about checking in with their employees, and more intentional about communicating the vision, goal setting, expectations around what success looks like and even career pathing," Kat Judd, chief people officer and associate general counsel at Lucid Software, told Newsweek.
A hybrid approach can also ensure that whether people are in virtual meetings in different office locations or with clients, those meetings and collaborations can still run smoothly across time zones and with everyone's presence in those meetings appearing equitably.
"We were really clear when we rolled this out, that we are going to act like a hybrid-first workforce," Judd said. "Even if you are together in a room, the people in person need to act like it's a hybrid-first, and being really thoughtful and respectful about making sure that people are included."
Compliance Concerns
Even if employers want to implement a hybrid model, they need to make sure they are compliant with the laws in the states where hybrid or remote employees may live. Judd states that this compliance need has led to Lucid creating a list of states where people can work from, because they've ensured their ability to be compliant with local labor regulations.
"Managing all 50 states for legal compliance and tax compliance, also just the time zones...started to feel overwhelming," Judd shared. "We decided to say that there's only certain states allowed, because on the back end, on the HR side of things, like payroll, finance, taxes, we wanted to be able to feel really certain that we were following all the laws."
Judd said that sometimes they will add or remove a state, including for regulatory reasons, increased costs associated with being an employer in that state or if the employee population is tiny or dwindling.
"One area that we have is just being really clear around the expectations of where you are actually allowed to work," she added, stating that questions around temporary relocation and long-term remote arrangements have come up, with the company offering tax guidance if, say, an employee wanted to spend a season in a different location from their primary residence.
"We gave guidelines around the amount of days to be away from your permanent residence without having to get permission or to change your permanent residence," Judd said. "It has to do with taxes and compliance behind it, and that's something that some companies forget about or just turn a blind eye to."
HR Strategy Notes
When considering a new workplace policy around office attendance, HR leaders emphasized the value of employee feedback throughout the process as especially crucial in a post-pandemic world where workers have had a taste for remote and now favor remote-friendly working models.
"We sent out surveys. What we found was there's no one-size-fits-all answer that meets everybody's desires and needs," Judd said, adding that she and her company's leadership all value the in-office experience but felt hybrid was the way to go.
Lucid's approximately 1,000 employees are split across multiple offices in the U.S. in addition to one in the Netherlands and one in Melbourne, Australia. Judd said she's pleased with the attendance—she's in the office two to three days herself—and points to intentional programming as well as catered lunch and leadership availability as keys to success for their hybrid model.
"People need to understand the purpose of coming into the office, whether it's for training or team-building or collaboration, sometimes customer meetings, they have to see the value of coming in, not just coming in for coming in's sake," she explained.
Judd emphasized the tremendous value of in-person work but added that "it's also important to give people that flexibility and still be intentional about fostering in-person connection" and that "disconnection and miscommunication are some of the top frustrations people have with hybrid policies."
She recommended to peers in HR that they and leadership teams work together to "build frameworks for connection by creating structured opportunities to build deeper connections, professionally as well as socially."
Even Gen Z has expressed an appetite for going into the office. It's on the shoulders of leaders to make that time worthwhile and acknowledge the new realities of today.
"Providing flexibility around how and where work gets done, while still fostering in-person connection," Judd said, "is going to be essential going forward."
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