Employers will continue pushing return-to-office mandates in the year ahead, but how they craft such policies is evolving to include more flexibility. When ResumeBuilder.com surveyed 1,000 business leaders at the end of 2022, 9 in 10 said they will require employees to return to the office in 2023. When they ran the same survey a year later, they got the same answer, with 9 in 10 employers saying they will mandate RTO by the end of 2024.
But “what they’re not doing is defining what RTO is; that’s the part that has changed the most,” says ResumeBuilder.com’s chief career advisor Stacie Haller. “In our most recent survey, only 19% defined it as five days a week [in-person].”
Haller adds that while 90% of employers intend to enforce RTO mandates in 2024, that figure includes the 51% that have already done so—and doesn’t necessarily apply to every staff member, every day.
“RTO could mean three days a week, it could mean one week a month; it doesn’t always apply to everybody in the organization,” she says. “Only 44% said that at least three-quarters [of staff] will be required to come in in-person, so it’s not one-size-fits-all.”
RTO Mandates Increasingly Don’t Apply to Every Employee, Every Day
Haller explains that most organizations remain unwilling to force high performers—those who have proven their ability to be productive while working remotely—back into the workplace for fear of losing key talent. In fact, a separate ResumeBuilder.com survey conducted in March found that 37% of employees who were forced to return to the office are unhappy with their employers; and among them, 29% intend to resign unless the policy is reversed.
Instead, Haller suggests the landscape will get a little more fractured in the year ahead, with employers announcing sweeping RTO mandates that contain plenty of exceptions to match a range of employee needs and preferences.
“They realized that today they need to compromise, and that employees want to have a say in the way they work,” she says. “It comes down to economics; if your employees are leaving because they want to work remotely, you’re not going to be able to attract top talent. If you don’t let some employees work remotely, you’re missing out on a section of the candidate pool.”
In recent months, numerous employers (including Apple and Farmers Insurance Group) have reversed or adjusted RTO policies in response to employee backlash, while others (including YouTube, Amazon, and Disney) have refused to do so in the face of employee protests.
Employers Still Fear Losing Top Talent
That economic risk can’t be overstated. According to a recent survey conducted by Flexjobs, 57% of remote employees say they will look for a new job if they can’t continue working remotely. Another Flexjobs study also found that 56% of workers know someone who has or plans to quit their job over return-to-office mandates, and 35% know more than one.
“Fifty-one percent of professionals say they prefer working remotely, and 46% say they want a hybrid job, which means 97% of the workforce are looking for some level of workplace flexibility, and I don’t foresee that changing,” says FlexJobs’ lead career expert Toni Frana. “Since the pandemic, in particular, employees have felt the benefits of remote work, and those numbers show where they stand.”
An Emphasis on Hybrid Work
Frana adds that this push toward flexibility from employees and pull back to the office from employers is leading many organizations to land somewhere in between, a trend that is likely to continue into the new year.
“We at FlexJobs have seen an increase in the number of hybrid jobs that were posted over the past year, and it does seem to be trending in that direction,” she says. “I think as time passes, we will see the hybrid model as where things land.”
Frana adds that the “hybrid” model can take many forms, including everything from one day in office to four, and may incorporate different requirements for different roles or teams within the same organization.
Smaller Employers Return to Using Flexibility to Compete for Talent
As larger employers pursue RTO mandates, smaller employers are using their more flexible approach to lure talent who they can’t compete for on salary alone. According to Glassdoor’s 2024 Workplace Trends report, work-from-home benefits fell among large employers in 2023 and rose among smaller and medium-size businesses.
“In those very large companies, we’ve seen a continued return-to-office push because there is this belief among senior leaders that in-office work is more productive than remote work, but that’s not necessarily borne out by the evidence,” says Glassdoor’s chief economist Aaron Terrazas. “The past few months and into 2024 reflect a return to normal from what we saw pre-pandemic, where smaller companies compensate their employees in a number of noncash ways, including flexibility, while larger companies demanded a lot from their employees, and pay them more for it.”
As with those pre-pandemic days—when flexibility was the exception rather than the norm—Terrazas says decisions around flexibility are once again emerging as a defining attribute of company culture. Furthermore, with employers planning to spend less on employee experience in 2024, employers may lean more heavily on flexibility policies in order to stand out in what remains a competitive labor market.
“A company’s decision about what kind of work they want to promote is going to have implications for the types of workers they attract, the types of risks that those workers are willing to take, and the types of products they’re willing to build.”
