As companies demand workers come back to a physical site with return-to-office mandates, the result is worker dissatisfaction and workplace attrition. The negative reaction is more due to the take-back of a privilege than returning to work. To prevent a loss of workers, companies must develop reasonable hybrid solutions.
Pick up a newspaper or magazine these days, and you’re likely to read that many workers are reacting negatively to employer mandates that they come back to the office. They may protest in the streets, loud quit or quiet quit and put in minimum work, or look for another job. Not everyone is dismayed at being called back to the office, but many workers like the flexibility that remote or hybrid work offers them.
Worker Reaction To Return-To-Office Mandates
Many remote Amazon workers who expected to remain remote were so angry when company CEO Andy Jassy told them they needed to return to the office three days a week that they set up a Slack channel to vent. Over 14,000 workers joined in a week and started a petition against the policy.
The language in the petition indicates that workers feel the company violated their trust, blindsided them with their new demands, and maybe was trying to make people quit.
Other companies who made similar demands on their workers, such as Starbucks, Apple, Disney, General Motors, and Twitter, also strongly objected to return-to-work mandates.
The Big Stay – Yet Employees Are Leaving
Before and during the pandemic, many workers quit their jobs or accepted new ones where they felt more valued in a move known as the Great Resignation. At a time when many economists worry about an impending recession, and workers fear layoffs, workers are more likely to stay put – a trend dubbed the Big Stay.
But are employees staying? Recent statistics from the Bureau of Labor in May and June 2023 indicate that while the number of job openings is decreasing, the number of workers who quit their jobs is increasing. The pandemic opened the eyes of many people to their value in the workplace. As employers try to rescind benefits and perks offered to keep people working, workers are more likely to leave jobs that don’t value them. Those unhappy with RTO policies or broken promises of ongoing remote or hybrid work are moving on.
Of the 72% of companies with back-to-work mandates, half of them are seeing attrition among the ranks.
Research Support Worker Desire For Flexibility
A recent Fortune article included research from two sources to show that forced RTO mandates result in staff attrition.
Hybrid work scheduler software creator Scoop Technologies found that “fully flexible” companies where workers can choose whether to go to the office increased their headcount over the last 3 months by 1.9% vs. 1.5% with structured hybrid work policies and .8% for fully in-office. Over the past year, fully flexible companies grew by 5.6%, hybrid companies by 4.1%, and fully in-office companies by 2.6%.
A report from Flex Index showed that workers who had to go into the office were happy to do so if it were their choice vs. being mandated. Company headcount decreased more among those companies requiring 4 or more days per week in-office attendance vs. those requiring 1-3 weekly appearances at the office,
What does headcount indicate? As the FlexIndex report says, “Headcount growth is not a perfect proxy for economic growth, but it is likely that the companies that are adding headcount are also the ones that are growing sales, the report says. “Put simply, the growth in the economy—at least for corporate employees—appears to be with the companies that are offering flexibility.”
The Returning For Good study by Unispace showed similar results. Attrition was higher among companies with RTO mandates (42% ), while 29% of such companies were having trouble recruiting new employees.
The Greenhouse Candidate Experience report found that
- 76% of employees might leave their jobs if the company backs away from flexible work. Among 22% of “historically underrepresented” workers (e.g., black workers who suffer microaggressions) would leave if flexible options disappeared.
- 42% of candidates would turn down jobs with no flexibility
- Workers still rank increased compensation (48%) as a top priority in a new job, followed by excellent job security (34%) and opportunities for career advancement (32%). However, better flexible work policies (28%) and a more positive company culture (27%) were the concerns of nearly 30% of respondents.
How To Address Attrition
Many workers acquired a taste for freedom during the pandemic and resisted changing back to less flexible workplaces. While they may have been satisfied with salaries and job security before this cataclysmic event, they began to see flexibility as an essential part of the work-life balance equation.
In time, many employees may get back to seeing work as something most people do in an office. Employers may have their right to define the workplace, but RTO mandates are a rallying cry for discontent in many quarters. Flexible work is the new status quo, and demanding that people abandon what they become used to is no easy feat. Human psychology simply does not work that way.
Some companies have worked with consultants like Gleb Tsipursky to find solutions agreeable to companies and workers. Considered the office whisperer, he has worked with corporate and worker groups to reach a compromise. In cases cited in The New York Times, he succeeded in convincing management that flexible work policies would help attract and retain workers. He also helped companies develop relationships with workers so that they abandoned a “top-down mandate” to return to the office to a team-driven approach, so all saw the advantages of hybrid work.
Even without using a hybrid work consultant, companies that want more workers back in the office would be wise to evaluate their policies to allow for enough flexibility to satisfy reasonable worker needs. They may find that increased productivity, more satisfied workers, and less attrition are their rewards for changing their attitudes.
