A new report is shedding light on the inexplicable push to enforce return-to-office mandates despite evidence they do not work.
Companies large and small have been pushing to bring their employees back to the office despite lower costs and increased productivity associated with remote workers. Not even the threat of losing top talent has been enough to stop some of the biggest names in the CEO field from taking a hard line.
According to Business Insider, there may finally be an explanation, and it all boils down to the workaholic, older male CEO at the top who is increasingly out of touch with employees.
“Because the labor market is looser and there’s more talent to be hired, I think the employers think they’ll be able to get their way,” Dr. Grace Lordan, associate professor in behavioral science at the London School of Economics, told Insider.
“This belief of a certain cohort of people, and they are represented across all sectors, that presentee-ism is productivity, for them it’s perfectly rational that if somebody doesn’t want to come into the office then that basically means they’re not somebody who wants to add value to the firm,” Lordan added.
See Also: Marc Benioff – ‘Office Mandates Are Never Going to Work’
Standford economist Nick Bloom agrees, telling Insider:
For most employees, life is partly work, but partly things outside work. These elite CEOs probably work 100-plus hours a week and they’re much more work-focused.
Even some of the RTO mandates betray CEOs’ motives. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan recently demanded employees return to the office at least two days a week, slamming collaboration via Zoom. As Human Workplace CEO Liz Ryan points out, Yuan’s own argument shows the real reason may not be what he says it is:
Zoom showed their hand when they announced that anybody who lives within 50 miles of the office has to show up there. If you hate commuting enough, you could move 51 miles away. It’s not about their culture. It’s about filling up the office space they’re paying for.
— Liz Ryan (@humanworkplace) — August 19, 2023
Lordan and Bloom’s take seems to agree with the evidence, given that studies have shown the costly impact of RTO mandates. Such mandates have cost companies top talent and left them struggling to fill some roles. Similarly, studies have shown that remote workers work longer and are more productive than their in-person counterparts.
Even some of the biggest proponents of RTO efforts, such as Amazon’s Adam Selipsky and Mike Hopkins, admit there is no data to support RTO mandates, relying on “serendipity” as their reason for pushing in-office work.
Employee pushback is not likely to subside anytime soon, with one study showing that 76% of employees plan to quit their jobs if flexible work options are eliminated.
Famed tech icon Marc Andreessen said early on that the shift to remote work was a societal turning point:
“It’s potentially an earthquake,” Andreessen said. “It’s potentially one of those things that in a hundred years, people could look back and say, ‘That was a real turning point for how society developed.’”
Which way society turns will largely depend on whose will is stronger: employees or older, male, workaholic CEOs.
