Return to Office or Stay Remote? How HR Can Navigate the New Workplace Divide

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Amanda is a senior manager at PrecisionSoft, a mid-sized IT company specializing in ERP implementation. She’s spent the last two years building her team into a cohesive, high-performing powerhouse.

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The team is as diverse as the company’s client base. Half of them, including Amanda, are based in Baltimore and meet regularly in the downtown office. A few employees live in smaller Maryland cities like Frederick and Columbia, occasionally commuting for in-person meetings. But the team’s strength lies in its global reach.

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When a promising startup in Kuala Lumpur folded, Amanda pounced, recruiting their top cybersecurity specialists. They’ve brought deep expertise and a strong sense of camaraderie to the team. They’re a tight-knit unit and still meet face-to-face in their local coworking space.

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Other team members are scattered across the globe: a developer in Azerbaijan and a young, ambitious security analyst in Brazil. Both work as contractors. These remote hires were Amanda’s answer to a hypercompetitive job market where local talent with niche skills is scarce and expensive.

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Amanda poured her heart into making this team successful. She recruited experts with rare skills and created a culture that fostered collaboration and support. She knows everyone’s personal challenges and career aspirations. Her leadership was recognized last year when she won PrecisionSoft’s “Manager of the Year” award, earning the highest employee satisfaction score of anyone in the company.

Now, it feels like it’s all slipping away. 

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Amanda's fictional, but this situation is all too real. Many managers today face the stress of returning to the office (RTO), which is bringing employees back to one place after a period of remote work. If it's this difficult for managers, imagine how employees feel.

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In this article, we'll look for an answer to a tough question: whether RTO is worth it. Along the way, we’ll talk about the pros and cons of different work models and dive into some real cases.

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RTO and workforce management

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The recent wave of RTO demands started with concerns about overemployment — cases when remote employees take on multiple projects or even two full-time jobs simultaneously. For some companies, RTO is a way to downsize in disguise: 25% of executives admitted they were hoping for voluntary redundancies in response to an RTO demand. 

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Positive aspects of RTO

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Returning to the office can cause a lot of frustration, but let’s be honest with ourselves: there are upsides, too.

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Pros of office work for employers

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• Productivity. Some studies show that for a number of tasks, working in the office is more efficient. (Not everyone agrees.)

• Quickly sharing information. It’s easier to discuss news and solve problems when a team is in the same place. With remote work, managers spend more than half their time gathering information and doing administrative tasks.
• Ideas and innovation. Employees generate fewer ideas when working remotely. A study of millions of articles and patents found that working in the same space makes discoveries more likely.
• Higher engagement. Gallup found that employee engagement in the U.S. was at a 10-year low in 2024, especially among remote workers. 

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Pros of office work for employees

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• Clear boundaries. There’s a common perception that remote workers find it more difficult to maintain a good work-life balance.
• Strengthening corporate culture. Many remote workers complain of loneliness. Sharing a physical space can create stronger bonds within teams and prevent burnout.
• A sense of purpose. According to Randstad’s Workmonitor, this is one of the most important motivators for employees. When you’re in person, it's easier to feel that you're contributing to the mission.

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Disadvantages of office work

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Now, let’s look at the downsides.

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Cons of office work for employers

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• Overhead. Rent, utilities, and office equipment all increase the company's expenses.
• Talent attrition. 42% of employers who have mandated returns have seen higher attrition. High-performing employees often perform worse when made to return to the office. According to Gartner and McKinsey, young parents, millennials, and people with disabilities are the first to start looking for new jobs when an RTO is announced, and without a flexible schedule, 38% of mothers with young children will ask for fewer hours or quit altogether. 
• Reduced productivity. 79% of managers report that remote work is more efficient. People spend the same amount of time on tasks at home and in the office (76% of their workday), but office workers spend about an hour more socializing than their remote counterparts.
• Restricted talent pool. There’s no guarantee a company will be able to hire the talent it needs in the local market. Hence, one of remote work’s biggest advantages is that it makes it possible to hire people from all over the world. Farshoring — hiring workers from distant regions — can even reduce costs if the average salaries there are lower. In general, RTOs scare candidates away: nearly 30% of organizations that do RTOs have difficulty recruiting.

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Cons of office work for employees

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• Problems with work-life balance. Some experts believe office work actually makes it more difficult to maintain a balance. Gartner notes that this is one of the main reasons workers quit — and RTO decreases their intent to stay.
• Time and money. Employees say that spending more time on the road means lower productivity. Plus, having to commute hits them right in the wallet. According to the 2023 State of Hybrid Work report, 38% of respondents would be willing to RTO if the company covered transportation costs (yet another expense).
• Limited flexibility. After working remotely, fixed hours and a dress code are unappealing. But one in four would consider returning if they were allowed to wear casual clothes.

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A potential solution?

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In 2022, according to Statista, a majority of workers in most countries, from Australia to the UK, favored a hybrid work model over a fully remote one. 62% of employees are willing to take a 10% pay cut if allowed to work both in the office and from home. 

However a hybrid model is only possible to implement with doubling infrastructure costs and communication. It's also hard to design a system that everyone likes, though there are claims that the sweet spot is spending 60% to 67% of the time in the office.

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Pros of the hybrid model

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• Work-life balance.
• Face-to-face meetings when needed.
• Greater flexibility. This is especially attractive to younger professionals.

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Cons of the hybrid model

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• Office space costs — yet with a hybrid model, offices are often empty.
• Decreased cohesion. 44% of hybrid/in-office workers feel that communication is weaker with remote colleagues than with those they see in person. One in four say RTO made this worse.
• Stress. Nearly a third of remote workers fear they will be fired sooner than those who work in the office.

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It’s also worth mentioning that the hybrid model’s pluses are debatable. One study led to the conclusion that it “appears to have small positive effects on productivity.”

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Real cases of RTO

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Boeing, Goldman Sachs, UPS, Dell, and other large companies insist that employees be in the office Monday through Friday. Sometimes this is a condition for keeping their jobs. That’s the case at Tesla and X: Elon Musk said employees should either work from the office or quit, tweeting, “They should pretend to work somewhere else.”

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Other companies are trying the hybrid approach. Apple, Google, and Meta let their employees work from the office three days a week, and Zoom has asked employees to show up two days out of five. (It would be pretty odd if Zoom, of all companies, did a full RTO.)

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Amazon. In September 2024, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced a full RTO from 2025 in order to strengthen corporate culture. The news sparked protests: more than 30,000 people signed a petition demanding a reversal, but they were rebuffed. Blind found that 91% of employees were unhappy with the decision and 73% were looking for a new job.

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Ubisoft. Also, in September 2024, the French game developer Ubisoft announced that its 19,000 employees had to go to the office three days a week. In response, workers went on strike and issued a statement saying they’d rebuilt their lives and couldn’t go back to the way things were.

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To RTO or not to RTO? Key takeaways for HR

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It would be great if there were a definitive, one-size-fits-all answer, but there isn’t. The best approach is one that reflects the interests of both the business and its employees. Companies should carefully monitor the impact of remote work on productivity, conduct regular surveys, and listen to team members’ opinions. Regardless of which model is chosen, it's important to create an environment where employees feel valued and heard.