The great RTO mandate pushback

When workers abandoned their offices during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, many probably thought it would be temporary. Five years on and many workers are still performing their jobs from the comfort of their own home.

More and more companies are hoping to change this. At the start of 2025, Dell introduced a return to office (RTO) mandate requiring employees to be back in the office five days a week from March onwards, although reports have since emerged that the mandate is open to interpretation. Others are easing their employees back gently. In April, Uber announced employees would have to return to the office three days a week.

Proponents of RTO mandates argue that having employees together can help to foster a sense of community that can’t be achieved virtually and this results in better communication and collaboration.

Not everyone in the sector is convinced by this. Speaking on an episode of Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast in June, Dropbox chief executive officer (CEO) Drew Houston criticized RTO mandates, likening the push to the office to forcing people away from online shopping and into malls. “It’s a different world now … There’s a better way to do this,” said Houston.

Tech workers aren’t impressed either. In September 2024, Amazon staff were vocal about their displeasure with the firm's mandatory demands that they return to office five days per week. By December, almost half of Amazon workers were looking for new roles and two-thirds expecting to quit within 12 months, per Strategic Organizing Centre data.

And in the wake of Dell's aforementioned RTO mandate, the percent of Dell Technologies staff who said they would recommend the company as a place to work dropped from 62% to 48%. Within certain departments and divisions the number dropped far lower, with some Dell divisions approaching zero percent likelihood they would recommend it.

A recent survey by Owl Labs also found that 56% of 1,005 UK-based office workers believe that RTO mandates are designed to boost productivity but are failing to have an impact because employers aren’t providing the right support. Eight in 10 workers who are under a strict RTO mandate revealed that they’re actively looking for a new job, while half of the Gen Z and Millennial respondents admitted to doing the bare minimum in their role, i.e. not going above and beyond their job description.

Office leases spur the return to the office

For this piece, ITPro spoke to several firms who warned the sector shouldn’t be quick to force workers back to the office.

For starters, rigid RTO mandates will often “be driven more by lease agreements than culture or productivity,” argues Debbie Shotwell, chief people officer at Stack Overflow, the question-and-answer website for programmers.

This comment echoes the findings of a survey published at the end of last year by Resume.org. Around two-thirds of 900 business leaders said their companies currently lease office space, with half of these agreements running until 2028 at the earliest. Only 12% expire this year. What’s even more interesting is that a third said they’d reduce the number of days in the office once the lease has expired, while 8% would be willing to drop RTO mandates altogether.

Stack Overflow has been relying on a remote-hybrid model since the company was founded in 2008, but switched to a fully remote model in 2023.

Shotwell adds that “a remote, distributed model gives companies the advantage of being able to tap into a larger global talent pool” and enables them to build “an employee base that is aligned around impact rather than location”.

RTO mandates can trigger a loss of talent

Another advantage of not enforcing RTO mandates is higher retention. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh tracked more than three million workers from 54 high-tech and financial firms within the S&P 500 and concluded that the average turnover rate was 14% higher after a mandate had been introduced.

A Hubble study from February found that despite over half of founders expressing an interest in RTO mandates, 60% worried that implementing strict mandates could push staff to resign.

These worries are backed by even more statistics in the UK, where a recent study by Hays found 48% of surveyed workers would consider quitting if asked to come into the office full-time. This was largely identified as due to the cost of commuting, with 73% of workers saying they couldn't justify shelling out for the season ticket or added fuel costs.

Cloud computing giant Twilio regularly surveys its employees to find out how its remote-first working model is having an impact. The latest findings, shared by Unleash in February, showed that 94% of employees are collaborating effectively and 81% would happily recommend Twilio as a workplace.

“The decision to not mandate a return to office reflects a long-term strategy backed by data, employee feedback, and strong performance since launching our Open Work policy,” Christy Lake, Twilio’s chief administrative officer, tells ITPro.

Open Work was introduced in 2021 after Twilio realized that only a very small percentage needed to be in a physical office space to do their job. CEO Khozema Shipchandler, who took up the post in January 2024, has reassured employees that he’s committed to remote-first working.

“Many tech companies are reversing course [on their RTO policy], but we’ve doubled down on remote-first flexibility, because it works – for our people, our business, and our customers,” adds Lake.

That said, just because not mandating a return to the office works for some, doesn’t make it the right approach for all of the tech sector. Each company needs to determine what the benefits of a mandate will be and whether introducing one will actually improve productivity.