‘Entirely unsurprising': Issues with return-to-office mandates coming to light

News.com.au

4 hours ago

Late last year we saw a huge increase in companies issuing strict return-to-office mandates, with many requiring staff to be in the office five days a week starting in 2025.
Among the businesses that have issued these types of orders are Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, Tabcorp, AT&T and Dell.
Now, a few months on from many of these mandates being in force, it seems things may not be going as smoothly as decision makers would have hoped.
In the case of technology giant Dell, a new report from Business Insider has suggested the company is dealing with significant issues in the return-to-office rollout.
In March 2025, Dell began requiring all employees who live within an hour from an office to return to in-person work five days a week.
An internal memo stated all employees that met this criteria would be expected to do a 'regular working day in the office', though there would be 'flexibility as needed'.
It has been over three months since staff were ordered back to the office, with 10 Dell employees painting a very varied picture of how things are panning out.
Business Insider reported the degree of enforcement very much varies between managers, with some employees saying they were in eight hours a day, while others seemingly coming into the office to show their face and leaving soon after.
One employee, a program manager, said the lack of blanket enforcement was causing 'lots of in-office politics', with this 'haphazard' nature leading to friction among employees.
'So much of this is dependent on leaders,' they said.
A recent internal FAQ obtained by the publication laid out examples of when employees may be approved to work from home, such as a temporary medical condition, needing to provide temporary care, or adjusting in-office hours to avoid peak traffic.
However, of the five employees who claimed they sometimes work from home, none said it was due to any of the reasons listed above.
'I personally have not been adhering to eight hours a day,' one employee said, claiming they were aware they may be breaking the rules but have not yet been corrected.
Another said that, while their team was in the office full time, they usually only work about half the day in person before finishing the rest of their shift at home.
One staff member claimed they had intentionally been coming in less as the new policy made them feel like they were being 'treated like a child'.
Speaking to news.com.au, Rebecca Moulynox, ANZ General Manager of Great Place To Work, said the issues we are seeing arise from widespread return-to-office mandates were 'absolutely predictable'.
'Our data couldn't be clearer – when employers mandate work location, whether remote, hybrid, or onsite, productivity drops, retention plummets, and relationships with managers deteriorate,' she said.
'We found that employees who can choose where they work are three times more likely to want to stay with their company.
'When companies ignore this data and impose mandates anyway, the outcomes we're seeing at Dell and elsewhere are entirely unsurprising.'
Dell is far from the only company experiencing return-to-office issues.
Earlier this month, a leaked internal memo from JPMorgan showed morale had taken a hit in the wake of the RTO mandate.
Every year, employees are asked to complete a survey that asks them to assess aspects of the company culture, such as internal mobility, work-life balance and health and wellbeing.
An internal memo from CEO Jamie Dimon and Chief Human Resources Officer Robin Leopold, obtained by Barron's, revealed the company's health and wellbeing scores had dropped, with leaders attributing this to the return to office.
'Health and wellbeing scores remain favourable, though they dipped slightly year on year,' the memo stated.
'We know return full-time to the office has been an adjustment and one that not everyone agrees with, but we continue to believe in-person is how we do our best work and how we foster connections and mobility opportunities.'
Elsewhere, there have also been complaints of companies introducing RTO mandates but actually not having the capacity for everyone to come back.
Telecommunications giant AT&T required staff to come back to the office five days a week from January 2025.
In the wake of the return, several workers from the company's Atlanta offices told Business Insider that there was a shortage of available desks and the parking lots had become overcrowded.
There were also claims of increasingly long wait times for elevators, leading to the company posting signs with 'motivational quotes' encouraging staff to use the stairs.
Ms Moulynox said one of the key drivers behind the issues we are now seeing is a 'fundamental disconnect' between executive decision making and employee needs.
'The specific issues like desk shortages and inconsistent enforcement stem from companies trying to force a one-size-fits-all approach without understanding why employees value flexibility in the first place,' she said.
'When you mandate where people work without recognising that employees need flexibility for things like picking up children from school, managing family responsibilities, or avoiding toxic office dynamics, you're bound to face resistance and practical failures.'
Neal Woolrich, Director, Advisory in the Gartner HR practice, has also noticed that, not only are organisations struggling with unclear policies, there is also a lack of guidance for how leaders are meant to be applying the policies.
'So there's that lack of consistency, and that leads to feelings of inequity or unfairness,' he told news.com.au.
Mr Woolrich said some companies are also running into issues because they haven't established in advance how they are going to enforce the mandates.
'What we've seen over the last few years is that, where organisations have set a target for in-office attendance, on average, most organisations are just not getting close to that target,' he said.
This means that companies are now in the position where they have to get serious about their enforcement mechanism and how strict they want to be.
Mr Woolrich said the 'logical extension' is that not meeting in-office targets becomes a performance issue that could then impact promotions or pay rises.
On the extreme end of things, companies may be having to decide whether they exit people from the business for noncompliance to RTO mandates.
'Different organisations are taking different views to that. Some are using return-to-office mandates as a bit of a Trojan horse, and using it just as an excuse to exit people from the business quickly,' he said.
'Others don't necessarily want to go down that path, but then that might be where it leads to if they really want to be strict about in office attendance.'