A 2024 study of S&P 500 firms found that companies often mandated a return to the office after stock prices fell—hoping in-person work would spark productivity and improve financial performance. But is that really working? Experts offer their insights, opinions, and advice here.

Invest in Systems, Not Just Office Space

Return to office mandates are making the rounds again. The reasons most often given are collaboration, innovation, and productivity.

The truth is, if those outcomes are the real goal, they will not happen just by getting people back in the same building. Where people sit matters far less than how they are set up to work. Too often, RTO is rolled out without any meaningful investment in the systems, tools, processes, and environments that make collaboration and innovation possible in the first place.

A recent report from Australia’s Productivity Commission found that hybrid work does not harm productivity. The real drop in performance comes from a lack of investment in technology and systems that would allow people to do their best work. If your infrastructure is outdated or your processes are clunky, getting everyone in the office will not change the result.

The cost of this gap between intent and execution is real. In cities like Atlanta, employees can lose two to three hours a day just commuting. That is time that could be spent on focused work, creative problem-solving, or even rest, all of which directly improve output. Once they arrive, many are still working with the same outdated tools, inefficient workflows, or uninspiring environments, which means productivity does not go up. In some cases, it gets worse.

We know hybrid can work when it is done with intention. Stanford research shows employees who work from home two days a week are just as productive, equally likely to be promoted, and 33% less likely to resign than those who are in the office full time. Other studies have shown remote and hybrid setups reduce sick days, limit distractions, and improve satisfaction, all of which support performance.

The key is to design work intentionally. If you want more collaboration, upgrade your collaboration tools. Redesign meetings so they actually create space for ideas. Use in-person time for high-value activities like mentoring, creative brainstorming, and relationship building.

I am not anti-office. I am pro-employee. That means creating an environment—whether remote, hybrid, or onsite—that allows people to do their best work and deliver real results. The leaders who focus on removing barriers, upgrading systems, and trusting their people will see gains in productivity no matter where their teams sit.

Lena McDearmid, Founder & CEO, Wryver

Design Intentional Ways of Working

The discussion about workplace flexibility often centers on where people work—office versus remote—but the “where” matters far less than the “how” and “why.”

When leaders mandate return-to-office without purpose or empathy, they risk damaging culture, breaking trust, and draining engagement. This is because people quickly see the disconnect between stated reasons and lived reality; there are far too many examples of employees dutifully coming in to “collaborate” only to spend the day on video calls. Conversely, there are examples of leaders trying to reach employees only to find that they are not actually working remotely but completely disconnected from their laptop. It has become a battleground of wills.

Offices aren’t the enemy, and neither is remote work. The better approach is to define the goal and maximize the purpose of each: offices for in-person connection and collaboration; remote for focused work and flexible well-being. Aim to maximize the benefits of each mode of work while removing friction that makes intentions and reality misalign. For instance, if in-office days are for collaboration, limit video calls those days and design connection opportunities like meals, live meetings, and in-person training. If remote work raises concerns about availability, set clear expectations for when and how to be accessible. This is what I call designing “ways of working,” which can become both a business advantage and a culture catalyst.

My approach is to turn these “ways of working” into a framework of philosophy statement, much like a compensation philosophy. When I help organizations write this, it articulates the purpose, principles, and expectations for how, when, and why people gather in person versus work remotely as well as what “flexibility” is defined as within that culture. Done well, it becomes a shared compass that is honest about business needs, clear about collaboration goals, and grounded in values. When “ways of working” are defined and designed to honor both organizational and individual needs, rather than making it a zero-sum choice, performance and engagement increase.

Angela Heyroth, Principal, Talent Centric Designs

Hybrid Model Boosts Collaboration and Creativity

The return to office has actually had a really positive impact for us. Being back in the same space has brought a level of energy and focus that’s hard to replicate remotely. We’ve found that casual in-person interactions, those quick hallway chats or spontaneous whiteboard sessions, lead to faster decision-making and more creative problem-solving. There’s just something about being able to look across the room and get instant feedback that helps keep momentum going.

For example, when we were working on a major product update earlier this year, having the team together allowed us to collaborate more fluidly across departments. What might’ve taken a few days of back-and-forth over Slack or Zoom happened in one afternoon. That speed and alignment directly impacted our launch timeline and let us respond to customer feedback much faster.

That said, I don’t think the solution is forcing everyone into the office five days a week. The future is flexibility. What’s worked best for us is a hybrid model where we use office time intentionally, for collaboration, planning, and building team connection, while still giving people the autonomy to focus remotely when it makes sense. It’s not about going back to how things were, but using the office as a tool when it adds real value.

Mark Yeramian, Co-Founder, CEO, Moast.io

Build Trust Through Flexibility and Leadership

The RTO push is the wrong approach to ensure long-term business success. When a large employer makes this decision, it communicates to employees that they can’t be trusted, that they are cogs in a machine, and that work and profit are more important than the people generating it. The RTO push is a surefire way to dramatically decrease psychological safety in your organization.

Psychological safety builds certainty. When we feel safe, certain, and trusted, our brains are better equipped to think critically, properly define problems, and effectively collaborate to create solutions that add real value and profit to our businesses. Mandating in-person work will both increase stress for loyal, productive employees and motivate your top performers to seek employment elsewhere.

Bringing people in to be babysat is wasting your time and creating a tense environment where great employees cannot do great work. Work with stakeholders to define clear, measurable outcomes with specific deadlines, and collaborate as a team to accomplish the shared goals you’ve chosen to prioritize.

A better approach than RTO is building meaningful relationships with your direct reports, and asking that they do the same. People are what drive our businesses forward. Schedule a weekly team huddle. Hold one-on-ones with the individuals who report to you. Learn what’s going on in their work and in their lives. Give positive, specific feedback regularly so your staff’s confidence grows along with their trust in you.

If you need to see people to believe they’re working, you don’t have a productivity problem; you have a leadership problem.

Kate Vawter, Founder and CEO, Ascent Solutions

Focus on Fixing How Work Gets Done

Forced return-to-office policies often send the message: “We don’t care about accessibility or diversity.” Remote work opened the door for people with disabilities, caregiving duties, or those living far from expensive office hubs. At a global tech company where I worked on the workplace effectiveness team, we found that productivity suffered not because people were remote and distributed, but because meetings were scheduled excessively, poorly planned, and lacked clearly documented outcomes. Meetings are just one of many types of interruptions that happen frequently throughout an average employee’s day. If companies focused on fixing how work gets done, instead of where, it would drive far better results and keep employees feeling productive.

Megan Rees, Head Therapist, Head Coach, Founder, Megan Rees, LPCC and Megan Rees, Coaching & Consulting

Flexible Work Weeks Test Productivity Theories

The Return to Office push would be received much better if it wasn’t coupled with layoffs. Albeit, employees are probably not going to be enthusiastic, but some people would be more receptive if not for their colleagues now being without a job and their duties now being theirs. The quiet firing trend pushes employees to the office, in hopes that some will resign and the company can avoid public layoffs and/or severances, but the damage is exponential and slow to erase.

For the remaining employees, you now have the feelings of employment instability running rampant and forced proximity converging into a negative mantra being shared over and over during their coffee breaks or at the water cooler.

Employers fail to see that when employees are allowed to remain Work From Home or flexible, they mostly communicate on projects or day-to-day collaborations via emails, chats, and video calls. So negative opinions are suppressed naturally because few employees want to have their negative feelings in print or recordings. Instead, with the forced RTO, you’ve successfully shoved employees together, even the ones that don’t communicate day-to-day with every business unit, and they are now free to grumble together. Solidarity amongst employees should be preferable when there are benefits gained, not lost.

Staying flexible with office days is a better way to test those productivity theories. Is it that employees are less productive at home, or is it that goals are unclear and accountability is lacking? In my experience, it’s most often the latter. Flexible work weeks also allow for those employees that do better in a more structured environment, the option of doing so without the need for negative feedback from those employees that do well from home.

Annalee Malone, Benefits & Compensation Manager, Total Safety U.S. Inc

Hidden Costs of Return-to-Office Mandates

Many businesses don’t realize how much money return-to-office mandates will cost them. For most businesses, office space is one of the biggest fixed costs. It usually makes up 10 to 20% of all operating costs. When companies require RTO, they need to make sure they have enough space for their employees, which is usually 150 to 200 square feet per employee when you include common areas, meeting rooms, and collaborative spaces.

The operational infrastructure becomes more complicated and expensive beyond the rent. The cost of utilities increases significantly. For example, electricity for lighting, heating, and cooling commercial spaces can cost two to three times more than for homes. Companies need to spend money on high-speed internet infrastructure that can handle dozens or hundreds of users simultaneously, as well as robust IT security systems for networks that are located on their own property.

The financial impact also includes amenities that modern workers expect in the workplace, such as ergonomic furniture, kitchen facilities, coffee services, cleaning services, security systems, and parking arrangements. For growing companies, these costs of doing business directly compete with revenue-generating investments. Every dollar spent on office overhead is a dollar not spent on activities that truly help a business grow and increase its stock price, such as developing new products, running marketing campaigns, or acquiring new customers.

Ryan McDonald, COO, Resell Calendar

Remote Flexibility Crucial for Global Teams

Requiring people to return to the office as a solution to declining stock prices is a temporary fix that may do more harm than good, particularly in industries where dispersed workforces are the norm. This is the case in blockchain, where I have witnessed projects lose momentum within weeks because remote flexibility was eliminated. This could include teams that used to work effectively together across six or more time zones simply stalling in their workflow as they were pushed into a smaller time window. This transition involved a delay in decision approvals of up to 48 hours, which used to take place on the same day. The fact that the change was considered to be operationally reactive as opposed to being financially strategic undermined trust, which proved to have a direct impact on the quality of output.

It also has a quantifiable cost of talent that most people do not consider. As I have experienced myself in advising high-growth businesses, the potential hiring pool was reduced by almost 40% due to strict in-office requirements. This forced companies to either accept lower-skilled workers or pay employees relocation packages averaging $15,000 to $25,000 each, without a corresponding increase in output and innovation.

Suvrangsou Das, Global PR Strategist & CEO, EasyPR LLC

Commute Time Hinders Productivity and Balance

It should come as no surprise that the RTO (Return to Office) push is backfiring. A commute adds anywhere from 2 to 10 extra hours of time to someone’s work week—often time that’s completely unproductive. That’s time that could be spent contributing to the workplace or recharging so someone is set up to do their best work during the workday. For working parents—especially mothers—it can pose significant logistical challenges with navigating childcare and finding the flexibility needed to balance work with being a present and engaged parent. Top talent knows they don’t have to give up their flexibility just to access great opportunities anymore when remote work allows them to do it all.

Bonnie Dilber, Sr. Manager, Talent Acquisition, Zapier

Shift Focus to Outcomes, Not Physical Presence

In my experience, the return-to-office initiative often backfires because it’s framed as a productivity solution rather than a cultural or strategic issue. On one team I worked with, leadership assumed that being back in the same physical space would naturally spark collaboration. What actually occurred was the opposite—people felt drained from commuting, frustrated by the loss of flexibility, and less focused overall. The energy in the office wasn’t creative; it was resentful.

What proved more effective was shifting the focus to outcomes instead of presence. When we established clear goals, gave people ownership, and brought the team together intentionally—for example, for brainstorming or strategy sessions—the collaboration was meaningful, not forced. This balance of flexibility and purposeful in-person time maintained high engagement without eroding trust. In my opinion, this is a much more sustainable approach to driving productivity in today’s workplace.

Pyper L. Cali, Senior Product Manager, Generative AI Solutions, TikTok