Recently, headlines announcing strict five-day return-to-office (RTO) mandates have dominated news cycles, suggesting workplaces should return to the pre-pandemic norm. As ActivTrak CEO, I’ve had countless conversations with leaders grappling with RTO policies.
Many assume full-time RTO boosts productivity, efficiency and innovation, but a blind RTO directive is a shortsighted choice for those who ignore the data. Worse, it may be a poor excuse for a soft layoff. In reality, many employees would rather quit than return to the office five days a week.
Research from our Productivity Lab shows that hybrid employees maintain productivity levels on par with their in-office counterparts. And remote-first employees are more productive than either, up to 13% according to a Stanford economist’s study. Workers prefer flexible work, too. Gallup’s polling shows 60% of employees with remote-capable jobs want a hybrid work arrangement. About 33% prefer fully remote work. Less than 10% prefer to work fully on-site.
How should a well-intentioned leader navigate RTO decisions? My advice: CEOs should use data to shape policies aligned with core business objectives and avoid blindly following headlines or gut instinct.
Connect Problems and Opportunities to Objectives
An RTO policy should address a specific business need or highlight missed opportunities that align with company goals. Otherwise it may lead to employee disengagement and dissatisfaction.
Leaders must ask: What problem are we trying to solve? Is it a lack of collaboration, a dip in productivity, or an undefined desire to "return to normal"? What opportunities have been missed? How might changes to working habits benefit my organization?
Validate Potential Changes with Data
Simply identifying problems or opportunities isn't enough. Before making changes to how and where people work, gather productivity data from workforce analytics software like ActivTrak, engagement surveys and focus groups. Measure employees' performance, preferences and barriers. Then use this data to outline opportunities and challenges.
RTO considerations may include:
Opportunities
- Encouraging Organic Collaboration: Teams involved in frequent brainstorming or problem-solving may need more in-person interaction.
- Reinforcing Company Culture and Community: Bringing employees together in one place can strengthen company culture and build deeper relationships.
- Strengthening Leadership and Mentoring: In-person interactions allow managers to provide more spontaneous mentorship, coaching and feedback to new or junior team members.
Challenges
- Ensuring Employee Well-Being: RTO reintroduces commutes and potential conflicts with personal responsibilities and preferences that affect work-life balance.
- Addressing Varied Productivity Needs: Some roles benefit from collaborative office environments, while others perform best in quiet, focused settings. A one-size-fits-all RTO policy may improve productivity for some and make it worse for others.
- Impacting Retention and Recruiting: Mandating in-office work can drive voluntary turnover and make it harder to attract top talent seeking flexible work options.
Build Transparency Into RTO Strategy
You’ve set clear objectives, collected baseline workforce data and identified opportunities and challenges. Now, you must be transparent with your findings to build trust and encourage employee buy-in. Explain objectives and how leadership will implement a data-driven approach, ensuring employees understand the rationale behind decisions. Without this clarity, RTO policies and exceptions may seem unfair leading to frustration and resistance.
Different roles benefit from different work environments. Individual contributors who focus on deep work are often more effective remotely, while roles that blend deep work with cross-team collaboration tend to benefit from a hybrid work model. Treating every role the same means missing a critical opportunity to optimize both workforce performance and business outcomes.
To get started:
- Pilot changes within a single department or functional role tied to specific objectives.
- Collect a baseline of work activity data and measure the opportunity for improvement.
- Engage key executives to help with change management.
- Develop and implement a plan for continuous improvement.
- Integrate trend reporting and analysis into workforce planning. Share your results with your workforce.
- Iterate and expand your RTO plan to your full organization.
Evaluate RTO Success with Data
To measure RTO impact, CEOs should track key productivity and engagement metrics pre- and post RTO implementation, including:
- Productivity and efficiency trends by location
- Average start and end of day times by location
- Focus time vs collaboration time spent vs time spent in offline meetings
- New hire productivity by work mode
- Office space utilization compared to expectations
- Employee engagement and retention rates
Organizations that iterate based on real workforce insights will succeed long-term. Invest continuously in change management strategies to support evolving workforce needs. This includes upskilling managers to lead hybrid teams effectively, ensuring employees have the right tools to collaborate and refining policies based on workforce data.
Final Thoughts
CEOs must shift from assumption-based RTO mandates to strategies informed by workforce insights. The future of work is not about enforcing office attendance — it’s about designing work models where productivity, engagement and business success thrive based on data-driven insights. As leaders, we owe it to our teams to make decisions based on data, not dated beliefs or assumptions. Data-driven organizations can extend more flexibility and autonomy to employees while simultaneously optimizing performance in a rapidly evolving work landscape.
