The current state of RTO mandates

• Key insight: Learn why growing mandates to return to the office require employers to redesign workplace benefits.
• What’s at stake: Loss of critical organizational talent due to failure to properly implement transition policies.
• Expert quote: “There is still a lot of fear of mistrust.” – Kim Wylam, Baker Tilly
  Source: AI generated bullets with editorial review

With back-to-office orders on the rise, employers must evaluate how their benefits, operations, and even meal options can effectively bring workers back to their desks, especially those reluctant to return.
Not everyone is dragging their feet when they return to the building – 94% of workers say the office still has value, especially as a hub for work relationships and connection. According to a new Hilton reportand applied to 96% of Generation Z workers.

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However, these offices must promote the productivity that many of the younger generation cultivated during years of remote work. A YouGov’s latest survey of office workers in Z 53% of these workers feel more productive working from home, and 34% said their current workplace design doesn’t allow them to focus effectively.

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For all ages of remote and hybrid workers, almost 70% said their work-life balance has improved over the past year, According to a CoworkingCafe survey earlier this year, 1,140 full-time workers in the US were working remotely or in hybrid roles.

Meanwhile, 40% of those seeking employment would be willing to accept a lower salary if it meant they could work remotely, according to a report by recruitment platform Employ, and 22% said they would turn down a job offer if the job didn’t have the flexibility to work from home or work remotely from time to time.

These numbers indicate that the workforce is changing, and the need for employers’ RTO policies to provide clear reasons beyond mere slippage.

“We’re in a period of real uncertainty, and when leaders are left with no answers they reach for whatever they can still control,” said David Grossman, founder and CEO of leadership and communications consultancy The Grossman Group. “Assistance is quantifiable. It creates a table for Friday. Best of all, it allows the leader to see the decision without saying the hardest phrase in leadership, which is, ‘I don’t know yet.'”

The workers also do not want to return to the offices they left before the mandate.

“When we ask employees to go back to the office, it’s not a return to the old way, it should be a return to a new way.” said Kim WylamBaker Managing Director of Tilly’s human resources consulting practice. “That means compromising some things and understanding your workforce and (what) their needs are.”

The best benefits to return

While flexibility and productivity are key factors in employees’ preferred work arrangements, there are many benefits to bringing people back to the office environment.

A survey by food technology company EzCater found this 76% of former remote workers say that they expect or would welcome new benefits when their work arrangements change. But nearly half of workers who made the transition from remote to hybrid or fully on-site said they received no additional benefits following the RTO’s orders, and 27% considered looking for a new job.

Free meals are a well-known perk in person 79% of hybrid workers said employer-provided food According to the EzCater survey, they would be more likely to stay with a company with a local mandate.

Organizations applying for an RTO should also evaluate the benefits, or lack thereof, of commuting.

“We encourage employers to offer pre-tax travel and parking flexible spending accounts (FSAs) as well as an employer contribution to reduce the perceived burden on employees of this benefit.” said Ellen PresmanSVP, benefits operations and brokerage services at HR services company Congruity HR.

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These benefits have impact, agreed Richard Huang, CEO and founder of office solutions company Reframe Space. this covers parking costs for employees

“It sounds simple,” he said, “but it makes a significant difference in daily stress, especially in areas where parking is expensive or unreliable. Removing that friction at the beginning and end of the workday means more than people deserve.”

While these benefits are attractive, Grossman cautions HR leaders that incentives can only go so far.

“When (RTO) expansion goes wrong, the request that lands on your desk is ‘what can we add.’ Backup care. Suburban subsidy. Lunch on Wednesdays. Those are real benefits and I’m not going to throw any of them away,” he said. “But fix the complaint before you buy the fix. Some of it is a benefit gap and that’s yours. Some of it is a trust gap of whoever wrote the note, and no salesperson is going to close that for you.”

Trust is a critical factor

The RTO policy itself is of course key, but so is the messaging surrounding it, and the implication of trust.

“There is still a lot of fear of mistrust”, Wylam said. “Organizations still worry if their employees don’t know what they’re doing, and the idea that if everyone comes to work and is at their desk they’ll know (and can measure) that they’re working is very comforting.”

An employer’s trust in its workforce cannot be delivered through an RTO memorandum, but it must be fundamental, so it can be leveraged as policies change.

“Trust is where all of this is decided, and I want to be careful with that word because it’s a concept that gets thrown around,” Grossman said. “Trust isn’t given and it can’t be traded. It’s grown through consistent action over time. This means that the mandate is being pulled against a balance that was built earlier, and most leaders have no idea what their balance is.”

The risk is high for employers who do not effectively deploy, communicate and provide support for their RTO: 80% of employers have lost talent because of these mandates, according to the Byteiota workplace insights platform survey.

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“You look at the implementations that went sideways and almost none failed over the number,” Grossman noted: “They failed because the reason they were given didn’t hold up, or because the manager layer had nothing to offer beyond the caveat.”

“So here’s the test,” he continued. “Does this policy make you more predictable or less predictable to your people? If they tell you what to do next, you’re building. If each of your last three ads caught you by surprise, you’re spending.”