Why organisations have got the RTO debate all wrong

Amidst a continuing tug-of-war, advocates of the return to office (RTO) often cite reasons such as enhanced collaboration and improved productivity to encourage their employees to give up on remote work.

What if, however, there are more ominous reasons for pushing the RTO mandate?

According to a recent study released by Bamboo HR, nearly one in four (25%) VP and C-suite executives and one in five (18%) HR executives admit they hoped for some voluntary turnover when employees are compelled to adhere to RTO policies.

Lamenting the findings as “unfortunate”, Kevin Oakes, CEO of i4cp, told HRM Asia, “It immediately made me think of an organisational trait that our research has found is eight times more prevalent in toxic cultures vs. healthy cultures: conflict avoidance.”

“In these cultures, it is common to find actions often don’t match up with statements, and transparency is not a core competence. In fact, employees in toxic cultures are 16 times more likely to indicate a lack of trust in senior leaders, and 10 times more likely to indicate their organisation has an unsafe environment for expressing opinions or concerns.”

Many leaders are also not walking the talk. Oakes referenced a survey by International Workplace Group, which found that 93% of CEOs do not go into the office full-time and have instead adopted flexible working patterns. Contrarily, a quarter of these CEOs believe that a full-time RTO is a priority.

This hypocritical approach has not gone unnoticed by employees, with many organisations with RTO mandates seeing a drop in engagement. “This is creating some unwanted consequences,” said Oakes. “Other research has shown that nearly half of companies with RTO mandates witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated. Women are making up a greater portion of this number and 29% of companies enforcing office returns are struggling with recruitment.”

He also pointed to another study by Atlassian, which drew on data from 200 CEOs from Fortune 500 and 1000 companies to deliver the verdict that mandating in-person work has minimal impact on productivity.

With apparently little to gain, why then, do companies continue to insist on implementing RTO policies and what do they potentially stand to lose?

READ MORE: Four-day or six-day workweek? Why flexibility goes beyond just numbers

“Long term, if companies have used RTO policies to thin out the workforce, my fear is they are driving out the very people they would want to retain, namely their high performers,” said Oakes. “Top people have more opportunities elsewhere, and they are likely to explore those opportunities if they feel they have more autonomy over their own schedules.”

“This is likely to be a lasting lesson we will look back on years from now. There is no doubt in my mind that we will be laughing about how we cared more about where our employees did the work versus if they were achieving their objectives.”