Workers across the globe got acquainted with an increasingly common email from their bosses in 2024: the return-to-office memo.
The trends of worker power that proliferated during the COVID-19 pandemic brought with it new phrases like the Great Resignation and quiet-quitting have left the zeitgeist amid waves of layoffs. Those who have kept their jobs are realizing their pandemic-era freedoms are disappearing.
That has been most exemplified in the remote work debate, which appeared to shift in bosses’ favor this year.
In Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, remote jobs made up just 4.7% of LinkedIn job listings in October, down 21% from the same time in 2023. Hybrid jobs, meanwhile, made up less than a third (31.6%) of job listings on the platform, down 6% from a year earlier.
The shift has been apparent through high-profile RTO announcements, largely from the U.S., as some of the country’s biggest companies pushed the boat out by calling workers back into the office five days a week.
Amazon was perhaps the most high-profile, mandating a full return to the office in September and sparking a wave of frustration among employees in the process.
But several European companies across every sector have also pulled back their COVID-era remote work pledges.
High Street retailer Boots called workers back full-time in March, risking the wrath of its female-heavy employee base.
Even Manchester United staff, under Sir Jim Ratcliffe, were ordered to come back to the office five days a week after the billionaire noticed a 20% dip in traffic on Fridays.
Bosses’ innovation obsession
The word consistently used to reinforce to workers the importance of being in the office is “innovation.”
Nothing, the London-based challenger brand to the iPhone, called all its workers back into the office five days a week in August, with the company’s CEO Carl Pei telling workers: “Remote work is not compatible with a high ambition level plus high speed.”
Pei wasn’t alone in providing workers with this rationale.
Sanofi’s chief digital officer, Emmanuel Frenehard, told Fortune in November that the pharma giant was an early mover in requiring workers to come back into the office three days a week, adding the company’s approach has gone from being contrarian to the norm.
“You need something that is very special that humans have called serendipity,” Frenehard told Fortune.
“When you work from home, every part of your day is scheduled because this is how my calendar is. There’s no moment of, ‘Hey, have you thought of that?’
“How many great inventions were scheduled? How many great moments of innovation were scheduled? They’re not. They’re conversations, they’re challenges. And so it’s very difficult to get that [working from home].
It’s difficult to know whether 2024 marks the first shift to widespread full-time return-to-office mandates.
What’s clear, though, is that remote work remains a key driver to attract the best talent. While less than one in 20 positions posted on LinkedIn in October were remote, they accounted for 13.1% of applications.
Josh Graff, managing director for EMEA & LATAM and a vice president at LinkedIn, said earlier this year: “It’s clear that companies offering flexibility will attract the best talent.”
There is an increasing acceptance that bosses and workers need to find a middle ground between flexibility and face-to-face collaboration.
“We continue to be in a world where the expectations from employers and from professionals is different,” Daniel Shapero, LinkedIn’s chief operating officer, told Fortune.
“But a lot of organizations are maintaining some level of flexibility. I think the pandemic taught us that in many jobs, people can get work done from anywhere, but there’s also power in coming together.
“So I think, depending upon the industry, depending on the location, you see a wide range of policies that have embraced some degree of flexibility. But it is true that the trend from a job posting perspective [is shifting] towards hybrid or in-office, as opposed to remote.”
Companies shunning the RTO trend
There are still examples of companies shunning the wider RTO mandates.
In October, Spotify’s HR chief, Katarina Berg, reaffirmed the streaming giant’s “work from anywhere” policy.
“You can’t spend a lot of time hiring grownups and then treat them like children,” said Berg.
Nvidia, too, hasn’t considered revoking its own remote work policy as the company rose to one of the world’s most valuable.
Despite the high-profile holdouts, 2024 will be remembered for the wave of companies that clamped down on remote work, and the implications for the boss-worker power dynamic.
