Name: We Asked CEOs About RTO Mandates—Hybrid Work Won by a Landslide
Uploaded: 2025-01-30
Duration: 4 min 52 s
Description: Almost five years after the COVID-19 pandemic normalized remote work, companies like Amazon are attempting to pull their employees back into the office five days a week. But despite mandates from some of the biggest companies, most CEOs we talked to prefer a different model.

Almost five years after the COVID-19 pandemic normalized remote work, companies like Amazon are attempting to pull their employees back into the office five days a week. But despite mandates from some of the biggest companies, most CEOs we talked to prefer a different model.

We Asked CEOs About RTO Mandates—Hybrid Work Won by a Landslide

Leadership

Nearly five years after the COVID-19 pandemic popularized remote work, companies like Amazon are pushing for a full return to the office. However, most CEOs we talked to prefer a different model.

The days of everyone heading into the same office to work 5 days a week came to a dramatic halt in 2020 as COVID shook the world. But this year, another shift has been happening for many organizations that continued allowing employees to work remotely beyond the pandemic. Here come the employees back to work in the city, no more working from home. Amazon is demanding its corporate employees return to the. Of 5 days a week forcing employees to come back into the office. They're being ordered back to the office. This year's slew of return to office mandates have made headlines as some of the biggest companies, including Amazon and Walmart, have announced full 5 day a week returns to office for their workforces, and Elon Musk, a CEO known for railing against remote work, has shared plans to mandate a return to office for all. US federal employees once President-elect Trump takes office through the proposed Department of Government Efficiency. But research suggests that these mandates lead to an exodus of high performing employees, and not all CEOs and business leaders agree. In fact, the vast majority of executives we spoke to at last month's Fortune Global Forum said that a version of remote work was here to stay, the hybrid work model. I'm thinking it's going to be hybrid forever. I'm thinking the all in or the all out doesn't work. I think people get motivated by being with each other. I think they also have incredibly complex lives and they need to balance. The hybrid model brings together new and old ways of working, combining the flexibility and autonomy of remote work with the culture and collaboration that comes along with face to face office environments. Workers spend their own money and time each day they head to an office, so remote days mitigate that burden while also making it easier for them to handle kids. Appointments and other responsibilities. Some companies are leaving the decision up to the employees. In our office space where people could be remote, we've allowed people to make that decision themselves. and about 70% of our workforce that's adopted to the fact that they don't have to commute, they don't have to buy work clothes, they don't have to have that chunk out of their day. They can do their Work when it fits for them. One thing we know is if our workforce likes it, they do a better job for our customers. So the hybrid way in our conclusion is the best balance between the two sides. What one has to realize is that extreme of either side is bad. This motivation to avoid extremes turned out to be a prime factor for many in finding balance through a hybrid work model. CEOs agree that there is an element of creativity and collaboration that just can't be replicated in a fully remote environment. Being in person, collaborating, learning from each other was really important to me and and important to how I grew up as a as a leader. So that is an important part of collaboration. It's an important part of leadership development, and I think we've we've sort of lost some of that over the last few years. It's not just staying in your lane and doing the work you have to do today. We can be very efficient at doing that over Zoom and remotely, but it's when we're together, we get the creativity, so it's critically important to have people together. We value the time we spend together and so we try to make those 3 days the same 3 days so that we can all work together and then understanding the realities of life outside of the office and the difficulties of commuting. And providing some flexibility on the on the edges, I think is important. It allows us to retain, attract and retain a really talented workforce. While there are benefits to working together in person, some see the return to office mandates as a thinly veiled way to reduce headcount by getting employees to resign in protest. You're seeing a whole lot of pushback from major corporations where they're trying to bring people back into the office, and they know that as a part of that. Will further reduce their workforce. Elon Musk even admitted this is a reason behind his plan to end remote work for federal employees. Requiring federal employees to come to the office 5 days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome. But whether headcount reduction is the goal behind these decisions or not, it's turning out to be the result. Amazon employees began mass applying for new positions, and a survey found that 73% of these workers were considering quitting. And following Walmart's return to office announcement, Sam's Club chief technology officer resigned in protest. But despite the rise of hardline stances to in-office mandates, the leaders we spoke to praised the best of both worlds approach. We've all learned as employers that you can be really, really productive even when you're not in the same physical location. So I expect that this is a trend that is here to stay. People have different work styles. Lifestyles and approaches as long as we're in pursuit of the same mission, as long as we are keeping pace with each other, uh, it's up to them. I believe that the flexibility is probably something that needs to be there for a lot of people in order to make their everyday life work even better, so. I like the fact that they have that flexibility, but I also like when we're all together in the in the office, magic happens when people come together, so I like that we get together in the office as well.