Return to Office Policies Are a 21st Century Cliché

Putting the genie back in the bottle, closing the barn door after the horse has bolted or that ship has sailed. These old clichés have never been more relevant than they are today in the ongoing saga of return-to-office directives.

During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when businesses were looking for any way to stay open and profitable, the ability for many employees to do their jobs remotely was hailed as a lifesaver. The work-from-home movement quickly gained traction and many people found the convenience of not having to commute to the office and find a place to park made the rat race a little easier to take during a very hard time.

But in that relentless pursuit of the mythical “new normal,” some executives ordered their worker bees back to the hive in an effort to return to a business-as-usual setting. The problem, of course, was that trying to unscramble that egg was impossible. Employees found that working from home offered personal and professional advantages compared to being in the office, including more time to take care of family matters and having to spend less time coming and going to and from work. And lo and behold, they were more productive.

According to a recent Reuters report, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is the latest CEO to feel the wrath of employees unwilling, unable or uninterested in heading back to the office. A memo from a JPMorgan executive added insult to injury by admonishing employees to bring more “hustle and scrappiness” to the workplace culture that apparently was lacking when they were working from home.

The implication is that only under the watchful eye of supervisors in the maze of half-walled cubicles could workers truly be productive and efficient. In the Reuters story, Dimon said he was not against working from home but was “against where it doesn’t work.” But that is a distinction without a difference.

The fact is remote working is here to stay and is only going to increase. According to a report from recruiting firm Robert Half, fully remote jobs increased over the past two years from 10% in the first quarter of 2023 to 15% in the fourth quarter of 2024 while fully on-site jobs continue to trend downward.

“(O)ver the course of 2024, the rate of new, fully in-office jobs decreased to 61%, solidifying that flexible work arrangements are here to stay,” the report said. “We have also observed that job postings for hybrid and remote positions are stabilizing. This suggests many employers continue to see value in offering their employees flexible work options.”

Companies like JPMorgan and others will no doubt continue to push for workers to return to the corporate office, but it is a losing strategy. After embracing remote work as a necessity during the pandemic – and realizing the benefits thereof – it will take more than edicts from on high to change workers’ attitudes toward workplace locations. And for the managers who believe remote workers are prone to lazy work habits, the reality is the workers who are watching the clock more than the bottom line in a home office are not likely to become superstar employees once they are back in the office suite.

Asking workers to abandon a work/life balance that benefits both them and their employer, using the technology available to connect with colleagues and clients easily is unreasonable and unrealistic. It would be like expecting American television viewers to go back to choosing between three or four broadcast networks airing programs at fixed times.

That’s a genie that’s never getting back in the bottle, no matter how hard we try.

And for those managers who are still unconvinced that unsupervised workers can be productive, they can take solace from the words of Henry Ford: “Quality means doing to right when no one is looking.” And that includes bosses.