Should Your Company RTO? Use This Guide to Decide

“I want that great office energy for us every day,” wrote Will Lewis, publisher and CEO of The Washington Post, as he explained his full-time return-to-office (RTO) mandate in November 2024. But when employees marched to his office in protest, he wasn't there. The company encouraged opposers to quit, and The Post continued to struggle financially. No-win.

While several prominent companies, such as The Post, have made headlines for the unpopularity of their RTO policies, this hasn't been the case everywhere.

“Our data shows that at large enterprises like Salesforce, [employee] sentiment actually improved post-RTO,” said Evan Sohn, chief executive officer of workforce analytics firm Aura Intelligence. “So it’s not about the mandate itself — it’s about how it’s rolled out, communicated, and supported on the ground.”

So, should your company RTO? In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know to make that decision, what goes into a well-strategized return-to-office mandate, and how you can organize a smooth transition.

What is an RTO mandate?

An RTO mandate is a workplace policy requiring employees to work in the organization's offices. It primarily applies to companies rescinding flexible, remote, and hybrid work policies introduced during the pandemic.

These policies may apply companywide or only to specific roles and teams. For example, Dell Technologies applied the RTO mandate only to sales teams and employees living within an hour of a company office.

While many firms, like Amazon, insist upon a full-time return to office, many US companies tend to follow a “structured” hybrid model. Some examples include:

• Minimum days a week: Companies establish a specific number of days that employees are required to work from the office each week. For instance, Google has asked employees to return three days per week without specifying which days those are. 
• Specific days of the week: Companies require their employees to come into the office on particular days of the week. Uber has ordered its employees back to office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. 
• Minimum percentage of time: Companies set a percentage of time employees are required to work from the office overall. For example, His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), a government organization in the UK, has stipulated employees work from the office 60% of the time.
• Employees' choice: Employees and teams can decide on a hybrid schedule among themselves. At Booking.com, teams agree amongst themselves about the specifics of their time in office, with some exceptions based on the criticality of the role. 

State of RTO Mandates in 2025

Trump’s executive order to bring all federal employees back to offices was a watershed event in the future of work.

Soon after, several prominent employers made headlines for their own aggressive return-to-office mandates. Among Fortune 500 companies, full-time-in-office requirements surged from 13% to 24% between Q4 of 2024 and Q2 of 2025.

Business leaders have stated that the push for in-person work is in the best interest of company culture, collaboration, employee engagement, and productivity. Some, like Elon Musk and the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase, Amazon, and Meta, made breaking news by telling indignant employees to quit or forfeit promotion opportunities.

According to one study of tech and finance workers’ LinkedIn employment histories, firms’ average turnover rates increased by 14% after issuing return-to-office policies. Women, employees in senior positions, and highly skilled workers comprised a significant portion of those who left.

“While many employees understand the rationale behind returning to work, they are often highly resistant to HOW it is being implemented,” said Laurie Cure, PhD, chief executive officer of Innovative Connections. “Employees often feel like a promise has been broken and are unsure how to readjust their lives to accommodate new practices.”

With the RTO push, some firms are surveilling employees to ensure policy adherence and accountability. Tactics include collecting individual attendance data with badge swipes and monitoring office traffic with sensors mounted on the ceiling.

There are good reasons for returning to the office at least part-time, but such surveillance practices can make people feel suffocated and resentful, going against building a positive company culture. 

Furthermore, organizing a sweeping, large-scale transition could be monumentally expensive according to estimates published in Forbes. Since many of the mandates have only come into effect in the past few months, the profitability of this effort remains to be seen.

Pros and Cons of RTO

“For managers navigating return-to-office transitions, the biggest mistake is treating policy like a lever — and forgetting the nuance behind what drives employee sentiment,” said Sohn. As you bear your employees’ apprehensions in mind, consider the following: 

Pros

1. It supports the growth of early-career workers. Careers grow with networks, access to mentors, and opportunities to learn by observation. Office settings facilitate these opportunities for employees who may not have been exposed to the industry before, as well as those who wish to make lateral shifts in their roles. 
2. It minimizes miscommunication. Most of us have found ourselves occasionally scrutinizing the use of an exclamation point or a bolded sentence, wondering if the writer is “mad at us.” Being face-to-face can reduce these misunderstandings and accommodate the needs of non-native speakers, people from conservative cultures, and those who are visually impaired. With misunderstandings out of the way, relationships, trust, and camaraderie thrive more easily.
3. It encourages innovation. Many potentially transformative ideas are lost when there is a delay between inspiration and communication: Enthusiasm wanes, second-guessing begins, and momentum is lost. Being physically present with one's colleagues offers more opportunities for spontaneous conversation, allowing ideas to cross-pollinate far more quickly and easily. When everyone’s in the office, you can simply approach a colleague and ask for input when inspiration strikes.

Cons

1. It can increase partiality. According to a 2025 Wall Street Journal report, top performers, employees with unique skills, and those with seniority are often exempt from RTO mandates. They are offered more flexibility, leading to inequality among workers. This inequality leaves teams vulnerable to tension, frustration, and resentment among colleagues, harming otherwise positive relationships among employees.
2. It hurts employee wellbeing. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh analyzed employee ratings from Glassdoor and found that RTO mandates lead to a significant decline in employee satisfaction. Returning to onsite work contributes to change fatigue, and long commutes are draining and expensive, taking time away from individuals' personal lives, causing stress, and hurting employee productivity.
3. It creates a low-trust environment. Lattice research indicates that, aside from flexible working policies, employees need to feel trusted by their managers to perform at their best. “A work-from-home option often equates to trust for employees,” said Sara Green-Hamann, a seasoned HR professional and owner of Tallwood Human Resources Consulting. “By removing the work-from-home option, employees may feel as though the organization no longer trusts them.”

What HR Teams Should Consider Before an RTO Mandate

1. Availability of Facilities

Ensure that your office spaces comply with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations and are fully functional, ready to support your employees in doing their best work. This includes:

• Providing comfortable, accessible workspaces, computers and IT support, and parking areas
• Ensuring that there are private spaces where individuals can pray or meditate according to their religious observances
• Setting up a smooth-running system for facilities management by hiring custodians and security professionals
• Auditing the space to ensure it meets Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards for accessible design
• Ensuring the space meets the unique needs of your employees with disabilities by providing:
  
  • Quiet work arrangements for neurodivergent individuals
  • Wheelchair-accessible parking areas and restrooms
  • Feeding and relieving arrangements for service animals

If your employee records are on Lattice HRIS, you can use the nifty Report Builder feature as a starting point to triangulate the specific facilities you’ll need to make available.

2. Compliance and Paperwork

“The EEOC's [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s] guidelines suggest that employers can require employees to return to the workplace but must accommodate individuals with disabilities or sincerely held religious beliefs that may prevent them from returning immediately,” said Roy L. Kaufmann, an attorney, civil litigator, and founder of Servicemembers Civil Relief Act Centralized Verification Service. 

“Implementation of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) along with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) should be the main priorities,” he added. Here’s how these laws affect your RTO policy rollout:

Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

New parents, employees with serious health conditions, or caregivers for a spouse, child, or parent with a serious health condition, may be entitled to FMLA leave for a maximum of 12 weeks of leave per 12-month period.

Factor in:

• Protected leave considerations: Employees currently on FMLA leave cannot be forced to return before their leave period ends. This could create timing challenges if you're trying to implement uniform return dates.
• Intermittent leave complications: Employees using intermittent FMLA leave may also need flexibility in office attendance for medical appointments or flare-ups of chronic conditions. This makes rigid return-to-office schedules problematic.

Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)

The ADA requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities, unless doing so would cause undue hardship for the employer. This means employees with disabilities can legally appeal for continued remote or flexible work as an accommodation in the face of a blanket return-to-office policy. 

Lattice HRIS enables you to create set-it-and-forget-it workflows for approving and processing compliance-related employee requests (including for paid time off, schedule adjustments, and work-from-home requests). 

The Lattice AI Agent then answers commonly asked questions, freeing up people teams to focus on the emotionally demanding aspects of managing change. 

3. Employee Resistance

It’s improbable that your employees would be unanimously enthusiastic about returning to the office if they’ve been remote workers for years. They might even leave in droves.

In a 2024 Korn Ferry survey of 10,000 global employees, 22% said mandated full-time office attendance was the factor that was most likely to make them leave their company, while 17% cited no allowance for full-time remote work. 

“Many teams have built a strong and productive culture around being remote, and not knowing why the change is happening can cause discontent, disengagement, and turnover,” said Green-Hamann.

Some companies are botching the transition without considering employee resistance. Avoid this trap, and make your messaging clear. “Despite the significance of this change to employees, leadership is often not using change management best practices as they implement return-to-work policies,” said Cure. “The message companies are sending is generally vague and sometimes not true.” 

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RTO Policy Implementation Tips

According to a 2025 McKinsey & Company article, their research found that “In-person, remote, and hybrid workers all report mostly similar levels of intent to quit, burnout, effort, and satisfaction,” with small differences across generations and caregiving status. 

Your company can succeed with an RTO policy, as long as you do it right.

1. Dialogue with your employees.

“The most successful RTO approaches center on co-creation — asking, not telling,” said Green-Hamann. “Communicating policies with transparency, allowing for feedback, and offering some degree of choice increases employee alignment and reduces resistance.” 

Rather than imposing a blanket one-size-fits-all mandate (e.g., “Everyone must return to the office full-time”), Cure suggests allowing managers and teams to set their own work schedules. “For example, a customer-facing department might say, ‘In-person access must be available five days a week from 8:00-5:00.’ Then, the team can determine how best to accomplish that goal.” 

Stay in constant dialogue with your employees by conducting regular change management surveys. Lattice HRIS and Lattice Engagement work together, allowing you to correlate responses to engagement surveys with employee record data to create policies that are as inclusive as possible.

To gain insight, ask Likert scale or open-ended questions like the following:

• Likert scale: I am comfortable with returning to the office 2-3 days per week.
• Likert scale: I am comfortable with the idea of a full return to the office.
• Open-ended: What specific concerns do you have about returning to the office?

2. Empower your managers.

According to Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace Report, managers’ engagement levels fell three percentage points from 2023 to 2024, the most significant decline across worker types. Female managers and managers younger than 35 showed the largest declines in engagement. 

In the past five years alone, we’ve seen the capricious post-pandemic economy, unprecedented AI digital transformation, and multiple hiring booms and busts. Leading teams while handling the impacts of these events on their personal lives has pushed managers to the brink of burnout. Supporting them through the RTO process will be critical.

“As the frontline carriers of culture, trust and organizational success, direct managers are positioned to make or break the messaging and buy-in around return to work changes,” said Cure. 

Support your managers by providing them with training in active listening, change management, and coaching techniques, and empower them with tools to decrease their administrative load as they navigate the RTO shift.

The Lattice People Platform offers a comprehensive suite of tools to help managers effectively lead their teams. AI-powered insights drawn from employee surveys, performance reviews, and one-on-ones can quickly bring attention to employees who need managers’ support and help them decide their next steps. 

3. Measure what matters.

To know if your RTO policy is actually succeeding, keep an eye on employee engagement levels, team performance, absenteeism, and retention. Who were your best-performing employees before the rollout, and how are they doing now? What are the levels of burnout? Are there specific demographic groups that are underserved by the RTO program? 

This is a breeze with a tool like Lattice Analytics. 

Lattice synthesizes all your employee demographic, performance, engagement, and career growth data from the Talent Suite and HRIS, and brings it to one interactive, customizable, and visually attractive interface. 

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