Just because the boss makes the rules, doesn’t mean the employees will follow them.
Even after continued efforts to crack down on a return to office, the mandate-compliance gap between companies setting return-to-office policies and employees actually following them is still cavernous, new research finds. But it’s not just rank-and-file workers leading the charge. Burnt-out managers uninterested in enforcing the RTO push are often the overlooked drivers of the “hushed hybrid” workplace culture.
While companies have steadily increased expectations of employees being in the office, actual office attendance has only modestly increased, according to a report released Wednesday by flexible-work insights platform Flex Index. Across 14,000 companies, required office time has increased 12% since early 2024—from an average of 2.57 days in office per week to 2.87—but actual office attendance has increased by only 1% to 3%.
“Hushed hybrid,” or workers quietly staying home some work days despite workplace policies requiring their in-person presence, became a workplace trend last year as a result of continued push from employees to have workplace flexibility, as well as the desire for managers to retain their workforce and morale.
Brian Elliott, CEO of Work Forward, which publishes Flex Index, said employees can get away with working from home more than mandated because many can make the practical argument for it: If workers have team members in different time zones or offices, it doesn’t make sense to attend myriad Zoom meetings in an office’s open-floor plan. It’s sometimes just more productive to work from home on those days.
But the ongoing mandate-compliance gap isn’t just a result of workers pushing the boundaries of RTO mandates, but also managers too burnt out to enforce them.
“If I’m the manager and I’ve got a solid performer and they’re coming in two or three days a week, but not five, I’m not going to fire them,” Elliott told Fortune. “Lack of compliance with the policy is not nearly as important as somebody delivering the goods and getting their work done.”
“Especially given all the pressure that managers are under, policy compliance falls pretty low on the list of things for me to be concerned about,” he added.
Manager burnout is boiling over
While employee burnout has been on the rise—increasing concerns of “quiet cracking” and a second Great Resignation once the labor market heats back up—it’s managers who are being substantially depleted. Digital coaching platform meQuilibrium predicted in a November 2024 report that a “manager crash” would hit workplaces in 2025, tanking managers’ well being and ability to lead their teams.
Beyond middle managers’ jobs being under threat amid the rise of AI, most of managements’ days are spent juggling menial tasks, rather than actualizing a broader workplace vision. Almost 40% of a manager’s work day is spent navigating last-minute problems or completing administrative tasks, according to a Deloitte survey published in March, using data from 10,000 business leaders in 93 countries. Meanwhile, only about 15% of their day was spent strategizing, and 13% of their time was allocated for mentoring and guiding their team members.
“Like a market crash, we’ll see a significant downturn in manager well-being, performance, and the ability to continue taking the lead as the change champions,” Alanna Fincke, head of meQuilibrium’s content and learning, wrote in the 2024 report.
The depletion of middle management has also pressured remaining supervisors to manage bigger teams, meaning when directives come from executives asking for more workers to return to the office, managers have little resources or interest in enforcing the missives, Work Forward CEO Elliott said. Not only are managers unmotivated to enforce the mandates, they’re also more likely to become resentful of the broader RTO push.
“It’s no wonder that managers themselves are often not only burnt out, but the ones that are the most frustrated by this entire conversation,” Elliott said.
