The people in charge of enforcing return-to-office policies may be the ones most likely to leave because of them, a pair of new reports find. That could surprise CEOs who’ve been more concerned about junior workers being the ones to resist calls to head back to the office.
Two new analyses released in the last week highlight the potential that senior-level employees will want to change jobs after return-to-office policies are introduced, offering new evidence that builds on past reports about the remote work preferences and habits of more experienced workers.
Gartner, the HR consulting and research firm, shared findings from a survey of 3,500 employees which found that 33% of the executive-level respondents who’d been given a return-to-office mandate said they would leave their current employer for that reason. Meanwhile, just 19% of the non-executive respondents with a similar requirement said the same. The survey, conducted in November 2023 but released last week, said that was despite more than half of executives who’d been mandated to return saying the reason their employer gave was convincing.
“Senior leaders—who are often the ones communicating and representing those decisions to the business—are not impervious to the heightened flexibility expectations that we see from all employees,” says Gartner director of research Caroline Ogawa.
Gartner’s survey was released two days after an academic working paper which found that adding some kind of in-office work approach at three large tech companies appeared to have an impact on departures of senior workers, with tenure in the organization lower following the announcement. The working paper looked at resume data from a firm called People Data Labs after varying return-to-office policies were added at Apple, Microsoft and SpaceX, comparing the outflow of senior employees to firms with similar workforces.
Those who left didn’t suffer in their next jobs, says David Van Dijcke, a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan. “We don’t find any evidence they’re accepting role changes, demotions or they’re going into unemployment,” says Van Dijcke, who co-authored the paper with Michigan’s Florian Gunsilius and University of Chicago assistant professor Austin Wright. “That suggests these senior employees have plenty of outside options.”
SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the research. Apple spokesman Josh Rosenstock pointed to a prior statement from the company saying the research draws “inaccurate conclusions” and “does not reflect the realities of our business,” as well as that “attrition is at historically low levels.”
Microsoft also rebutted the paper’s findings. Amy Coleman, the company’s corporate vice president of human resources, said in an emailed statement the findings don’t match Microsoft’s internal data, “especially around attrition. It is also inaccurate to say we have a return to office mandate. We have a hybrid workplace that revolves around flexibility and a mix of workstyles across worksite, work location and work hours.” (Media reports have said that in April 2022, Microsoft began asking workers to be in person 50% of the time unless they have permission from their managers; however, the company does have 100% remote work roles and, a Microsoft spokesperson says, its hybrid approach receives positive employee feedback and is a “starting point from which a lot of flexibility flows” rather than a rigid practice.)
Both reports build on previous surveys or data that suggest it’s not Gen Z workers who are most resistant to office mandates or least likely to work from the office. According to data from Stanford University economist Nick Bloom and others, the percentage of paid full days worked from home is highest among workers between the ages of 30 and 44, who are more likely to have young children or face long commutes. A survey of nearly 400 workers by the firm Seramount found that just 11% of Gen Z workers wanted to work from home full-time, compared with 34% of older workers. Another survey by the background check firm Checkr found that 68% of managers want remote work to continue, compared to just 48% of employees.
The new reports come at a time when some companies are tightening remote work options. Walmart said Tuesday that in addition to a reduction of “several hundred” corporate jobs, it is asking the majority of remotely based employees to relocate to its home office in Arkansas or to other offices in San Francisco or the New York metropolitan area. Some 37% of employers—the highest percentage yet—have a “structured hybrid” model, according to a recent Flex Index report, allowing for some remote work but also requiring some time in-office. The percentage of companies expecting full-time office work declined, Flex Index found, even while some companies, like UPS and Boeing, now require five days a week in the office for some groups of workers.
Brian Elliott, who previously led Slack’s Future Forum research consortium and now advises executive teams on flexible work arrangements, points to another Gartner survey from January which showed that high performers’ “intent to stay” was 16% lower after a return to office mandate, double the rate of average employees’. “It’s not just one piece of evidence, it’s all sorts of things,” he says. “Senior people who expect to be treated like adults are the same people who have a lot of options.”
Van Dijcke says he and his co-authors studied the three companies in the report because they were among the first to implement some kind of return-to-office approach, enabling the researchers to distance their results from widespread tech layoffs that came afterwards. How policies are implemented may evolve over time, and Van Dijcke says results could change as more companies have office requirements now than in 2022, meaning opportunities to jump to other firms could be rarer. “We look at companies that were early movers…you could imagine these effects do change as more and more companies have already returned to the office.”
Still, as business leaders continue to worry about the impact of remote work on productivity, collaboration and team-bonding among employees, they should balance those concerns with the risks of losing top talent if they choose to implement a rigid mandate, says Elliott.
“It comes down to trust,” he says. “Talented people always have choices.”
