So Many RTO Rule-Breakers

Stop at the office for 15 minutes to have coffee and leave. Have a friendly coworker swipe your badge. Don’t show up at all and dare the boss to say something.

With the pandemic years behind them, corporate leaders continue to be aggressive about establishing return-to-office policies, occasionally even making headlines by insisting that everyone return five days a week. But “trying” and “enforcing” are turning out to be two very different things. A recent survey by career site ResumeBuilder found that one in five full-time workers admitted to not obeying their company’s RTO policies. Workers’ tactics in this area are both varied and creative, and experts say leaders may only have themselves to blame. “Enforcement of RTO rules has been uneven; some companies are just living with it,” says Dan Kaplan, a senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s Chief Human Resources Officers practice.

It’s not that all workers are averse to going into the office. Indeed, in the survey, nearly half of respondents want to, for at least three days a week. However, 68% also said their productivity would improve if they could set their own schedule.

Employees ignoring RTO mandates isn’t new, of course. Back in 2022, when numerous companies pushed to get people back in the office at least three days a week, workers resisted in large numbers. As the job market has tightened, and with workers worried about finding new roles, experts say that fewer are blatantly ignoring RTO policies. But attempts to enforce the rule, and the flouting of it, never went away.

There’s some evidence that employees are tired of the constant changing of RTO policies during the last three years. They’re also leery that the most recent updates are just ways to convince workers to quit.

But in most cases, employees find commutes a grind and feel they’re far more productive doing most tasks remotely. Deepali Vyas, global head of Korn Ferry’s Global FinTech, Payments and Crypto practice, compares working remotely to flying first class after flying economy. “You don’t want to go back to economy,” she says. Still, many executives doubt that employees are more productive when they’re remote, and some research indicates that working in the office is far better for certain work assignments, such as onboarding employees and team activities.

Managers would love to adopt a one-size-fits-all RTO work policy, but none has emerged that can be universally applied. “Everyone is waiting for an example,” says Kaplan. In the meantime, experts counsel that the focus should still be on productivity—wherever the work’s being done—even if disciplinary measures may be necessary for flagrant violations. “There’s historically plenty of people in an office not adding value,” says Barry Toren, a senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s Financial Officer Practice.

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