Using RTO to Cut Staff?

Return-to-office mandates are all about corporate values and building a shared culture, right? Maybe not—at least in some cases.

According to a new survey confirming the worst fears of some workers, one-quarter of top corporate leaders and nearly one-fifth of HR executives say they hope RTO mandates lead to “voluntary turnover.” Experts say the survey reflects a shift in the thinking of leaders: Where once they feared losing talent because of RTO mandates, now they’re enforcing them so people will leave. Pointing to studies like Korn Ferry’s Workforce 2024 report, which found that 60% of employees would stay in a job they otherwise hate for flexibility, Shanda Mints, vice president of recruitment process outsourcing analytics and implementation, says leaders are enforcing RTO mandates specifically to produce turnover. “Using RTO en masse has the potential to impact a mass number of people,” she says.

To be sure, many corporate leaders strongly favor RTO because they believe in-person collaboration can improve productivity and innovation. Many have cracked down on such behaviors as “coffee badging” (coming to the office, but leaving immediately) while also increasing the number of in-person days required. But experts say that at least some of this is due to a steep decline in attrition rates. Six million fewer workers quit their jobs in 2023 than in the year before, a 12% decline, and the quit rate is tracking even lower for 2024. Dimming job prospects are leading people to stay in their positions longer. Opportunity or necessity is keeping older workers in the workforce longer, or returning them to it, and investments in AI are making some positions redundant. At the same time, companies have slowed the pace of layoffs.

In sectors like financial services and technology, whose leaders have been among the most vocal proponents of RTO mandates, there’s a further complexity: resetting pay. Pay raises and bonuses in these sectors shot up during the early post-pandemic era; many firms are now trying to pull them back. They want employees to either take a salary commensurate with market rates or quit, says Paul Fogel, sector leader of professional search for the Software practice. “Some companies are definitely using RTO in that manner,” he says.

But the strategy of using RTO mandates to increase voluntary turnover comes with both risks and unintended consequences, says Jamen Graves, global leader of CEO and enterprise leadership development at Korn Ferry. For starters, blanket RTO policies could compel top talent and high performers to leave. RTO mandates can also further erode the already low level of trust and loyalty between employer and employee. “Put bluntly, using RTO to hope people will leave points to a failure to manage your workforce effectively,” says Graves.

Experts also point out that managers often have wide discretion to enforce mandates—which may allow bias and personal vendettas to creep in. “RTO can be used in a way that is unjust or playing favorites,” says Alma Derricks, a senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s Consumer and Culture, Change and Communications practices. Indeed, Alina Polonskaia, global leader of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Consulting practice at Korn Ferry, says companies may expose themselves to bias charges if the data shows their RTO policies disproportionately affect underrepresented groups. “There’s a good chance you could end up with a homogenous group of people,” says Polonskaia, noting that diversity encompasses not just race and ethnicity, but also age, thought, and other factors that have been shown to improve business performance.

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