A return-to-office showdown is coming in September.
Companies such as Apple Inc. and Peloton Interactive Inc. have told corporate and office-based workers in the US to come back next month, and whether they do will say a lot about the ever-shifting balance of power between bosses and their underlings.
If the latest calls for “RTO” sound familiar, they are: Last summer, many companies targeted Labor Day in the US and Canada as the inflection point for remote workers to return to their cubicles. The Delta variant of Covid-19 upended those plans, prompting leaders to look to early 2022, but the Omicron variant soon scuttled that. Apple has pushed back its RTO nearly half a dozen times in the past year.
Across companies, the delays confused and annoyed workers, making some firms unwilling to deliver specific mandates, instead trying to lure staffers back with perks.
Those days might be over soon. As the US economy and stock market deliver mixed signals about the outlook for growth, business leaders have decided to draw a line in the sand. Beyond Apple and Peloton, Royal Bank of Canada and Comcast Corp. have also told workers to return several days a week sometime after Labor Day, which falls on Sept. 5. Corporate chiefs like Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co. continue to bash remote work, raising concerns among some workers that staying home might be hazardous to their career.
But demand for labor remains rock solid, providing skilled workers a good bit of leverage. Average office occupancy across 10 of America’s largest cities has barely budged in the past five months. In the battle of the boardroom versus the bedroom, something has to give come September.
“We believe post Labor Day will be a meaningful milestone” said Jay Jiang, finance chief at Dream Office, a Canadian real estate investment trust, which owns office buildings and parking garages in Toronto and other cities. “We’ll start to see a lot more traction after Labor Day and getting people back into the office.”
A milestone for senior executives could be a millstone for the rank and file. After more than two years of flexible work arrangements, many white-collar workers have grown accustomed to being able to work where and when they wish, freeing them up to care for kids, aging parents or to simply escape endless Zoom calls and take a stroll in the backyard after lunch. According to the Future Forum, a research consortium backed by Salesforce-owned Slack Technologies Inc. that polls more than 10,000 so-called knowledge workers every quarter globally, most workers want that flexibility, and might leave if they don’t get it.
Most companies calling for September RTOs aren’t demanding workers get back to the office every day -- by now, they know that’s a non-starter. Just one in five workers wants to be in the office all week, Future Forum found in its most recent poll conducted in May. Workers who are in cubicles Monday through Friday say they’re much less satisfied with their job compared with peers with more flexible arrangements, the survey found.
“People want the flexibility to go in or work from home, but when there’s a mismatch there, burnout goes up,” said Jim Harter, the chief scientist of workplace and wellbeing at pollster Gallup. “Getting that match right, between what the employer and the worker wants, is essential.”