MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Return-to-Office Mandates: How to Lose Your Best Performers

Your organization’s highest-performing employees want executives to focus on outcomes and accountability, not office badge swipes.

Editor’s note: Since we originally published this story, even more data has come to light on the effects of RTO mandates. We have updated this story with a video in which Brian Elliott explores the newest RTO mandate research and lessons learned from company examples. He also shares predictions for what’s coming next for companies like Amazon that have imposed RTO mandates. Watch the embedded video at the bottom of this story.

Recent return-to-office (RTO) mandates like those at UPS and Boeing have a simple message: Come back to the office five days a week. CEOs cite productivity as a core reason for these proclamations, even in the face of employee resistance. Many executives simply don’t trust that employees are as effective as possible when managers can’t see them at their desks.

But in a world of globally distributed teams, falling back on management-through-monitoring is falling back on the weakest form of management — and one that drives down employee engagement. There is mounting evidence that mandates don’t improve financial performance. Instead, they damage employee engagement and increase attrition, especially among high-performing employees and particularly those with caregiving responsibilities.

About the Author

Brian Elliott is an executive adviser and speaker. He is coauthor of How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to Do the Best Work of Their Lives (Wiley, 2022).

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