RTO Trends 2025: Why Forcing Employees Back to the Office Hurts Business

Are companies still enforcing RTO mandates in 2025? Yes, and it’s backfiring.

Return to Office (RTO) mandates have tightened across industries, but productivity isn’t improving. Morale is down, top talent is walking, and leaders are clinging to outdated playbooks.

We’ve been told that having people back in their office space leads to better outcomes. But the data says otherwise. If your best people are disengaged, does it matter where they’re sitting?

Let’s break down the trends, the numbers, and the reality behind return-to-office mandates in 2025.

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RTO trends in 2025: What are companies doing?

Despite the work benefits displayed by remote work adoption in recent years, many companies are doubling down on in-office mandates.

Leaders believe presence equals performance, but the gap between policy and impact is starting to show — so who’s really pushing RTO? 

Who is pushing RTO?

There’s a difference between nudging people back to the office and demanding it.

However, the impact of the latter is more palpable, especially when big companies do it:

• Amazon. In mid-2023, Amazon mandated employees return to the office at least three days a week. Internal reports showed that managers were tracking attendance and tying it to performance evaluations — with some teams threatening disciplinary action for non-compliance.
  
• AT&T. AT&T issued one of the strictest RTO mandates of 2025: relocate or return to one of nine designated offices. Employees who had worked remotely for years now risk termination. 
  
• Google. Once a supporter of remote work during the pandemic, Google told its employees that in-office attendance would become part of performance reviews in 2023.

RTO is gaining the most traction in industries where hierarchy, legacy norms, and in-person optics still have a significant impact on workplace culture. Industries like finance, legal, and consulting tend to top that list.

Firms like JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs have made full-time office work the default, often linking visibility to promotion.

In consulting, client-facing culture and team-based delivery models drive a hard return to pre-2020 expectations. The logic is less about measurable output and more about presence and politics.

What’s new in 2025?

RTO mandates are bad enough when they’re strict They’re even worse when they’re tactical.

Like the examples above, companies tighten policies with clear consequences: skip office days and risk performance penalties. Companies are now tying promotions, bonuses, and job security to in-person compliance across multiple sectors.

Across industries, management monitors badge swipes, location check-ins, and login times more aggressively.

Some firms are publishing internal RTO dashboards that show attendance rankings by team — turning visibility into a competitive (albeit unnecessary) metric.

Are RTO mandates working or failing?

We’re biased at Hubstaff, so instead of saying RTO mandates are a step backward, we’ll let the data speak for itself.

In our recent Workstyle Revolution report, we found that:

• 85% of leaders do not believe that in-office work is more productive than remote.
• 84% do not believe that remote employees are less reliable than office employees.
• On average, 52% of remote workers’ time is spent on focus time. For in-office workers, it’s just 46%.
  

Here’s a more blunt way: RTO mandates do not work.

Return-to-office mandates have been met with significant resistance as employees express dissatisfaction and, in some cases, outright defiance. After all, many workers have grown accustomed to the flexibility of remote work. It’s no surprise they view enforced office returns as a step backward.

Additionally, recent data shows a growing disconnect between employer expectations and employee preferences:

• A survey revealed that 1 in 5 U.S. workers refuse to adhere to their company’s RTO mandates. Furthermore, about half of these employees stated they’d consider quitting if forced to comply.
  
• Research indicates that 42% of companies with RTO policies have seen higher-than-expected employee attrition rates. This suggests that rigid in-office requirements may be driving valuable talent away.
• You don’t need to look further than Amazon. An internal survey at Amazon found that 91% of employees were dissatisfied with the company’s RTO mandate. As a result, 73% were actively seeking new employment opportunities.

Remember that many of these employees thrived in remote work, so their willingness to resist RTO and leave organizations that enforce it is not based on a hunch.

For companies, that means carefully weighing the potential loss of talent and decreased morale against the perceived benefits of in-person work.

Hidden costs of RTO mandates in 2025

Many pro-office leaders like to say RTO is a return to normal.

It’s an expensive move with hidden costs that hurt profit margins, morale, and momentum. Companies are pouring money back into real estate, losing top talent, and watching job satisfaction take a nose dive.

The bigger question isn’t whether people should return — it’s why they are paying so much to make them.

• Financial costs are stacking up fast. Companies enforcing RTO policies face substantial expenses related to office leases, utilities, and maintenance. For instance, a firm with 1,000 employees incurs approximately $18 million annually in real estate costs.
  
• The talent drain is real. Prominent companies implementing RTO policies have experienced the departure of highly skilled and senior employees, resulting in a “brain drain” that affects organizational performance.
  
• Declining job satisfaction is making it worse. Surveys find that 41% of the workforce would consider leaving their jobs if forced to return to full-time office work.

If you’re already offering remote work, you’re pulling ahead of competitors just by staying out of your employees’ way. That said, coasting isn’t a strategy.

Remote work policies should be clear, flexible, and built around outcomes, not availability. Set expectations based on output, not hours logged.

While micromanagement is never the end goal, remote work should be intentional, not hands-off. Remote teams win because they treat flexibility as an advantage, not a perk.

The future of work: Where are we headed?

Is remote work going away in 2025?

Not even close. It’s just evolving for companies smart enough to offer it.

The cracks of RTO mandates are showing more than ever in 2025 — lost talent, bloated overhead, and productivity levels that have, unsurprisingly, moved an inch backward.

This will force many companies to ask themselves whether they’re placing value on performance or attendance.

There is hope, though.

• Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced in May 2020 that the company would be “remote first” and allow employees to work anywhere without mandatory office days.
  
• eCommerce giant Shopify calls its model “digital by design.” Shopify shifted to remote work during COVID-19, and as of 2025, it allows fully remote work.
  
• ​In 2023, Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, announced a permanent shift to a flexible work model, allowing employees to work from anywhere. 

Best practices for businesses

Companies serious about performance need to stop measuring it through the lens of attendance. Office presence is easy to fake, but results are not.

Adopt these practices to take advantage of remote work’s full potential:

1. Overcommunicate. Write things down and follow-up. If someone hasn’t replied to your message, don’t assume they saw it. Follow up.
   
2. Cut down on meetings. Are you at a point where you feel like you’ve slashed a lot of meetings? Double-check if there’s still calendar fluff you can cut down. Some tools can help.
   
3. Use productivity tracking tools. Use a tool like Hubstaff to see what’s happening in your team with full context.
   
4. Let people work how they work best. Don’t micromanage the “how” if the “what” is getting done.
   
5. Set clear goals and KPIs. If your team doesn’t know what winning looks like, they’ll drift. Make performance expectations concrete.
   
6. Recognize wins and normalize rest. Burnout kills output. Celebrate real progress and give your team space to recharge.

Many people believe that remote teams have to work harder to compete with the output of office teams.

But the truth is, when remote work is done right, remote teams easily outperform office teams.

Conclusion

RTO mandates are great if your goal is to destroy morale and shove talent out your door.

If you’re forcing people back just to “see them working,” you’re managing optics and living in the past. That mindset is outdated and potentially hazardous to your team’s future. 

Remote or hybrid work flexibility wins out because it’s built on trust and accountability. High-performance companies set clear goals, track real output, and cut unnecessary processes that get in the way.

If you want to compete, stop obsessing over badge swipes and start embracing modern work by building a high-output team that can work effectively from anywhere.