HR continues to grapple with RTO mandates as more companies push for fully in-person workweeks

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Has in-office work fully bounced back?

The majority (87%) of job listings on career platform JobLeads are for roles that require workers to be fully onsite, according to January data from the site—7% offer a hybrid option and 6% are remote. The amount of occupied office space is also on the rise, reaching 55.1 million square feet in 2025 Q4, according to December data from commercial real estate firm JLL, up from 30 million at the end of 2020. (It’s still, however, down from 70 million in 2019.)

Many return-to-office (RTO) mandates represent a “mismatch” between what employees and companies want, Martin Schmidt, co-founder and managing director of JobLeads, told HR Brew. “American employers are being more aggressive on return-to-office,” he said, creating “tension” in the workforce.

Why we’re still talking about RTO. Some companies slowly brought employees back to the office two or three days a week in late 2020 and early 2021. But, in recent months, employers including Home Depot and Stellantis have upped the ante, requiring a five-day RTO.

Companies that inch closer to a fully in-person workweek may find themselves in a “transaction trap,” Deborah Lovich, managing director and senior partner at consulting firm Boston Consulting Group, told HR Brew. She said this can happen when an “us versus them” mentality sets in.

Leaders may be saying, “Get your butt back in office,” because there is a lack of trust, but “it’s a symptom of this underlying culture that’s not great,” Lovich said. It’s a trap, because neither leaders nor employees win.

Some leaders may be attributing organizational issues to in-office attendance, she added. “A company can be having weak performance, and then they can look around the office and say, ‘Not everyone is here,’” she said. “Those two things are true, but they’re not related.”

Before an RTO, ask yourselves…“Why?” Lovich said. “You’re measuring inputs instead of impact? You’re measuring, do you see people at a desk, as opposed to, are teams delivering the impact that they need to deliver?”

“Why do you want them in?” she added. “I hear words like culture…[and] learning and development…talented managers can build culture and build skills across distributed teams, but have you made the effort to figure out what your best managers are doing?”

Before issuing a “blanket ‘we don’t trust you’ edict,” Lovich recommended looking at the departments or teams where hybrid schedules are working and sharing company-wide how they’ve made it work. “Let’s try and see where you have pockets of performance. What’s driving that?” she said.

While there are benefits to working in person, leaders shouldn’t forget the benefits of remote work, Sondra Leibner, managing director at consulting and technology firm alliantConsulting, told HR Brew.

“Deep thinking, heads-down analysis, deep strategy work require…silence, focus, and flexibility,” Leibner said. “I’ve seen things like, ‘We need to see you swipe your badge in five times a month.’ That just doesn’t feel like the right way to entice employees into the building…There’s not a real case for why.”

What HR can do. Companies should avoid making RTO decisions based on “stories of one,” Lovich cautioned. The now-infamous tales of remote workers with multiple jobs, or a manager’s experience with an employee who underperformed at home, should not dictate a company-wide policy, she said.

“That is what performance management is for. Don’t make a rule for all your staff for the lowest common denominator. Manage that person,” she said.

Some leaders who implement strict RTO mandates may think employees are “a cost to be managed” or “a cog in the machine,” Lovich said. HR pros can help them break free of those sentiments and refrain from tossing issues “over the fence to land on HR’s lap to solve,” she said.

“When we say we want people back in the office, do we really mean full-time, or do we mean for meaningful moments?” Leibner said. “Not every moment needs full-on, in-person collaboration, so can you create a solution that gives people flexibility, that gives them the opportunity to think, but also gives them the opportunity to have those in-person collaborations?”