When people ask about return-to-office mandates and the hybrid office, I feel terrified. I’ve worked remotely most of my career. In 2020, everything changed. Now in 2025/26, everything is supposed to revert to 2019. But should we?
The Great Unraveling: Why Remote Work’s Early Success Is Showing Cracks
Peter Cappelli and Ranya Nehmeh’s In Praise of the Office: The Limits to Hybrid and Remote Work challenges the binary thinking that dominates discussions about the workplace. Their research reveals remote work’s initial productivity gains often came at the expense of long-term organizational health through the silent erosion of culture, mentorship, and collaboration.
Proximity bias is real. Office-visible employees receive more promotions than equally productive remote colleagues. Early-career workers struggle most—new hires have no one to watch and mimic.
Google mandated three days in the office by 2023 after initially offering flexibility. Former CEO Eric Schmidt said the company decided that work-life balance was more important than winning.
The Productivity Paradox
Remote work doesn’t tank productivity. Remote-friendly companies report sustained or improved output. Microsoft’s research shows remote workers are often more productive.
So why demand returns? The cynical answer: RTO policies are stealth layoffs. By making conditions less attractive, companies reduce headcount without severance costs—voluntary attrition spikes, particularly among top performers.
The Meeting Disaster
Lockdowns led to more meetings and emails, longer workdays, and larger meetings. Without space constraints, meetings ballooned, requiring pre-meetings to prepare.
Approximately 30% of Microsoft meetings involve multitasking. When people multitask, engagement drops, meetings become less productive and longer—a vicious cycle.
Seven Critical Problems with the Hybrid Office
- New Hires Are Drowning Ignored but drawn into meetings they don’t understand, lacking low-stakes interactions with senior colleagues
- Employees Become Self-Focused Focus on individual KPIs over helping colleagues
- Collaboration Has Collapsed Less brainstorming, especially between teams
- Communication Gaps Widen Silence gets misinterpreted without body language
- Wrong People Get Promoted Individual performers advance regardless of leadership skills
- Cultures Fracture Pre-pandemic and pandemic-era employees observe different norms
- Commitment Erodes Less connection without shared physical space
The Real Cost of “Just Come Back”
Gallup found that 71% of Gen Z, along with 60% of millennials, and 55% of older workers, prefer a hybrid work arrangement. Remote work is a working condition that affects quality of life and productivity.
Most RTO mandates are blunt instruments. Companies force people back without clear reasons or redesigned workflows. With hybrid teams, spontaneous collaboration doesn’t occur when half the team is on Zoom.
What Actually Works
Full remote works best when:
- The organization was built remote-first
- Work is highly individual and asynchronous
- Heavy investment in digital tools and clear documentation exists
In-office works best when:
- Employees are early-career professionals needing mentorship
- Work requires rapid, synchronous collaboration
- Innovation depends on spontaneous interactions
Hybrid fails when:
- No clear strategy exists for which days matter
- Proximity bias isn’t addressed
- Technology and spaces aren’t designed for seamless hybrid collaboration
Key Recommendations
- Start with Why—Specifically
Identify specific, measurable problems. Are new hires struggling? Is innovation slowing? Different problems require different solutions. - Design for Hybrid, Don’t Default to 2019
Create in-office anchor days, redesign spaces for collaboration, invest in technology to ensure remote participants have equal access, and train managers on leading hybrid teams. - Address Proximity Bias
Create evaluation criteria that don’t favor office visibility. Consider remote-first meetings where everyone joins from their own screen. - Differentiate by Role
Early-career employees benefit from in-office time. Senior contributors may work better remotely. One-size-fits-all rarely makes sense. - Use Incentives, Not Mandates
Make the office worth coming to with compelling amenities, purposeful experiences, and team autonomy for scheduling. - Track Outcomes, Not Attendance
If you can’t articulate how office presence improves specific metrics, you don’t have a business case for RTO. - Acknowledge “Normal” Is Gone
The 2019 workplace isn’t returning. People have restructured their lives around remote work. A mandate ignoring this will lose your best people.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Both extreme positions are wrong. Fully remote isn’t a panacea, but neither is forcing everyone back to offices not designed for post-pandemic patterns.
Organizations that will thrive are those willing to design work models intentionally—understanding what they gain and lose with each choice, actively managing downsides, and treating their approach as an ongoing experiment.
For companies considering RTO: Before sending that memo, ask whether you’re solving a real business problem or just making executives feel comfortable. For workers facing mandates, consider whether an employer who can’t articulate why you need to be in the office is where you want to build your career.
The future of work won’t look like 2019 or 2020. It’s time we stopped fighting about returning to either and started building what comes next.
