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This past year in the workplace was like a roller coaster ride you thought was going to be fun, but ended up being a bit…meh.
We saw employees continuing to push back on RTO requirements. But as of December, 24.6 million employees at 914 companies had returned to the office in some capacity, with 1.3 million commuting five days a week, according to online workplace forum Blind’s RTO database.
As we forge ahead into 2024, let’s take a look back at some of the biggest splashes made by RTO mandates in 2023.
Setting sail. In January, Disney’s CEO Bob Iger mandated that employees return to the office four days a week, CNBC reported.
Employees across Disney-owned companies, including Marvel Studios, ABC, FX, and Hulu, signed a petition saying the mandate would cause “forced resignations among some of our most hard-to-replace talent and vulnerable communities,” the Washington Post reported. Iger wrote in an email obtained by CNBC that a four-day return was necessary because “in a creative business like ours, nothing can replace the ability to connect, observe, and create with peers that comes from being physically together.”
Breaking hearts. While its business thrived in a remote-first world, Zoom shocked many in August when it announced it would be requiring some of its workers to come into the office two days a week.
Employees were outraged by the mandate, the San Francisco Standard reported, with one even pointing out the irony on Blind, writing that “you need to go to [the] office but every meeting is via Zoom.”
Not so sweet. The LGBTQ dating app Grindr gave its employees an ultimatum in early August: Relocate to “their respective team’s newly assigned ‘hub’ city to work in-person twice a week or leave the company with severance,” CNN reported. They had two weeks to decide.
By the end of the month, around one-half of its employees quit. The app’s CEO, George Arison, recently told the Los Angeles Business Journal that the company is using the mass exodus as a strategic recruitment opportunity.
Holding strong. Considering an RTO in the new year? There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to the future of work, Lívia de Bastos Martini, chief people officer at Gympass, previously told HR Brew, adding that a RTO mandate “has to be something that the employees have a voice in.”
Martini said HR leaders should remember that any RTO approach can work if “your strategy [is] cohesive around: Who [do] you want to hire? How do you want them to work? What’s your key business needs?”
Just as the world may never know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, HR leaders may never know how many days a week in the office is right for their employees—unless they ask.