Workers are fighting back against RTO mandates - as survey claims remote work really does make you more productive

• Study reveals continuing resistance to RTO mandates
• Many workers say they would look for a new job, or just quit, if forced to go back full-time
• Women more resistant than men, but BME workers also affected

A new study has revealed attitudes towards a full-time return to office (RTO) are still incredibly resistant, as workers look for more flexibility and productivity in their roles.

Over a one million observations from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and some 50,000 responses from the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (SWAA) UK from between early 2022 and 2024 were analyzed by researchers from King’s College London (KCL) and King’s Business School to see if worker opinions on RTO mandates had changed.

Unsurprisingly, the report found many workers were still opposed to the policies, with less than half (42%) saying they would agree to go back to the office full-time - and the overall figures showing there is "no clear trend of a mass return to the office in the UK".

RTO resistance

"Despite the growing public announcement of CEOs and reports of mass return-to-office mandate of companies, based on two large scale representative surveys of the UK labour market we see no evidence of this," authors Professor Heejung Chung and Research Fellow Shiya Yuan stated in their report.

"We do not see any clear signs of workers returning to the office, nor do we see evidence of employers restricting workers’ homeworking possibilities in their policies. In fact, we see a growing number of workers who can work from home."

Overall, the figures showed working-from-home (WFH) rates remained stable since 2022, with over a quarter of all workers saying home is their main place of work, and about 40% of workers work remotely at least once per week, with over 25% work three or more days from home.

The report appears to indicate that RTO mandates are a potential deal-breaker for many workers, as half of those surveyed said they would rather look for a new job than return to full time at their current employer - an increase from 40% in the earlier survey.

Women were more likely to look for a new job (55%) or quit entirely (9%) than men (43% and 8%), with young mothers much more unlikely to comply.

However black and minority ethnic workers were found to be slightly more compliant with returning to the office, which the study hypothesised could be due to possible "job insecurity and workplace discrimination".

"For HR leaders and policymakers, the message is clear: well-designed hybrid working models offer significant benefits for both employers and employees that supports equality, talent retention, collaboration, and business resilience," the authors concluded.

"Rigid RTO mandates not only risk reversing these gains but may also create serious recruitment and retention challenges in a labour market where flexibility has become a baseline expectation."

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