Big companies from Microsoft to Paramount and NBCUniversal are ordering workers to show up to the office more often. If only their staffs would heed the call.
Even as corporate bosses cut back on remote work and ratchet up in-office mandates, average office attendance has barely budged across U.S. workplaces. Companies are struggling to enforce mandates, and many managers tasked with herding folks into the office would rather not be there either. Other executives have made their peace with hybrid work, especially amid cooling consumer confidence and an unpredictable trade war.
“There’s a lot more pressing things for companies to be worrying about right now,” said Beth Steinberg, a longtime tech-industry human-resources executive. As for whether bosses are cracking down on no-shows? “I haven’t heard of many consequences for that, especially if somebody’s a high-performer.”
The New York Times is among the latest companies to step up office-attendance requirements, telling opinion and newsroom staffers on Wednesday to come in at least four days a week by November, up from three. Microsoft wants three days starting in February for many Pacific Northwest employees.
Some ultimatums are blunter. At Paramount, staffers in New York and Los Angeles had until this week to commit to five days a week starting in January—or else take a buyout. NBCUniversal, which will require four days next year, gave staff a similar choice.
Those unable to comply should contact human resources about a “voluntary exit assistance package,” NBCUniversal told employees.
They join other big names dialing back remote work this year, including Amazon, Dell and JPMorgan. Overall, companies are requiring 12% more time in-office than in early 2024, according to data on policies for 9,000 employers from workplace think tank Work Forward.
Yet Americans still work from home about a quarter of the time—much like in 2023, said Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford economist who has helped run a monthly survey of 10,000 Americans on the topic since 2020.
Unenthusiastic bosses don’t help. They might shield top performers to keep them from leaving. And nearly half of senior managers said they would take a pay cut to work from home, according to a survey this summer of 1,500 salaried U.S. employees, including 500 human-resources professionals, from BambooHR.
Then there are the logistical snags. Amazon.com ran short on desks, parking and videoconferencing rooms after ordering hundreds of thousands of workers to the office full time. The company backpedaled in Houston, New York and elsewhere, at least temporarily. Dell encountered similar problems.
“Since the beginning of the year, the overwhelming majority of our employees have returned to the office full time and had dedicated workspaces,” said an Amazon spokeswoman.
Some employers are trying to bring workers together without alienating or uprooting them. Axon, which makes Taser stun guns, is asking new hires to spend Tuesday through Friday in the office starting next month. But current employees can largely keep their existing hybrid or remote schedules.
“I don’t think it’s fair to tell those people who are hired and say, ‘Hey, you live in North Dakota and, like, now you have to move somewhere else with your family to come work in an office,’ ” said Josh Isner, Axon’s president. But with 12% annual attrition, he added, the company’s 4,000-strong workforce will eventually be largely in-person.
“It’s a little bit of the long game here,” he said. “We’re having a lot of success, and we don’t want to lose good people.”
In-office mandates prompt some people to quit, and many suspect that is by design. Tighter requirements sometimes precede or follow layoff announcements, including at Amazon, AT&T and Dell, said Brian Elliott, a former Google and Slack executive who runs Work Forward. In its August economic update, the Federal Reserve observed that some employers were “reducing head counts through attrition—encouraged, at times, by return-to-office policies.”
“It is a cheap way to reduce head count, there’s no disguising that,” said Stanford’s Bloom. “The problem is, you don’t get to choose who leaves.”
Most companies also don’t put in the effort to catch shirkers by matching up badge swipes, Wi-Fi connections, time-off schedules and other data, Bloom added, citing conversations with dozens of human-resources chiefs. That makes it hard to distinguish rule-breakers from those out sick or traveling for work, so many HR departments dig deeper only if workers miss at least half of their required days.
Office attendance isn’t uniform. In New York City, where banks such as JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs have pushed workers to be back full time, subway traffic is at its highest levels since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the New York governor’s office. Likewise, city foot traffic exceeded 2019 levels for the first time in July, according to cellphone data from Placer.ai. Nationally, office visits in August were down by about a third from 2019, the firm found.
Return-to-office ultimatums at big companies get the most attention, but most smaller companies continue to allow at least some remote work as a matter of routine, Work Forward’s data show.
Employers pushing higher attendance can expect more scofflaws. Those requiring one day a week get near-perfect compliance, but companies mandating three or more days see compliance fall below 75%, commercial real-estate services and investment firm CBRE found in a survey. That is up from less than two-thirds a year ago.
Write to Theo Francis at theo.francis@wsj.com
