Bookmark of Return to Office is About Control

The RTO push has nothing to do with productivity and everything to do with control. When a manager can’t lead without seeing bodies in seats, that says more about the manager than about remote work.

Hiring the best performers should always be the priority. If your RTO mandate means losing top talent who do their best work remotely, you have made a bad trade. And as Mark points out, the people who stay aren’t necessarily your strongest. They are the ones who can’t afford to leave. So the mandate ends up filtering for the wrong people.

Management needs to evolve. COVID proved that remote and hybrid models work. The companies clawing that back are the ones whose leaders never learned to articulate clear goals, measure outcomes, and trust their teams. Instead of developing those skills, they’re dragging ICs back to the office so they can walk past rows of desks and feel important again.

Companies that double down on RTO mandates are going to suffer. The best people have options, and they’ll pick the places that trust them to do their jobs wherever they happen to be sitting.