• JPMorgan told employees on Friday that their days of hybrid work were numbered.
• It said the five-day RTO mandate would start in March and affect roughly 30% of the bank's workforce.
• See the memo explaining the new policy and rationale.

JPMorgan on Friday told employees that hybrid work was largely over. In a memo issued by the bank's operating committee, the largest US bank by assets said it was calling all workers back to the office starting in March.

"Starting in March, we'll be asking most employees currently on a hybrid schedule to return to the office five days a week," a copy of the memo obtained by Business Insider said. "As it stands, more than half of our workforce already comes into the office full-time."

A company spokesman said that roughly 70% of the bank's employees were already back in the office five days a week, while everyone else was in three or four days a week.

"We know that some of you prefer a hybrid schedule and respectfully understand that not everyone will agree with this decision," the memo said, adding, "We think it is the best way to run the company."

JPMorgan, which had more than 300,000 employees in September, is the latest in a growing list of large companies to revert to pre-pandemic office norms. AT&T and Amazon have implemented similar five-day mandates starting this month.

JPMorgan's return-to-office policies have been slowly ratcheting up since the COVID-19 pandemic. It returned all managing directors — the highest rank outside the C-suite — to a five-day workweek in 2023.

The full memo sheds some light on the company's rationale:

Message from the Operating Committee

Dear colleagues,

We're proud of how our company has successfully adapted and thrived in an ever-changing environment, and this is thanks to all of you. We are a better organization because of your commitment and continued care for our customers, clients, communities and each other. Developing effective teams and maintaining a vibrant, healthy culture are clearly key for our success — and we believe best achieved through working together in person. This is why starting in March, we'll be asking most employees currently on a hybrid schedule to return to the office five days a week. As it stands, more than half of our workforce already comes into the office full-time.

We know that some of you prefer a hybrid schedule and respectfully understand that not everyone will agree with this decision. We are now a few years out of the pandemic and have had the time to evaluate the benefits and challenges of remote and hybrid working. We feel that now is the right time to solidify our full-time in-office approach. We think it is the best way to run the company. As we've discussed before, the benefits of working together in person are substantial and irreplaceable, and as we spend more time together, the more advantages we gain. Being together greatly enhances mentoring, learning, brainstorming and getting things done. It accelerates decision-making and offers valuable opportunities for spontaneous learning and creativity. It also allows our early career professionals to learn through our apprenticeship model and expand their networks by building connections with peers across the firm.

Many of our global locations, but not all, have existing capacity to allow for most or all employees to return to the office full-time in early March. We will confirm the list of locations where this is possible by the end of January. The evaluation of our locations will focus on operational readiness, including food services, cleaning and parking. For locations with capacity constraints, or where changes are needed to create capacity, we will work through plans in the coming weeks and will share information and timelines as they become available on a location-by-location basis. Until your location's readiness is confirmed, you should continue on your current work schedule. It's important to note that following a thorough review and applying stringent criteria, a few specific teams whose work can be easily and clearly measured will continue to work remotely or on a hybrid schedule. These decisions have been made in the best interest of the company. If you are on one of these teams, your manager will confirm your schedule.

We recognize that switching from hybrid to five days a week in the office may be disruptive and require adjustments for some colleagues. Importantly we will work to give you at least 30 days' notice in line with local requirements, prior to your full-time return. Once your location is ready, if you need a bit more time to accommodate the new schedule, you should discuss your needs with your manager and get their approval. We know that a lot has changed in our workplaces since returning to the office after the pandemic and recognize that it will take us some time to get all of our locations ready to accommodate a five-day-a-week schedule.

What is not changing is our support for flexibility in the workplace, which we are committed to providing at every level in a fair way. We fully recognize how important it is to be able to work remotely as life events happen, and managers will be directed to provide team members with the flexibility they need to work remotely under some circumstances, such as unexpected occurrences, family commitments or other times on occasion when you and your manager agree you can work away from the office. As always, we expect you to continue to track your time out of the office, and we will work hard to support a workplace of flexibility and collaboration.

We greatly appreciate your outstanding efforts day-in and day-out and are honored to work together on behalf of everyone we serve.

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For millions of Americans who have grown accustomed to the flexibility provided by their work-from-home arrangements, it's been a gloomy start to the year. As of this month, employees at Amazon and AT&T are required to start showing up in the office five days a week. Then, on Tuesday, news broke that JPMorgan is preparing to revoke the hybrid privileges of about 40% of its workforce. (The other 60% are already required to come in every day). The headlines, the latest in a steady stream of return-to-office announcements, sparked yet another round of freakouts on Reddit, LinkedIn, and countless group texts. But as someone who keeps a close watch on the American workplace, I can tell you that I'm really not worried about the future of working from home. Whatever old-school CEOs like Jamie Dimon and Andy Jassy may think of it, remote work is here to stay.

For one, take a look at the stats. The economist Nick Bloom runs a monthly survey of American workers that tracks the prevalence of remote work. At the peak of COVID, in the spring of 2020, as much as 62% of work across the economy was being done from home. As the pandemic eased, that number came tumbling down — to 37% at the beginning of 2021, 33% in 2022, and 27% in 2023. The work-from-home dream appeared to be fading.

But in the two years since, something odd has happened. Despite all the headlines about companies getting rid of hybrid arrangements, the actual prevalence of remote work has barely budged. Last month, the share of work-from-home jobs remained at 27%. The RTO wars, it seems, have reached an impasse — one in which neither side is able to score any gains.

This impasse is all the more remarkable because of the weakness of the white-collar job market. As I've reported, hiring for corporate professionals has been in a huge slump, which has given employers the upper hand to do whatever they want about remote work without risking a mass exodus of disgruntled staffers. If CEOs were waiting for the ideal market conditions to drag everyone back into the office, this would definitely be the time to do it.

And yet, as the data shows, that hasn't happened — which suggests that CEOs, for the most part, are fine with the policies they have in place today. Even if they quietly wish more employees would come into the office, they don't seem to think it's worth the disruption that would come from forcing the issue.

In fact, when you zoom out and look at the current status of work from home, what you see is nothing short of a sea change. In 2019, Bloom and his team estimate, only 4.7% of work was performed from home. That means the current level of WFH is still six times larger than it was before the pandemic. For all the Amazons and JPMorgans that are reverting to their pre-COVID policies, the norm remains tilted to hybrid work to a degree that would have been unimaginable back in 2019.

In the long run, despite the RTO efforts by the likes of Amazon and JPMorgan, I actually think working from home is almost certain to become even more common. First, given America's slowing population growth, employers will soon find themselves facing a serious labor shortage. That will force them to offer all kinds of perks to attract and retain staff — and the flexibility to work from home is sure to be one of them. Second, the WFH-friendly startups that were founded during the pandemic will continue to grow. They'll not only employ more and more remote and hybrid employees — they'll eventually come to dominate entire sectors of the economy, further cementing the value of work from home. And third, the technology that enables us to collaborate at a distance will only get better over time, reducing what's probably the biggest pain point of remote work.

That's all to say that the reports of remote work's death, to paraphrase Mark Twain, have been greatly exaggerated. After all, this is how big societal changes always happen: first comes innovation, then skepticism and fear, followed by a concerted push to return to the good old days. In the scheme of things, the office itself is a relatively recent innovation. Or consider one of the biggest inventions of Twain's time: the telephone. What was wrong with the telegraph, people asked. What's the point of switching to this new thing? Also, could it transmit ghosts? Could the electrical wiring shock you? Even as the devices proliferated, some worried that they portended the downfall of society. "The general use of the telephone," one New York Times writer lamented, "instead of promoting civility and courtesy, is the means of the fast dying out of what little we have left."

That's how laughable all the corporate hand-wringing about work from home is going to sound like a couple decades from now. Remote work, Jamie Dimon once groused, "doesn't work." History is in the process of proving him wrong.

Aki Ito is a chief correspondent at Business Insider.

• The advertising giant WPP is telling workers to come to the office four days a week from April.
• Business Insider obtained the internal memo sent to the company's 114,000 employees.
• "I believe that we do our best work when we are together in person," CEO Mark Read said in the memo.

The advertising giant WPP has told its workforce of more than 100,000 employees to return to the office at least four days a week.

"From the beginning of April this year, the expectation across WPP will be that most of us spend an average of four days a week in the office," WPP CEO Mark Read wrote in a memo sent to staff on Tuesday and seen by Business Insider.

The Financial Times first reported the move.

The policy is set to go into effect in April to give staff time to make adjustments and to "address capacity requirements" in offices, he wrote.

The CEO said in-office attendance was associated with "stronger employee engagement, improved client survey scores and better financial performance."

"I believe that we do our best work when we are together in person," he wrote. "It's easier to learn from each other, it's a better way to mentor colleagues starting out in the industry, and it helps us win pitches as a truly integrated team."

Under the new policy, WPP will allow staff one flexible working day a week and consider individual circumstances through a formal approval process, a person familiar with the matter told BI.

One WPP employee, speaking with BI on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on company policy, said they still had questions about the return-to-office plan's practicalities. They said that in some offices, there were already issues with securing enough desk space or meeting rooms, for example.

AT&T this week began implementing a staggered five-day RTO mandate, and workers told BI that limited available desks and elevators at some offices complicated their return.

Amazon encountered office-capacity issues last year, which, as BI previously reported, delayed its full return-to-office plan for some employees.

Another WPP insider said they felt the move would be positive for younger staff and help them network and learn from colleagues, while allowing flexibility for those who required it.

WPP's announcement follows that of its fellow advertising giant Publicis Groupe, which last year told employees to return to the office at least three days a week. The company later fired hundreds of employees for noncompliance with the mandate, Ad Age reported in October.

Bruce Daisley, a workplace-culture consultant and former Twitter vice president, said WPP's return-to-office policy would be an employee-morale gamble because advertising jobs already aren't as lucrative and aspirational as they once were.

"Working in an advertising agency used to be gloriously paid, now those who work in the field squint into spreadsheets all day earning salaries that are often substantially lower than the clients and media owners they deal with," Daisley wrote in his Make Work Better newsletter.

Read the full memo CEO Mark Read sent to WPP employees:

To everyone at WPP

I hope you had a restful holiday season and the chance to recharge over the break.

As I wrote to you in December, 2025 is going to be a year of opportunity for WPP — a year when we can win through a relentless focus on our clients.

With that in mind, I wanted to share our priorities for the next 12 months, as well as a change we are going to make in the way we work.

Clients, creativity and our work

WPP's mission is to deliver creative transformation for the world's leading brands. This means not only producing exceptional work in every discipline of modern marketing, but helping clients transform how they operate for a very different world. This is ever more true of our largest and most important clients, who come to us for the quality of what we do, the breadth of our skills, and our ability to prepare them for the future.

While industry mergers and jostling for status may distract our competitors, focus will be paramount for us in 2025. We have the opportunity to stand out by being more obsessed than ever with serving our clients. In every single decision we make, we should ask ourselves "how will this help us do even better work for our clients?" Those companies who embrace this philosophy will be those who emerge on top.

Technology, data and AI

Demand from clients for creative ideas, effective media plans, brilliant PR campaigns and outstanding design remains constant, but the way in which we deliver our work is changing faster than I have ever seen. That's why technology, data and AI are at the heart of our plans for the future, and why adoption of our AI-driven marketing operating system WPP Open has grown so quickly. Keeping up that momentum is another key objective for 2025.

WPP Open helped us win a number of 2024's biggest reviews and we are going to increase our investment in Open this year to build on the success it has brought us. It will be central to how we bring an integrated, AI-enabled offer to market, with the goal of producing better results for clients and winning more than our fair share of pitches in the year ahead.

A culture of winning, together

Finally, we are going to focus on the culture of our company. For all our technological sophistication, we remain a people business. Across everything we do, our success still relies on the fundamentals of human connection, creativity and relationships. Teams of talented individuals, working towards common goals, are what drives growth for our clients and our agencies.

I believe that we do our best work when we are together in person. It's easier to learn from each other, it's a better way to mentor colleagues starting out in the industry, and it helps us win pitches as a truly integrated team. The data from across WPP agencies shows that higher levels of office attendance are associated with stronger employee engagement, improved client survey scores and better financial performance. More of our clients are moving in this direction and expecting it of the teams who work with them.

For all these reasons, spending more time together is important to all of us, and we are making a change to help that happen. From the beginning of April this year, the expectation across WPP will be that most of us spend an average of four days a week in the office.

This doesn't mean we're going back to old ways of doing things. During the pandemic we all learned the value of greater flexibility in our working lives and of being trusted to balance work and personal commitments. We need to keep that spirit of flexibility and trust, and will approach this transition with pragmatism and an understanding of people's different circumstances. There will be a clear process to request additional flexibility — including for those with caring responsibilities, health issues and other considerations. Some roles that have always been fully or largely remote will continue as they are.

We know that for some colleagues this new policy will require adjustments to their routines and arrangements, which is why it will not come into effect until April — giving people time to make any changes they need to. There is also work to do between now and April to ensure we make the best use of our workspaces. Our WPP campuses offer superb working environments in beautifully designed buildings with leading environmental credentials. But it will take detailed planning in the coming months to address capacity requirements and other related areas, and I'd like to thank the teams who are already hard at work figuring that out.

Your leaders are working closely with the WPP People and Real Estate teams, and will follow up with next steps for your part of the business. It's important that we take a consistent approach across our agencies, who will communicate the requirements to you in detail. In the meantime, visit insideWPP for FAQs, details of the policy, and an AI-powered chat agent to help answer your questions.

A collaborative, winning culture is what makes WPP and our agencies a great place to work, and it's the key to our future growth and success. I firmly believe this change we are making will protect and enhance that culture, for the benefit of everyone.

As always, if you want to get in touch, email me.

Mark

• AT&T began implementing its staggered five-day return-to-office mandate on Monday.
• Workers told BI that limited available desks and elevators at some locations complicated their office return.
• As more workers are slated to arrive in phases, projects to add capacity are underway.

The first wave of AT&T's five-day return-to-office mandate started on Monday. Conversations with half a dozen AT&T workers across the country this week indicate it hasn't been off to a smooth start.

At the Dallas-based telecom giant's Atlanta offices, AT&T employees told Business Insider that a lack of enough open desks, parking lots that quickly filled up, and a limited number of elevators is complicating the company's plan to phase out hybrid work.

Internal documents obtained by BI suggest that AT&T is aware that its RTO mandate is asking more people to work on-site than the number of workstations it has at some of its offices.

An internal FAQ that was updated last week said that employees in at least one division should expect workstations for 70-80% of those who are assigned to a particular location.

"As a reminder, employees should not leave personal items, make signage, or add name plates on desks," the document said. "These items will be removed."

A spokesperson for AT&T did not provide immediate comment when contacted by Business Insider.

The document follows a memo last month from CTO Jeremy Legg sent to employees that said his AT&T Technology Services division "will not offer one-for-one seating per employee" under the new RTO rules.

One employee at the Atlanta offices told BI on Monday that he arrived before 7 a.m. to ensure he got a workspace.

Another Atlanta worker said he arrived before 6 a.m. and that the available desks he saw had been filled by employees by 9 a.m., at which point some employees sat in the dining area or around conference tables.

"I actually enjoyed coming to the office and even came four to five days a week," the employee said. He said that he felt the working environment "has deteriorated" as more employees returned to the office since last year's three-days-in-office requirement.

The worker said AT&T employees have already been competing for space and sometimes speaking over one another while conducting simultaneous Microsoft Teams meetings. The elimination of hybrid work is heightening those challenges, the employee added.

The two Atlanta workers, as well as employees at other offices, told BI that finding open parking in a timely manner has been a challenge for themselves and for colleagues, especially at offices that have been converted from less-dense cubicle setups to more tightly packed floor plans.

In communications sent to employees, AT&T has said it will continue to monitor workspace capacity and usage and will make adjustments accordingly. Legg's memo said that the company anticipates some percentage of workers to be out of the office each week due to sick days, work travel, vacation, or other reasons.

Workers in Atlanta also reported seeing signs in front of the office's elevators (which they said have seen increasingly long wait times) with motivational quotes recommending they use nearby stairs instead.

Workers said the signs included phrases like "There is no elevator to the top of the corporate ladder," and "There will be challenges, but each step you take brings you closer to who you're meant to be. Take the stairs." It wasn't clear exactly when the signs were placed, but the Atlanta employees said the signs were gone by Tuesday morning.

One of the Atlanta employees told BI that an additional elevator is planned to be installed at the location.

Meanwhile, more workers are slated to arrive this year under subsequent phases of the company's five-day RTO mandate. AT&T previously said different divisions are setting their own schedules according to their business needs.

AT&T's move away from hybrid work follows similar moves from Amazon, Dell, and others that are requiring workers to be in the office for the entire workweek.

"We believe there is great value in having people connecting, collaborating, and innovating together in an office setting," said one AT&T memo, which was distributed after the initial return-to-office mandate was announced in 2023. "Consolidating our work locations will also help us reduce costs and simplify things for our employees and our customers."

Nearly all of the dozen workers BI has spoken to in recent weeks have said they feel that the new rules may be an attempt to reduce its US workforce.

"This is not about collaboration," one of the Atlanta workers said. "If they can cut costs and have people leave because they're uncomfortable, that's the sweet spot."

If you are an AT&T employee who wants to share your perspective, please contact Dominick via email or text/call/Signal at 646.768.4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Business Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a non-work device when reaching out.

• Amazon delayed its full return-to-office plan in some places because of insufficient office space.
• An internal list shows where Amazon employees will work three days a week until space is ready.
• The list has more than 40 locations where the full five-day RTO policy is delayed.

Amazon delayed its five-day return-to-office plan in some locations because of a lack of space, as Business Insider recently reported.

An internal Amazon list viewed by BI shows where employees are being asked to continue following the company's policy requiring only three days a week in the office.

The locations include major tech hubs such as Santa Clara, California; Austin; Beijing; Shenzhen, China; and Bengaluru, India.

Amazon's original guidance required employees to work from the office five days a week beginning January 2. An Amazon spokesperson told BI on Tuesday that buildings were ready for most employees on that day.

The company's real-estate team late last year started notifying employees that they could continue following their current in-office guidance until workspaces were ready, with delays stretching as late as May, according to internal Amazon notifications viewed by BI.

The company has said the return to office will improve collaboration and bring other benefits. CEO Andy Jassy, in a memo announcing the mandate, said Amazon made the decision to "further strengthen" its culture and teams.

Here are more of the Amazon locations where employees are being told to continue working three days a week in the office: Raleigh, Annapolis Junction, Baltimore, Columbia, Austin, Cupertino, Irvine, Nashville, Boulder, Charlotte, Houston, Jersey City, Newark, Atlanta, Dallas, East Palo Alto, Mexico City, Santa Clara, São Paulo, Tampa, Miami, Brooklyn, Columbus, New York, Sacramento, Hamburg, Munich, Tel Aviv, Amman, Milan, Cairo, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Dubai, Istanbul, Beijing, Hyderabad, Shenzhen, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Shanghai.

Are you a tech-industry employee or someone else with insight to share?

Contact the reporter, Ashley Stewart, via the encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email ([email protected]). Use a nonwork device.

• Remote work is harder to find. That could push workers to consider small firms or self-employment.
• Some bosses point to a desire for higher productivity, but remote work can boost engagement.
• Some roles, like those with tight deadlines, might be better suited to being in the office.

A couple of years ago, not long after getting divorced, Sherita Janielle wanted to make a big move.

So, she put most of her belongings in storage and headed from her pandemic redoubt in Austin to sunny Lisbon. After more than a month in Portugal's capital, Janielle eventually made her way to Colombia, Uruguay, and Argentina.

"I've been popping in and out of places," she told Business Insider. In between, she often returns to the US to see family and friends — and swap out her wardrobe.

Shifting her career from finance to marketing allowed Janielle to work from wherever, a luxury she's come to prize. It's one that fewer workers might enjoy in 2025.

Only about half of full-time workers can do their jobs remotely, according to polling firm Gallup. And among those, some who work for big-name companies like Amazon are increasingly seeing an end to workdays spent in sweatpants and camera-ready shirts as companies mandate a full RTO.

So, to keep or land remote roles, which are already harder to find than in the pandemic era, workers might have to consider going off on their own or looking to smaller firms.

Productivity worries

There's no consensus on whether a full RTO is "better" than hybrid or entirely remote roles. Bosses demanding that workers show up more in person often cite a desire to maintain culture, spur innovation, and foster collaboration. Some point to concerns about productivity.

Nicole Kyle, who researches the future of work, said that IRL work doesn't actually guarantee increased productivity and performance. However, these metrics can go up when employers allow for more remote or hybrid setups, said Kyle, who's cofounder of CMP Research, in part because workers feel more autonomy.

"Nothing is less engaging to employees than not having flexibility and choice," she said.

Gallup notes that full-time remote or hybrid workers tend to have "significantly higher" engagement than on-site workers.

Even so, there are times when being in the workplace makes sense, said Lisa Walker, a managing partner at the executive search firm DHR Global. She told BI that for roles like those in operations or where there's a short-term deadline, remote work can present challenges.

"You want to walk down the hall. You need an answer. You need to react," Walker said. That's harder on Slack.

Going off on your own

A decade ago, after years spent working in offices at big agencies, Curtis Sparrer cofounded a fully remote PR and marketing firm. Too often, he said, startups had to choose between paying rent or making payroll.

"I said, 'What if we never had to make that choice?'" he told BI.

Sparrer and his business partner have grown the firm, called Bospar, to about 70 people. In the early days, the company relied on conference calls and text messages to keep workers connected. Now, it uses tools like Slack and video calls.

The firm's productivity isn't a worry, Sparrer said, because workers are in frequent contact with each other. If someone does slack off, managers will address it, he said. Otherwise, he sees the quiet of home as a boon to productivity.

"When it comes to thoughtful, focused work, nothing beats work from home because that's the way you cut down on distractions," Sparrer said.

To help keep workers connected, the firm occasionally brings people together in person, though not to work.

"They want to do all the cultural things, but they absolutely do not want to work," he said. That's because the firm's employees report they do better work independently. So, they instead use in-person gatherings to connect with colleagues.

Focus on output

Deborah Perry Piscione, cofounder of Work3 Institute and coauthor of the forthcoming book "Employment is Dead," told BI that focusing on output rather than where the job gets done can be savvy for employers.

"I don't understand what the fear is. At the end of the day, this is not about control. It's about output and productivity," she said.

Piscione said that early in her career, working in Washington, DC, there was an expectation that employees should be at their desks from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., no matter what. She said she never understood why she had to stick around if she was more efficient or skipped lunch to wrap up her work early.

Increasingly, Piscione said, employers and employees need to view work as a partnership. That's especially important in the face of technology like artificial intelligence that could eliminate roles or rejigger how people do their jobs.

Besides, she said, workers have more ways of getting by than only a few years ago.

"We're in this hyper, super gig economy where I don't have to take your crap anymore," Piscione said, referring to overbearing employers.

For Janielle, the globe-hopping marketer who describes herself as an older millennial, an additional remote job looked enticing: chief nomad officer. She applied for and got the role at Shift, which makes a web browser aimed at boosting productivity. The goal of her work is to demonstrate that it's possible to get a lot done from anywhere, she said.

Janielle said she enjoys showcasing what's doable. She's been to some 45 countries and said the more she travels, the more she meets others who are succeeding outside the office without sacrificing productivity.

"There's still a lot of space in the economy for these remote workers to thrive," she said.

Do you have something to share about remote work? Business Insider would like to hear from you. Email our workplace team from a nonwork device at [email protected] with your story, or ask for one of our reporter's Signal numbers.

• Kyle Ankney is looking for a remote role in PR because he has cerebral palsy.
• Ankney's insurance covers in-home care, complicating in-office work.
• The 34-year-old has found there are fewer remote roles in PR — a broader trend in the workforce.

Kyle Ankney, 34, lives near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and works in public relations, including running his own firm. He's looking for a remote role in PR because he has cerebral palsy, which limits his physical abilities, and his insurance covers in-home care. Business Insider has reviewed medical records that confirm his diagnosis. This essay has been edited for length and clarity.

I never really wanted to run my own PR agency. Yet a client who didn't want to lose me convinced me to start my own firm. Now, the client is going on an indefinite hiatus and isn't sure if they'll return.

So, for the past few months, I've been trying to re-enter a traditional PR agency-type role, to have a team to grow — to do all the things I enjoy, minus running a business. I'm looking at, I would say, mid-senior level or something around director level.

I've been doing this work for more than 10 years, quite successfully — not to toot my own horn.

One recruiter told me I was super qualified but said I was probably hitting bumps because when you get to my level of experience, many people are expected to manage teams. Then, the recruiter told me I might have to consider looking for a more junior role because most managing jobs would be in person.

Some of the conversation now about remote work goes beyond it just being a perk. It's almost like it's a drawback for some employers.

My condition requiring the nurse three times a day is the reason that remote has gone from a luxury for me to now being a necessity.

The way my insurance works, it only allows the nurse to come to one address. So, even if I were to find a job here in South Florida, I would still have to be remote because of that.

Getting this care took decades

It took me 20 years on a waiting list to get this level of home care by a nurse covered through Medicaid. If I leave Florida and go anywhere else, I lose those services and have to go to the back of the line.

Needing extra help from a nurse started four years ago when I was 30. It changed my world in the worst way. It now feels like the cerebral palsy and the wheelchair and all of the other BS that comes with it is nothing in comparison to needing the nurse to help me go to the bathroom. This I literally, physically, cannot handle on my own.

So, it's been a rough year trying to run a business, trying to find a job — it's just been a lot. I'm not trying to be completely unrealistic, but having as much resistance as I've had has been surprising just because you're taught, at least in society, that the more senior you become and the more experience you get under your belt, the easier it is to make connections and find opportunities.

As someone who's managed a team of six, I know how difficult it was to direct them remotely because there was a lot of oversight needed to make sure that mistakes weren't being made. There was a lot of back and forth, and ultimately, I was able to figure out how to do that quite well at my agency.

I try to reiterate whenever I have opportunities to meet with anyone in my field that working from home is necessary and that I've figured out how to manage a team remotely. I say, "I understand that this may be a point of hesitation for you. However, I've been able to navigate it this way for so many years."

When the recruiter told me I should consider more junior roles, my ego was like, "That's absurd." Yet now that I've been looking for four months, which feels like four years, my savings are drying up, and I'm not making ends meet. I've been lowering all the search criteria and the salary range and I'm not really finding a bunch more.

The last time I was looking for a job, I got remote positions just by chance, but I would have been able to do in-office if it was absolutely required — and now I cannot.

There are fewer remote roles

In 2020, because of the pandemic, I saw a lot of PR opportunities becoming fully remote. It was a game changer for me in terms of opening up opportunities. But because I've been running my own agency for several years now, I hadn't been paying attention to what was remote versus hybrid versus in-person. I was shocked by the level of swing back.

I've reached out to everyone I know in PR, which is a substantial group. They're saying things like, "I'll send people your way."

I have looked up every agency I wanted to work for, and I wrote a blunt email. It wasn't, "Hey, I need a job." It was, "Hi, I respect you. I admire you. I need advice because here's what I'm running into. I would love the opportunity just to pick your brain." That has been successful in the sense that I have had three or four conversations with people at different agencies, yet no one is quite hiring.

If there's a role that I'm particularly interested in, I'll go to RocketReach, I'll look for the best email that I can find, and I'll say, "I've already applied. Here's my situation." I continue to follow up to try to make myself stand out.

You have to try. I'm shocked by how many postings and emails I've received that say, "We're not hiring for this role, but we want to collect résumés." Or if you apply for positions, you get "We're on pause." Or it's just complete ghosting. I've experienced all three.

I don't know if this is the best- or worst-case scenario, but I recently interviewed with an agency, and it went to six rounds. The role was listed as remote. Then they were like, "You know, we might need travel to be involved, so we have to take this a different direction."

You would think you would know that at round one. I don't just blindly apply to jobs. I read for things like whether travel is required. That particular posting said nothing about travel. So there have been a whole bunch of hurdles.

It's just a game of resilience at this point — just holding on and crossing your fingers and praying.

Do you have something to share about what you're seeing in your job search? Business Insider would like to hear from you. Email our workplace team from a nonwork device at [email protected] with your story, or ask for one of our reporter's Signal numbers.

• In 2024, companies were seizing the AI opportunity and calling workers back to the office.
• Few big businesses embodied those trends more than PC maker and cloud storage provider Dell.
• BI spoke to the company and analysts about some of Dell's biggest developments over the year.

Dell made its name in the 1990s as the trusty brand for office PCs.

It has since evolved into a major server vendor and data storage provider, but outside tech circles, the company has mostly retained its original reputation.

In the last year, Dell's 40th as a business, it's become clear that another transformation is underway at the Texas-based company, one that positions it as a key player in the AI game.

The company has also embodied another major business trend of the year — the RTO movement.

Business Insider spoke to the company and tech analysts about some of Dell's biggest developments over the year.

Dell's AI transformation

Adopting AI has been at the forefront of most business strategies this year, Dell included.

The company rolled out AI across its internal operating model in the summer. It has also made it its mission to help all enterprises do the same.

"Our purpose really is to accelerate the adoption of AI by our customer," Vivek Mohindra, Dell's senior vice president of corporate strategy, told BI.

Bob O'Donnell, president and chief analyst at Technalysis Research, said Dell has been "aggressive" in bringing all the infrastructure and services needed for AI adoption to market.

Dell's product suite, which it refers to as the Dell AI Factory, now includes AI PCs, GPU-enabled servers, storage offerings, networking solutions, and advisory services.

Mohindra said Dell's lineup of PowerEdge servers has doubled this year from five to 10; six are air-cooled, and four are direct liquid-cooled.

They are exactly the kind of energy-efficient, high-density systems that companies require to run their own models on-premises. If Dell's servers can power heavy AI workloads, then its data and cloud-based offering can help streamline and scale data workflows.

The nuanced offering has helped Dell capture the market of very large customers or "tier-2 CSPs."

Think the likes of Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Pfizer, or Vultr, explained Patrick Moorhead, CEO and chief analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.

Moorhead, who has been following Dell for 14 years, said the company had done even better than he expected this year. It is taking advantage of the surge in companies wanting to run their own models and store data on-premises. It has succeeded in optimizing its offering by adding deployment services on top of great engineering, he added.

"It's a clever strategy and it's something that I didn't necessarily expect to see so much success so quickly," said Moorhead. "They're pulling it all together and making it a reality for enterprises."

Dell is also partnering with Silicon Valley's biggest names. It already works closely with Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Intel. In June, it announced that it was providing hardware to power the supercomputer being built by Elon Musk's company, xAI.

In November, Dell and Meta joined forces to provide on-premises AI infrastructure using Llama 2 AI models and Dell hardware.

These partnerships show how much Dell is extending its reach and make a statement that there is opportunity at the company, said O'Donnell.

"The fact that they're able to meet the requirements and demands of somebody like a Meta is a great sign."

The success of this AI strategy was evident in Dell's most recent quarterly earnings.

Revenue from the Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) — which includes AI servers, storage, and other network capabilities — jumped to a record $11.4 billion for the third quarter, a 34% increase on the previous year.

Specifically, servers and networking revenue was up 58% year over year. The company's shares have now soared from below $34 in September 2022 to around $117 in late December 2024, giving it a market capitalization of around $82 billion.

Nobody out there is indestructible, said Moorhead, but Dell's broad offering, strong supply chain, and scalability have set it up for continued success.

"They're one of the few companies in the world that sells all of those pieces. So I think they've positioned themselves pretty well," he said.

Mohindra is just as positive: "As I tell my teams, buckle up because next year, the change is going to be even more accelerated than this year."

RTO

As it rolled out products for the AI future, Dell was also making some big internal changes.

In August, the company implemented a major restructuring of business operations, including a round of layoffs. Dell also pushed a steady RTO policy throughout the year, which was connected to AI.

"As we enter a new AI world, in-person human interaction will be more important than ever," an internal memo sent by executives in September stated.

The policy blocked some workers from promotions and saw workers tracked for their attendance. For more than a decade, Dell had allowed some staff to work remotely leaving many of its employees frustrated by the changes.

BI obtained data on the workforce that showed close to 50% of Dell's full-time workers in the US opted to stay remote.

In September, another RTO policy called sales staff back to the office full time. "It became clear to us that there are huge benefits for sales to be together in terms of learning from each other, training, and mentorship," Mohindra told BI.

Several employees told BI that they had heard unofficially from managers that the five-day order would be extended to other departments in 2025. When asked if that was true, Mohindra said Dell is "a continuously learning organization."

Dell was more vocal than most of its competitors about RTO, said O'Donnell and Moorhead, but both analysts did not believe it would have a major impact on the company.

"It doesn't seem like their policies are radically different than what a fair number of tech companies are starting to do," said O'Donnell. "It's not like I think Dell's going to lose a whole bunch of people to HP or Lenovo."

"I think it will be a good thing for growth," said Moorhead, "especially product development."

It feels like tech workers have caught very few breaks over the past several years, between ongoing mass layoffs, stagnating wages amid inflation, AI supposedly coming for jobs, and unpopular orders to return to office that, for many, threaten to disrupt work-life balance.

But in 2024, a potentially critical mass of tech workers seemed to reach a breaking point. As labor rights groups advocating for tech workers told Ars, these workers are banding together in sustained strong numbers and are either winning or appear tantalizingly close to winning better worker conditions at major tech companies, including Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

In February, the industry-wide Tech Workers Coalition (TWC) noted that "the tech workers movement is far more expansive and impactful" than even labor rights advocates realized, noting that unionized tech workers have gone beyond early stories about Googlers marching in the streets and now "make the headlines on a daily basis."

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• Nearly 75% of executives said in a survey they'd mandate at least three days a week in the office in 2025.
• Many companies cite collaboration, productivity, and culture as reasons for office return.
• RTO mandates could lead to higher turnover, especially among women and skilled workers.

Many bosses with an RTO policy in place plan to ask employees to spend more time in the office next year.

In a recent survey from Resume.org, nearly three-quarters of execs at companies that have already implemented some form of an RTO policy said they would require workers to be in the office at least three days a week by the end of 2025.

The November survey of 900 business leaders underscores a general trend of bosses demanding to see more heads bobbing atop cubicles in the new year.

Some of the companies demanding more face time instead of FaceTime are big-name employers like Amazon, AT&T, and Starbucks.

In the Resume.org survey, 73% of respondents whose companies already have an RTO rule said they would require workers to report to the office at least three times a week by the end of 2025. Almost one in three expect to require workers to come in every workday, while only 2% expect to allow workers to show up once a week or less.

While many employers calling workers back to the office point to productivity — as respondents did in the Resume.org survey — being in person doesn't necessarily boost how much gets done, said Nicole Kyle, who researches the future of work.

She told Business Insider that many studies suggest productivity and performance don't drastically change when workers aren't side-by-side. Instead, such metrics can remain steady or even increase if an organization allows more remote or hybrid work, Kyle, the cofounder of CMP Research, said.

Various studies have come to conflicting conclusions on how remote, hybrid, or fully in-office work impacts productivity — and one complicating factor could be the matter of how best to define or measure productivity.

Bosses might not care if you quit

Employees, in some cases, have pushed back — often unsuccessfully — against RTO mandates. Yet many business leaders don't regard these mandates as asking too much of the people they're paying to do a job.

In the survey, about one-third of bosses said they were worried workers would quit because of the RTO policies, while 49% said they weren't very concerned or weren't concerned at all. Of those surveyed, 18% were uncertain.

About seven in 10 execs said the reason to have workers back IRL is to promote collaboration and teamwork. Nearly six in 10 said the move was aimed at improving communication. And about half pointed to a desire to strengthen the organization's culture and raise productivity.

Lisa Walker, a managing partner at the executive search firm DHR Global, told BI that some employers can benefit from bringing back workers because it allows more experienced people to mentor newer workers. She said that's often harder to do when workers aren't in person.

"To get the junior people into the office, you need to get the senior people back to the office," she said.

In the Resume.org survey, four in 10 respondents said they wanted to use office space that might otherwise lie fallow.

It's understandable that bosses wouldn't want to let sometimes pricey real estate go unused, though strict in-office rules can also have a cost.

Researchers from the University of Pittsburg and other academic institutions recently reported that S&P 500 companies that require workers to return to the office subsequently experience "abnormally high" rates of workers quitting and have a harder time filling open roles.

The researchers found that those leaving are often female, more senior, or more skilled. The findings are based on the employment histories of more than 3 million tech and finance workers, as reported on LinkedIn.

"The return-to-office mandates are having pretty specific and negative impacts and causing brain drain from companies," said Kyle, who wasn't involved in the research.

Perhaps with those types of concerns in mind, some leaders have said they likely would only tighten the RTO screws if productivity suffered. Among them, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in October that the company wouldn't require workers to come to the office as long as they remained on task when working from home.

Do you have something to share about your employer's RTO plan, something else at work, or in your job search? Business Insider would like to hear from you. Email our workplace team from a nonwork device at [email protected] with your story, or ask for one of our reporter's Signal numbers.

• "Quiet vacationing," "coffee badging," and "ghost jobs" were part of the corporate lexicon in 2024.
• These are just some of the trends that came to dominate our conversations around work.
• Here's a look back at work in 2024.

Ghost jobs. Coffee badging. Quiet firing. Quiet vacationing.

The buzziest workplace trends this year didn't just become well-known tropes but also highlighted an ongoing power struggle between workers and bosses after the pandemic shook up the way people do their jobs.

The year's biggest movements reflect "shifts in work models, technological integration, and employee expectations," says Lauren Winans, CEO and HR consultant at Next Level Benefits.

While some of these are by no means new fads, they all featured prominently in the discourse around work this year. Here are the trends that dominated the cultural conversation in 2024:

Ghost jobs

Ghost jobs are nothing new but got a lot of attention this year.

These are roles which employers claim to be looking to fill even though they may not actually be hiring for such positions.

Employers may list ghost jobs for a few reasons. They might want to suggest they're doing well and growing; they could be trying to ready a talent pool for actual positions opening in the future; or they may want to imply to overworked employees that they'll get some additional help soon.

Quiet vacationing

This one pretty much explains itself, but just in case: When employees go on vacation without using any time off or telling their bosses, they're said to be quiet vacationing.

RTO

Return-to-office mandates continued rolling out at big firms this year. Amazon, one of the country's biggest employers, became one of the highest-profile companies to announce a full 5-day-a-week return to the office. (Its implementation has been delayed for some employees though, due to a lack of space.)

Hushed hybrid

As employers tightened the reins on remote work, some employees started carving out a new working arrangement under the table.

Enter the hushed hybrid schedule, in which employees skirt RTO mandates by getting their manager's approval to continue working from home on days they're technically required to be in the office.

Managers, for their part, might agree to do this to keep their employees happy (or to keep them, period). They also probably have a more personal connection with the workers affected by a mandate than the executives enforcing it. And of course, managers who are themselves opposed to RTO plans might also cut employees some slack out of sympathy.

Coffee badging

Another method of evading RTO is coffee badging — though it still technically requires that an employee return to the office.

The practice involves going to work to swipe your badge so your attendance is logged. But instead of spending the rest of the workday there, you kill some time by grabbing a coffee, or showing face with a quick lap around the office, before returning home to do most of your actual work there.

PIPs

Performance improvement plans, or PIPs, usually consist of a series of goals set for an employee to improve in areas where a boss says they're underperforming. If they're not completed in the allotted time, usually a few months or less, the employee will face termination.

PIPs are certainly not unique this year but statistically have been more frequently issued in recent years. They got renewed attention in 2024 as part of the discussion around ways employers trim headcount unannounced.

Quiet firing, silent layoffs, and stealth sackings

Yes, these are all somehow different things.

Between RTO mandates and PIPs, "quiet firing," which gained a lot of buzz in recent years, stayed in the spotlight in 2024. It refers to a boss or employer's unspoken attempt to encourage employees to quit by making the role more uncomfortable, as opposed to facing the monetary and reputational costs associated with explicitly laying them off.

Related phrases include "silent layoffs," which refers to giving employees severance packages but asking them to be discreet about their exiting the firm.

There's also "stealth sackings," coined by the Financial Times to describe firing employees over minor offenses. The newspaper cited Meta's dismissal of two dozen staff for using $25 GrubHub meal credits to buy non-food items as an example, and EY's firing of dozens of staffers for watching multiple online training courses simultaneously.

Other key trends

There were also other trends that, though they lack flashy names, also shaped how we worked in 2024.

The main one, of course, was the growing adoption of AI in the workplace, the "standout trend" of the year, according to Amy Schabacker Dufrane, CEO of the Human Resource Certification Institute and the Human Resource Standards Institute.

Winans says other trends included an emphasis on upskilling and reskilling to keep up with technological advancements and changing job requirements, as well as increased labor organizing efforts.

What can we expect in 2025?

Next year, the integration of AI at work will no doubt continue.

"Employees expect training and transparency about AI's role, while employers navigate concerns about job security and ethics," says Dufrane.

Other themes to watch include an emphasis on skills-based hiring and employee wellness programs, as well as ongoing changes to companies' ESG and DEI strategies.

Employee engagement in the US hitting an 11-year low in 2024, coupled with the possibility it may be easier to change jobs in 2025 mean that revenge quitting may also be the next big thing in workplace trends come next year, according to a Glassdoor report.

The phrase refers to dissatisfied employees being vocal with their discontent and resigning, often with little or no notice, knowing it could negatively impact their employer.

Heading into 2025, "monitoring employee satisfaction will be more important than ever," says Dufrane.

"We may see an increase in trends like bare-minimum attendance or revenge quitting as return-to-work mandates require employees to be on-site more than the post-COVID norm," she adds. "Prioritizing open communication, as well as autonomy, fairness, and a high-trust environment, will be critical for organizations to succeed."

• AT&T's CTO told his US team there wouldn't be "one-for-one" seating upon the full office return.
• He added that AT&T would stagger its five-day-a-week mandate as more office space was constructed.
• Some teams may see their full office return delayed if construction doesn't finish in time, he said.

AT&T Technology Services employees in the US won't have "one-for-one" seating when they begin returning to the office five days a week in the new year, the company's chief technology officer wrote in a new memo.

The telecom giant's CTO, Jeremy Legg, detailed how the new in-office policy would be implemented across his US team in a Wednesday memo obtained by Business Insider.

The new in-office requirement for US AT&T Technology Services employees will begin a phased rollout on January 6 and is expected to be fully implemented for most teams by March 3, the memo said.

"Our purpose at AT&T is connecting people to greater possibility," Legg wrote. "We firmly believe that working together, in person and in proximity to our peers, is the best way for ATS employees to fulfill that purpose."

Legg oversees AT&T's technology organizations for business, consumer, IT and cloud, data and analytics, security, network architecture and AT&T Labs, and new product development. The AT&T Technology Services team has roughly 10,000 workers in the US.

AT&T told BI that organizations within the company have the flexibility to determine the right approach for their teams based on business needs and that many were staggering the return of employees.

The memo came after BI first reported that AT&T was tightening its return-to-office mandate from three days a week to five full workdays.

Legg said in the email that the company understood that not every employee could be on-site every single day because of "travel, vacations, or other reasons" and that "leaders will work with employees to provide the needed occasional flexibility."

While several expansion projects are underway in Atlanta and Dallas, Legg said AT&T "will not offer one-for-one seating per employee" and the company "will observe capacity vs. demand and make adjustments" as needed.

Legg's memo said that teams assigned to AT&T's Atlanta-area locations would be notified if their full-return-to-office date was delayed as construction on additional space progressed.

Several employees have told BI that workspace capacity has been a challenge, even with the prior hybrid arrangement.

Employees told BI it's common for workers to end up sitting in the hallways or working in the cafeteria to avoid running afoul of the company's attendance-tracking system.

One employee said their office had more than 1,200 people assigned to it but only about 150 desks available.

"I know returning to the office 5 days a week is a significant change for some," Legg said in his memo. "By coming together in person, we can strengthen our connections, foster a vibrant culture, and achieve our shared goals."

Read the full memo

Dear ATS U.S.-Based Management Employees,

Our purpose at AT&T is connecting people to greater possibility. We firmly believe that working together, in person and in proximity to our peers, is the best way for ATS employees to fulfill that purpose. By fostering in-person interactions, we can form stronger relationships, build trust and enhance our collaboration, innovation, and overall effectiveness as a team.

Full-Time Office Presence in 2025

That's why l'm asking all employees with Full Time Office designations (NFTO, MFTO CFTO) to return to the office full time, with staggered starts based on management level and office space availability. FTO employees in ATS will work in the office full-time, 5 days a week according to this schedule:

• January 6, 2025: All U.S.-based supervising level 4s and above
• February 3, 2025: All U.S.-based supervising level 3s and above in all locations except Atlanta and Alpharetta¹
• March 3, 2025²: All other U.S.-based management employees in all locations except Atlanta and Alpharetta¹

¹Construction of additional space is underway at Lenox, with an expected readiness date between April and June. As construction progresses, employees in Atlanta and Alpharetta will be notified when it's time to work in the office 5 days a week.

²Construction of additional space for ATS teams is underway at Dallas Headquarters and at 2900 West Plano Pkwy. Employees in these locations will return to the office March 3 if the space is ready. If completion is delayed, we will communicate further instructions to affected teams.

As we stagger the return to 5 days per week per the timeline above, FTO employees should continue to be present in the office 3 to 5 days per week. There is no change in expectations for Future Office Workers or virtual workers. We periodically review the needs of the business and may occasionally change an employee's office designation based on those needs.

Fostering Collaboration

Between now and early first quarter 2025, we will be working with Global Workplace Services to align teams to neighborhoods on each of our campuses.

Even with employees working full time in the office, we know that not all employees will be in every day due to travel, vacations, or other reasons. We will not offer one-for-one seating per employee. We will observe capacity vs. demand and make adjustments working with Workplace Services as needed.

Flexibility and Accountability

We know employees occasionally need to work remotely for various reasons. Leaders will work with employees to provide the needed occasional flexibility. This balance between flexibility and accountability is essential to maintaining our high standards of performance and collaboration. Senior leadership will review overall presence trends via How and Where We Work presence dashboards. With this data, we will work toward improving things like seating, availability of amenities, and parking options.

Next Steps

The How and Where ATS Works SharePoint site is your definitive source of information on returning to the office full-time, including campus and neighborhood information as it becomes available. It is currently being updated to reflect the changing expectations for our organization. Supervisors can also answer questions. We are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible for everyone involved.

Additional Thoughts

I know returning to the office 5 days a week is a significant change for some. As we outlined during Analyst and Investor Day, we have tremendous momentum in growing this company the right way. That momentum will accelerate when we reap the benefits of faster collaboration and innovation. By coming together in person, we can strengthen our connections, foster a vibrant culture, and achieve our shared goals.

Your dedication and commitment to excellence are the driving forces behind our success.

Thank you for your continued hard work and support. I look forward to seeing you all in the office and working together to create an even brighter future for ATS.

Jeremy

If you are an AT&T worker who wants to share your perspective, please contact Dominick via email or text/call/Signal at 646-768-4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Business Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a nonwork device when reaching out.

• Staff at major companies have asked their leaders if there are plans to follow Amazon's full return to office.
• Firms like Meta, Google, and Microsoft have a hybrid setup — however, execs say they're eyeing productivity.
• Research findings on the subject are varied, and the debate will likely continue in 2025.

Executives at major companies are referencing a specific term to hedge when asked by employees if they plan to follow in Amazon's footsteps and implement a return to 5 days a week in the office.

That word? Productivity.

While Amazon has been the most high-profile example this year of a full return to office policy, set to go into effect in January, telecom giant AT&T has also elected to double down on in-person work with a similar 5-day policy, Business Insider first reported.

In the wake of Amazon's announcement, executives at both Google and Microsoft, which require employees to be in the office at least 3 days a week, have fielded questions from staff wondering if the days of hybrid work are numbered.

Microsoft's executive vice president of cloud and AI, Scott Guthrie, said the company wouldn't change the hybrid work policy unless it noticed a drop in productivity, BI reported in September.

In October, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company had no plans to order employees back to the office, so long as employees remain productive during their at-home work days, BI previously reported.

Over at Meta, Mark Zuckerberg said last year that "early analysis of performance data," indicated productivity increases for early-career engineers in the office at least 3 days a week. A few months later, the company announced it was requiring employees to return to the office 3 days a week.

Executives at Dell called the company's sales team back to the office 5 days a week starting at the end of September, writing in a memo, "Our data shows that sales teams are more productive when onsite."

Though Amazon did not explicitly name productivity as a reason for its full return to the office, CEO Andy Jassy emphasized a similar term: effectiveness.

Being back in person 5 days a week makes it "easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another," he wrote at the time.

For those committing to a full return to office, preparing campuses for the influx of employees in the new year is its own challenge. Amazon has since delayed the announced January 2 effective date of the new mandate for some employees because it doesn't have enough office space in some locations, BI reported earlier this month.

As CEOs and company leaders keep an eye on how employees in remote or hybrid setups perform, various studies since the onset of the pandemic have attempted to measure and compare the productivity of employees who work at home and in-office. Research studies have produced conflicting results, further complicated by the matter of how best to define or measure productivity.

Goldman Sachs, which has a 5-day-in-office policy, reviewed several analyses that used different ways of evaluating changes in work-from-home productivity, from call-center workers who were randomly chosen to work from home to comparing the productivity of randomly assigned remote workers with their in-office peers.

In short, it's hard to say for sure, and executives are deciding what their long-term setup will be after a year in which some of the world's biggest companies put a renewed focus on being "lean" and "efficient."

Meanwhile, some employees have returned to commuting in (sometimes "coffee-badging" in and returning home), others have relocated to comply with a policy change, and some have resigned to pursue a hybrid or fully remote opportunity. As companies tighten their belts and conduct layoffs, other workers have taken to workplace forums to wonder if some of the RTO mandates have been a possible "quiet layoffs" tactic.

As more major global companies revisit their policies and make changes, CEOs are likely to face more questions on the topic going into the new year.

For some, the answer is simple: Stay productive and we'll stay flexible.

• Many major companies are requiring employees to return to the office full or part-time.
• Business Insider compiled a running list of the companies calling employees back.
• The list includes companies like JPMorgan, Starbucks, and Amazon.

The start of 2025 could herald a new return to office push.

Corporate giants like Amazon and AT&T announced at the end of 2024 that they would bring their employees back into the office five days a week this year. Sweetgreen, too, said in December that it's upping support staff's in-person requirement for 2025.

Other major employers, including JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, have also abandoned the hybrid attendance policy they adopted during the pandemic and instead implemented full return-to-office mandates.

Several executives and leaders have said they believe productivity increases when workers are in the office together, while others hope to increase in-person collaboration. Even some CEOs who previously praised the flexibility of remote work have backpedaled, telling workers to comply with RTO mandates. Some are tracking attendance and firing employees who don't comply.

Here's a list, in alphabetical order, of major companies requiring employees to return to offices. Business Insider will update this list regularly.

Amazon

CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a September 16 memo that Amazon would end remote work starting in 2025.

"We've decided that we're going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID," Jassy said. "When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant."

The CEO cited easier employee collaboration and connection and said in-person work would strengthen the company's culture. This echoes his February 2023 memo, which mandated employees spend at least three days a week in the office.

Not everyone agrees. Some Amazon employees took to an internal Slack channel to criticize the new RTO policy, BI's Ashley Stewart first reported, with one staffer writing that it was "significantly more strict and out of its mind" than pre-COVID operations.

"This is not 'going back' to how it was before," they wrote. "It's just going backwards."

The critical reaction is reminiscent of employees' response to 2023's surprise return-to-office rule. Thousands of Amazon workers joined a Slack channel to share their thoughts, with some even organizing to file a petition against the change.

In December, BI reported that Amazon is delaying full RTO for some employees over office-capacity issues.

Apple

In August 2022, Apple's senior leaders told workers they had to return to the office at least three days a week after previously requiring two days a week. CEO Tim Cook said the decision was meant to restore "in-person collaboration." Some employees fought back and issued a petition shortly after the announcement, arguing that staffers can do "exceptional work" from home.

Despite the pushback, Apple's hybrid work program launched the following month and is still in place.

AT&T

AT&T confirmed to BI that it's requiring all office employees to work on-site five days a week starting in January.

The change follows about a year of AT&T accommodating a hybrid schedule in its widely publicized office push.

"The majority of our employees and leaders never stopped working on location for the full work week — including during the pandemic," a spokesperson for the telecom giant told BI.

AT&T told BI it's updating its facilities amid the policy change.

"As we continue to evolve our model, we are enhancing our facilities and workspaces, adapting our benefits programs, and incorporating best practices to ensure our employees are best equipped to serve our customers," the spokesperson added.

BlackRock

In 2023, BlackRock mandated employees return to the office four days a week. The investment firm, which is headquartered in New York City, intended to bring employees into its then newly leased office space — which spans 1 million square feet across 15 floors, according to Hudson Yards.

In a May 2023 memo sent by the company's COO, Rob Goldstein, and the head of human resources, Caroline Heller, the execs wrote: "Career development happens in teaching moments between team members, and it is accelerated during market-moving moments, when we step up and get into the mix. All of this requires us to be together in the office."

Additionally, the memo notified staffers that the firm would give them the opportunity to work remotely for two weeks during a relevant time period in their country, to offer "seasonal flexibility."

Chipotle

The fast-food chain announced in June 2023 that corporate workers should work in the office four days a week, Bloomberg reported. Chipotle had previously required workers to show up three days a week, according to the report.

Citigroup

Citigroup asked its 600 US workers, who were previously eligible to work remotely, to return to the office full-time, Bloomberg reported. In a memo released by the investment firm in May, the majority of staff are reportedly still able to work a hybrid schedule, with up to two days a week outside the office.

HSBC and Barclays followed suit, mandating workers to come into the office five days a week, according to the report.

Vaccinated Citigroup employees across the US were asked to return to the office for at least two days a week in March 2022, an internal memo obtained by Reuters said.

Dell

Dell told its sales staff to return to the office five days a week starting on September 30. Previously, the company let US employees pick between working remotely or following a hybrid schedule with about three days a week in the office.

September's sales-team mandate came with just a few days' notice, Business Insider reported, sending employees with kids into a hurry to find childcare.

Disney

In a January 2023 memo obtained by Business Insider, CEO Bob Iger told workers that starting that March, any Disney staff member working "in a hybrid fashion" would need to return to Disney's offices four days a week.

In response, over 2,300 employees signed a petition asking Iger to reconsider the mandate.

"This policy will slow, or even reverse, our post-COVID recovery and growth by creating critical resource shortages and causing irreplaceable institutional knowledge loss," signees wrote, according to The Washington Post.

Goldman Sachs

In March 2022, CEO David Solomon told Fortune that the company was asking employees to return to the office five days a week. Seven months later, he told CNBC that about 65% of staffers were working in the office.

However, some staff have failed to follow the policy a year into its implementation, causing senior managers to become frustrated and Goldman Sachs to further crack down on employees to return to the office full-time, Bloomberg reported.

Google

In March 2022, Google employees in the San Francisco Bay Area and "several other US locations" were told to return to the office for at least three days a week starting the following month.

The next year, however, the company tightened RTO expectations, telling staff in an email viewed by BI that office attendance would factor into their performance reviews.

Fiona Cicconi, Google's chief people officer, wrote in the memo that requests to work remotely full time will now be considered "by exception only."

Some employees expressed feeling "frustrated" with the new policy. One staffer previously told BI, "We don't like being micromanaged like school kids."

IBM

At the start of 2024, IBM told managers to either come into offices or leave the company.

IBM asked all US managers to report to an office or client location at least three days a week, according to a memo viewed by Bloomberg.

A source told the outlet that staff would have to live within 50 miles of an IBM office or client location. The memo said employees had until August to complete their relocation arrangements, and those who were unable to comply with the new policy must "separate from IBM."

CEO Arvind Krishna previously told the news outlet that employees' careers could suffer if they work from home. He said that although he wasn't forcing his own staffers back to the office, he thought remote workers may struggle to get promotions.

JPMorgan

JPMorgan Chase was a first mover in the full return to office push.

The bank began requiring managing directors to work in person five days a week in April 2023 — and, at the time, reminded all other employees to come in at least three days a week.

Now, the company plans to double down. Bloomberg reported in January 2025 that JPMorgan may soon require all of its workers to return to the office five days a week and eliminate the option of remote work entirely.

CEO Jamie Dimon has long been vocal about the importance of onsite work in the face of pushback from employees.

"I completely understand why someone doesn't want to commute an hour and a half every day, totally got it," he told The Economist in July 2023. "Doesn't mean they have to have a job here either."

The company has also been collecting data on staff activity, including tracking attendance.

Meta

Meta updated its remote work policies in September 2023, requiring employees to head into the office three days a week.

It had also stopped offering remote work in new job listings. People familiar with the company previously told BI that hiring managers could no longer post new jobs that list the work location as "remote" or outside an existing office.

In June 2023, the company doubled down on its RTO efforts, telling workers that their attendance would be tracked daily and that failure to comply could lead to termination.

However, some employees returning to the office said they were met with a lack of space and privacy, with one worker calling the mandate "a mess."

Redfin

In April 2023, real estate company Redfin announced an updated return-to-office policy via a memo from CEO Glenn Kelman.

The memo noted that starting July 2023, Redfin would require "headquarters employees" who live within 20 miles of the company's Seattle, San Francisco, and Frisco offices to work from the office for a full day on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

The company said those who live beyond the 20-mile radius were required to visit the office in person once a quarter for a day or more of meetings.

To hold employees accountable, the memo included a "no-exceptions" section, reading that "to determine your distance from an office, we'll use Google Maps, with the distance from your home address measured in miles driven over roads by car."

Salesforce

Salesforce told employees in an internal memo seen by The San Francisco Standard in July that, as of October 1, the majority of workers had to be in an office four to five days a week.

According to the memo, the new policy is mandated for select staff in sales, workplace services, data center engineering, and on-site support technicians.

Early in 2023, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff revised the company's annual strategic plan, including return-to-office mandates, according to a draft shared in an internal Slack message viewed by BI.

The updated draft return-to-office policy required nonremote employees to work three days a week in the office and employees in "non-remote" and "customer-facing" roles to work four days a week. Engineers must work from the office 10 days per quarter, down from 20 in the initial draft, which was updated based on employee feedback.

Snap

Snap implemented a new mandate in September 2023, requiring employees to work in an office at least four days a week. The change represented a shift from the company's former "remote first" policy, which allowed employees to work from home or elsewhere.

Employees previously told BI that some managers told them the company can track workers' WiFi connections to see who is complying.

Starbucks

In a January 2023 memo to corporate staffers, then-CEO Howard Schultz said employees within commuting distance would be required to return to the office at least three days a week.

Schultz said some staff had failed to "meet their minimum promise of one day a week" and also said that Starbucks baristas didn't have the "privilege" of working from home. The executive had previously said he "pleaded" with workers to come back to the office.

Starbucks employees responded by signing an open letter protesting the company's return-to-office mandate.

In September 2024, former Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol took over as CEO of the coffee chain.

In October, the company threatened to fire staff if they did not comply with the RTO policy, Bloomberg first reported, citing an internal memo.

Beginning in January, the company plans to initiate a "standardized process" to hold workers accountable to the hybrid schedule at the team level, where consequences will cover "up to, and including, separation," according to the email obtained by Bloomberg.

Employees, however, may request exemptions due to physical or mental medical reasons.

Sweetgreen

Salad chain Sweetgreen is shifting to a four-day workweek from January 2.

The mandate will apply to its few hundred support staff who do not work at the chain's restaurants, Bloomberg reported on December 18.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Sweetgreen's cofounder and chief executive Jonathan Neman said that the company will move to a "hard four" days in the office policy, a shift from its current "more flexible" three to four-day policy.

He said the decision was in the works earlier in the year then solidified after Amazon put out its own five-day workweek RTO announcement in September.

"That was the big turning point where everyone's like: 'Oh, they're doing it, now we can do it,'" Neman said to Bloomberg.

Representatives of Sweetgreen did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, sent outside regular business hours.

Tesla

In June 2022, Tesla employees were notified of a mandatory return-to-office policy.

The email from Elon Musk told employees "If you don't show up, we will assume you have resigned," and said that everyone at Tesla must work from the office at least 40 hours a week.

Musk, who has called remote work "morally wrong," nodded to his frequent presence at Tesla factories as the reason for the business' success. "If I had not done that, Tesla would long ago have gone bankrupt," he wrote.

Ubisoft

In September, Ubisoft, the France-based maker of the popular "Assassin's Creed" and "Far Cry" video game series, ordered its staff worldwide to return to the office three days a week.

French workers at the video game maker went on strike on October 15 over the RTO mandate.

X

After buying X, formerly Twitter, in 2022, Musk told employees that not showing up to an office when they're able to was the same as a resignation.

Musk also told staffers in an email that remote work was no longer allowed and that employees were expected to be in the office for at least 40 hours a week unless given explicit approval to work elsewhere.

In 2023, the National Labor Relations Board filed a formal complaint saying that X had illegally fired an employee who complained about Musk's RTO policy.

The complaint said that Yao Yue, a principal software engineer, criticized the mandate, tweeting, "don't resign, let him fire you." She also posted, "don't be fired. Seriously" in a company Slack channel.

Yue was then fired five days later and told it was due to violating an unspecified company policy.

Uber

In a memo obtained by Business Insider, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told employees that beginning in April 2022, Uber staffers in 35 of the company's locations were required to return to the office at least half the time. He added that on other days, staffers were allowed to work remotely and that some could be entirely remote if they got clearance from their managers.

Khosrowshahi said in 2024 that remote work took away some of Uber's "most frequent customers," adding that "there is an audience who kind of stopped using us as frequently as they used to."

Walmart

Along with slashing hundreds of jobs, Walmart also asked previously remote employees in the US to move to offices in May 2024.

Staffers located in smaller offices in Dallas, Atlanta, and Toronto were being directed to the company's central hubs, including its headquarters in Arkansas or New Jersey, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The retail giant would still permit hybrid schedules as long as workers come in-person most of the time, according to the outlet.

The Washington Post

William Lewis, CEO and publisher of The Washington Post, told staffers in early November that they would be required to return to the office five days a week, according to a memo obtained by BI.

"I want that great office energy for us every day," Lewis wrote, referring to the energy in the office during election week. "I am reliably informed that is how it used to be here before Covid, and it's important we get this back."

All employees were expected to return to the office by June 2, 2025, while managers were expected to return by February 3, 2025.

After starting remote work in 2020, the Post previously required employees to return to the office three days a week in early 2022.

The announcement at the Post came shortly after Amazon's return-to-office mandate. The Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and executive chairman.

Zoom

Zoom, the darling of remote work, said in 2022 that less than 2% of staffers work in person full time. However, in 2023, the video-calling company asked employees to return to the office.

Workers living within 50 miles of one of its offices were mandated to work there at least two days a week.

"We believe that a structured hybrid approach — meaning employees that live near an office need to be onsite two days a week to interact with their teams — is most effective for Zoom," a spokesperson previously said in a statement. "As a company, we are in a better position to use our own technologies, continue to innovate, and support our global customers."

• Some US workers are embracing AI, seeing it as a career booster.
• A survey from KPMG US found that half of workers believe automation has helped them at work.
• Training is the primary lever employers have for retaining workers, a KPMG exec told BI.

Some US workers appear to be warming up to artificial intelligence.

In a KPMG US survey, half of respondents said automation — including AI — has boosted their professional abilities. Just shy of half said that automation would bring new career opportunities.

By comparison, 28% of workers said they might lose their jobs to automation, which has been widely touted as a concern. In a survey of managers last year, KPMG found greater unease about the possible toll of technological gains.

The latest findings are notable because they appear to indicate that workers are becoming more conversant with tech like AI — and not just ignoring it or fearing that it will replace them, John Doel, a principal in the KPMG US human capital advisory practice, told Business Insider.

"As adoption increases, people are getting more comfortable with the impact that's going to have on their careers," he said.

About seven in 10 surveyed said they use "automation tools" at least weekly, and one in three said they use them daily.

Doel said the rates at which workers are adopting the technology suggest that many are chipping away at a "fear factor" that might have existed around AI.

KPMG US surveyed more than 1,800 US workers at companies with more than 5,000 employees. About six in 10 of the respondents were managers.

Building skills to build their career

Some eight in 10 respondents agreed with the idea that building skills is important for their career. And about one in four workers said chances to learn are one reason they're staying in their jobs. Meanwhile, 22% said having the opportunity to learn and build their skills made them consider different roles.

Doel said that should be a sign to employers that investing in workers is a way to keep them. In the past year, he said many workers, particularly younger ones, have considered leaving their jobs. The employers that are helping their workers add skills are more likely to hang onto them.

"It's the No. 1 thing they could do" to retain workers, Doel said.

Even with training, however, limiting quitting could be a challenge for some employers years after the job-hopping frenzy of the Great Resignation. In the survey, 42% of employees said they'd considered leaving their roles in the past year. Millennials, who represent the biggest slice of the nation's workforce, were the most likely age group to say they'd considered it.

The main reasons workers thought about it weren't new: About one-third pointed to work-life balance, while a similar share identified insufficient pay. Another third said "feeling disrespected" at work animated their thoughts of resigning.

Doel said it's also not surprising that the survey highlighted a gap between what workers want and what employers want regarding where work gets done.

Five years since the pandemic rejiggered how many workers do their jobs, flexibility around where they work remains key for many employees. Seven in 10 survey respondents said remote work helped them balance the demands of their jobs with caretaking responsibilities.

Even as some high-profile employers — including Amazon, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs — have called workers back to the office, workers in the survey indicated they liked some degree of autonomy even though they see the office having benefits.

Forty-seven percent of survey respondents reported being more productive in the office, while 62% said the social aspects of working in the office helped foster a stronger corporate culture and their own sense of belonging.

Ultimately, Doel said, it appears that many employers and their employees have settled into a truce on the issue.

"That's not the top priority of organizations anymore," he said, referring to return-to-office mandates. "We've kind of reached a homeostasis."

Using AI for work-life balance

In some cases, Doel said, workers appear to be eyeing tech like generative AI as an avenue for achieving better work-life balance.

"They're looking at GenAI as one of the enablers of a more flexible work environment," Doel said. Workers who use tools like it to get their work done more efficiently might feel they could have a greater say in how they structure their jobs, he said.

Employees also see other areas where they could enjoy more flexibility. Two-thirds of respondents said they believed that a four-day workweek of 32 hours could achieve the same level of productivity as a 40-hour week. And 45% said efficiency gains from GenAI could help make a four-day week more feasible.

"They think it's going to allow them to be more flexible in their work-model contract with employers," Doel said, referring to workers' views on GenAI.

• Amazon has told staff in Germany they can apply to work from home for up to two days a week.
• A leaked internal document seen by BI says requests can be submitted starting December 15.
• Amazon has a global mandate for all employees to return five days a week to the office from January.

Amazon employees in Germany will be able to apply to work from home up to two days a week when the company's global return-to-office mandate takes effect, Business Insider has learned.

Managers at the e-commerce giant told staff about the measure on Thursday and Friday via Slack and email, directing them to a new flexible working policy, two people familiar with the matter said.

The document, seen by BI, said people could apply for flexible working starting December 15.

In September, Amazon announced a mandate for all global employees to return to the office full time from January. The majority of the company's 1.5 million employees work in warehouses. Amazon's CEO, Andy Jassy, said at the time that the RTO push was to help the company "further strengthen" its culture and teams.

Amazon said the expectation was still for employees to work from the office five days a week in Germany and that it had a similar flexible work policy before the pandemic.

"Regular working from home arrangements can be made for 1 day every week, exceptionally 2 days every week, and are limited to a one-year time frame," the document said.

It added that the policy applied to all Amazon employees in Germany but that it did not include Twitch and Audible employees. It said Amazon could reconsider or change informal arrangements "at its discretion at any time."

The rule includes two types of work arrangements: informal and formal. Under the formal arrangement, employees can request to work from home for up to two days a week and change their scheduled hours, the document said.

On an informal basis, managers can approve ad hoc requests made with 24 hours' notice to work from home, it added.

It said formal flexible working arrangements change employee contractual terms and conditions and "require documentation."

The document also said that Amazon would take disciplinary action, including terminating employment, for staff who fail to comply with the policy.

Announcing the five-day RTO mandate in September, Jassy said he wanted Amazon to "operate like the world's largest startup."

He added: "That means having a passion for constantly inventing for customers, strong urgency (for most big opportunities, it's a race!), high ownership, fast decision-making, scrappiness and frugality, deeply connected collaboration (you need to be joined at the hip with your teammates when inventing and solving hard problems), and a shared commitment to each other."

Amazon said in June that it's on track to have more than 40,000 permanent employees in Germany by the end of this year. It also announced an investment of 10 billion euros (about $10.4 billion) in the country to expand its logistics network and cloud infrastructure.

Are you a tech worker with insights to share? Contact the reporter, Jyoti Mann, via email at [email protected] or Signal at jyotimann.11. Reach out via a nonwork device.

• Greg Mansell says some employers are scrutinizing accommodation requests amid rising RTO mandates.
• Mansell says the process can be stressful for disabled employees, leading to some job resignations.
• Mansell advises employees to use their primary care doctor instead of a specialist to file requests.

This as-told-to article is based on a conversation with Greg Mansell, 40, an employment lawyer based in New York City. It's been edited for length and clarity.

Requesting an ADA health accommodation should be a collaborative process between the employer and the employee in which the main goal is to provide a medically necessary accommodation that doesn't place an undue burden on the employer.

With the rise of RTO mandates and the subsequent increase in work-from-home accommodation requests, some employers are elongating the process and scrutinizing requests more thoroughly. I believe this is to ensure employees aren't abusing the system.

Unfortunately, increasingly drawn-out and laborious processes can put added stress on disabled employees and, in some cases, may influence them to walk away from a job.

As an employment lawyer of 15 years, here are my tips for employees to overcome four hurdles in the accommodation request process.

1. Don't wait for your specialist

After an accommodation is requested, employers may ask the employee's medical provider to fill out an accommodation request detailing the underlying impairment, the restrictions it imposes, and the requested accommodation.

The employer may want the request filed by a specialist if the patient sees one, but these doctors can be hard to get a hold of. I remind people that their primary care doctor has access to all medical records and can provide the same information. It doesn't have to come directly from the specialist's mouth.

2. Prepare the request for your doctor

Some doctors simply don't like dealing with the employment process, so it can be helpful to take the burden off them in any way possible. It may be useful for the disabled employee to prepare their own accommodation request and present it for their doctor's review.

The doctor may approve it or change it for accuracy, but it makes the process significantly less taxing for the doctor.

3. Consider consulting a lawyer

The Americans with Disability Act is one of the most complex employment laws, so employees and medical professionals may make mistakes that lead to a wrongfully denied accommodation request.

For example, the medical professional may not specify the medical condition and, instead, state only that an employee needs an accommodation. This does not give the employer sufficient information to determine if the accommodation, or some other accommodation, is medically necessary.

Employment lawyers understand the process and can make sure an employee provides everything needed and hold the employer to the ADA's requirements. The downside, of course, is that this is a time-consuming process and the attorneys' fees can become quite expensive.

4. Document everything

If you consult a lawyer, it's helpful to have as much documentation of the accommodation request process as possible. Documentation helps us determine whether the employer followed the proper procedures.

You can't force an employer to have a conversation through email, but you can and should follow up any virtual or in-person meetings with the bullet points of what you discussed as a way to memorialize the conversation.

If you're going through the accommodation process amid your company's RTO mandate and would like to share your story, please email Tess Martinelli at [email protected].