• AT&T is requiring many office employees to work on-site a full five days a week starting in January.
• The telecom giant previously accommodated a hybrid schedule in its return-to-office push.
• The news comes as Amazon has delayed some RTO plans due to capacity issues.

AT&T's return-to-office mandate is set to get more strict in the new year.

The Dallas-based telecom giant confirmed to Business Insider that it is 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.

In the summer of 2023, CEO John Stankey said workers would be required to report at least three days a week to one of nine corporate hubs: Dallas; Atlanta; Los Angeles; San Ramon, CA; Seattle; St. Louis; Washington; Middletown, NJ; and Bedminster, NJ. The company previously supported more than 300 offices across the US.

Thousands of affected employees faced the choice of relocating or finding a new job, with some 18,000 management employees opting to return to one of the hubs, according to AT&T's proxy statement this year.

Now, some workers who may have gotten used to hybrid schedules will soon be required to log eight hours a day, five days a week at the office.

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

In multiple social media posts, Reddit users on the AT&T subreddit voiced concerns about whether the offices have enough capacity for employees.

AT&T told BI it is 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 said.

This week, BI reported that Amazon was delaying its 5-days-in-office mandate for some employees due to workspace shortages at some locations. While most locations are on track to be ready on January 2, internal documents indicated some employees will be delayed until as late as May.

"We continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant," Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees in a September memo announcing that employees were expected to be in the office every day of the week.

AT&T is also expanding its footprint in Atlanta, where the company signed a lease earlier this year on two office buildings it had previously vacated, CoStar reported.

Shares of AT&T are up roughly 40% in 2024 so far, outperforming the S&P 500's 27% return in the period. The telecom giant reported mixed third-quarter results in October, adding more new wireless subscribers than Wall Street expected but coming up slightly short for overall revenue as the land-line business declines.

The RTO push comes as some big-company CEOs say they're frustrated with hybrid work setups. Many job seekers have also found that it's getting harder to find a remote job or one that's hybrid.

At the same time, some employers appear to have settled into a tentative truce over how often workers are required to show up at the office.

In an October survey of nearly 7,500 organizations globally, the recruiting company Korn Ferry found that the share of employers requiring workers to report to the office five days a week had dropped to 43% from 89% before the pandemic ushered in a global experiment in remote work.

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 non-work device when reaching out

• 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.