- Examination reveals continued resistance to RTO mandates
- Many workers say they would look for a new job or just quit if they are forced to go back in full time
- Women more resilient than men but BME workers also affected
A new study has revealed attitudes to a full -time return to the office (RTO) is still incredibly resilient as workers look for more flexibility and productivity in their roles.
Over a million observations from the workforce survey (LFS) and approx. 50,000 answers from the study of work events and attitudes (Swaa) UK from early 2022 and 2024 were analyzed by researchers from King’s College London (KCL) and King’s Business School to see if worker opinions on RTO mandates had changed.
Not surprisingly, the report found that many workers were still against the policies, with less than half (42%) who said they would agree to go back to the office full -time – and the total figures showing that there is “no clear tendency to a lot of return to the office in the UK”.
RTO resistance
“Despite the growing public announcement of CEOs and reports on mass returns of office mandate for companies based on two representative investigations on a large scale, we see no evidence of this,” said author professor Hejung Chung and Fellow fellow Shiya Yuan in their report.
“We do not see any clear signs of workers returning to the office, nor do we see evidence that employers are limiting workers’ homework in their policy. In fact, we see a growing number of workers who can work from home.”
Overall, the figures showed work-from-home (WFH) rates remained stable since 2022, with over a quarter of all workers who said home are their most important workplace, and approx. 40% of workers work externally at least once a week, with over 25% work three or more days from home.
The report seems to indicate that RTO mandates are a potential deal -breaker for many workers, as half of the respondents said they would rather look for a new job than return to full time with their current employer -an increase from 40% in the previous study.
Women were more likely to look for a new job (55%) or finish completely (9%) than men (43%and 8%), with young mothers much more unlikely to be observed.
However, it was found that black and minority -ethnic workers were a little more in line with returning to the office, which the study assumed could be due to possible “job insecurity and discrimination at work”.
“For HR leaders and decision makers, the message is clear: Well-designed hybrid work models offer significant benefits for employers and employees supporting equality, talent storage, collaboration and business resilience,” the authors concluded.
“Stiff RTO mandates not only risk reversing these gains, but can also create serious recruitment and retention challenges in a labor market where flexibility has become an expectation of baseline.”
