RTO mandates frazzling your nervous system?

When Amazon announced their return to office [RTO] mandate for 2025, it made me think about my long commutes of 2-4 hours per day in the San Francisco Bay Area.

A 2-4 hour daily commute adds a tremendous amount of stress on the nervous system. The stress often shows up in the body as headaches, sciatica, carpal tunnel syndrome and other disfunction as well as mental health issues including anxiety and depression. Preventing and/or overcoming the impact of the daily commute will be a tall order for any RTO Taskforce, especially if the vast majority of employees have a commute longer than 30 minutes.

First let's talk about the nervous system

The nervous system is made up of three main parts: your brain, spinal cord and all the nerve cells in your body. According to the NIH, “the nervous system is how we communicate with the outside world and, at the same time, how many mechanisms inside our body are controlled.”

It can be disrupted by too little movement, socializing and sleep as well as chronic stress. In other words, your typical workday can wreak havoc on your nervous system and impair your cognitive function. A long commute on top of a long day amplifies the issues and increases your health risks.

Other notable sources of chronic stress that impact your nervous system include poverty, dysfunctional relationships with your family or a deeply unsatisfying job.

If you're in a deeply unsatisfying job, you might want to explore a slash career. A slash career is something that allows you to develop and/or use different skills, make some money and do meaningful work. The slash career augments your 9 to 5 so that you feel happier and more satisfied with your work.

Why are companies issuing RTO mandates?

It’s not clear yet why companies are implementing RTO mandates. Culture, employee productivity and financial performance are often the reasons communicated.

According to the University of Pittsburgh research, companies implementing RTO mandates reportedly didn’t improve financial performance and or increase value. The one notable change was employee satisfaction which declined.

Reportedly, the mandates are “consistent with managers using RTO mandates to reassert control over employees and blame employees as a scapegoat for bad firm performance.” Evidently, some leaders and companies have failed to adapt their processes and systems to the modern era of hybrid and remote work so they are trying to resolve financial issues with RTO mandates.

With that said, more research is needed to understand whether a RTO mandate will foster collaboration and ignite innovation that will eventually lead to higher profits and long term value for shareholders. The impact to employee health and wellbeing and the potential impact to healthcare costs, absenteeism and turnover also needs to be further assessed which should be done as the mandates are implemented.

Prepare yourself for an RTO mandate

Wellbeing is a shared responsibility. If you are required to return to the office full time, develop healthy habits to support your physical and mental health and plan a routine for your new workday. A calm your nervous system will help you be more productive and resilient in the workplace and life.

The Achievable Plan | The Guide is the perfect resource to help you do both and is available now. Invest one hour each week for Office Hours to get help creating your plan and/or the Mind & Body Self-Care online workshop in January 2025 to hone your new healthy habits. Register now to save 50%.