RTO v. WFH: How About Flexible Workplaces?

I don’t really care where a team member is as long as they are getting the work done and are reasonable available for any discussions we may need to have about a particular matter.

These were the words of a global head of a practice group at a Big Law firm when I asked his opinion about his stance on RTO. His system was simple: if you are getting the work done and the clients are happy, he didn’t need to see you. I had been working in Big Law for about 8 months, completely remote on account of the pandemic and the votes were 50/50 either way. I found myself somewhere in the middle. I had been a summer associate in-person and had connected with every single person at least briefly in my ten weeks. I built relationships across practice groups, not in some methodical way (well maybe subconsciously) but specifically with the people that intrigued me the most. When I returned to work in the middle of the pandemic, it was evident that those relationships made integration seamless. One of the greatest arguments for RTO is the lack of integration and camaraderie remote employees often feel because of their virtual experience with work. It is a valid one but it is still a bit misplaced.

The pandemic forced us to live in a remote world and we thrived.

During the pandemic many teachers were forced to turn their in-class sessions to fully remote classroom experiences. They were provided limited technology and support for themselves and their students and many students did exponentially worse than they might have but it is unclear if they did poorly because of the virtual experience alone or because of the added factors that we often ignore when collecting our data about the lockdowns: What did their wifi accessibility look like? Were they also caretakers to their younger siblings? Did they have their own space to engage the course material? Did they have their own computer? And these are the much lighter variables to consider. Three years before the pandemic, I began teaching hybrid courses. The students who thrived were those who embraced the flexibility and had a certain command over their personal schedules, managing their time effectively. Those who struggled, I argue, would have struggled regardless because they needed the in-class experience, the same way some junior employees need to be a fly on the wall during the conference calls to really get some concept. Who thrived in the virtual setting: students with disabilities, students with care-taking responsibilities, students who needed the flex a hybrid course offered them.

We have to invest the time it takes to create the outcomes we desire.

When my classes shifted to 100% remote in 2020, I worried for my students, because of some the variables I discuss above. Guess what? The same students who were thriving in the hybrid experience continued to thrive while those who were struggling continued to struggle – and yes I provided an extra 10 hours of student support each week that only the students, who didn’t need it, had the good sense to take. This was no different than my in-person office hours for years, where the students who were extremely plugged in always seemed to be the one requesting more face time. The truth is people who want to do well will do well if you provide all the best circumstances to help them do well. That was a hard pill for me to swallow as a professor. I couldn’t complain about my students’ supposed lack of effort, if I chose not to provide the best circumstances for them to achieve the objectives of my class. I couldn’t say they weren’t taking initiative, if I didn’t provide the circumstances for them to take such initiative. I couldn’t say they were lazy if I committed to using tired and mind-numbing pedagogically techniques because that’s the way it was always done. Whether I showed up to the classroom or logged into our virtual classroom on Blackboard, I needed to show up with every tool in my arsenal to help the weakest link achieve those objectives.

Will our cultures really improve simply by forcing everyone to return to the office space?

Every day we are bombarded with arguments for RTO mandates with infinite retorts that WFH is best. Neither works for every employer nor every employee.? But we knew that. We spent the better part of the ‘90s and early 2000s arguing that binary thinking is damaging because of the nuances that exist in humanity. Why are we now arguing against that large body of work, especially with the never-ending nuances with which we engage each other in society today? Many organizations are pushing for RTO because they’ve convinced themselves that simply adding people back to their office space will improve their culture, the culture that was tragic before, during and after the global lockdown period. Can you improve your culture by simply forcing everyone back into the office? Will your introverted employees suddenly become extroverted? Will your Black employees suddenly experience less microaggressions? Will your employees with disabilities suddenly avoid the intrusive questions about why they need some accommodation? Will your employees who are parents no longer have to pay the parent tax? Will your LGBTQ employees feel safe to be who they are without some off-hand comment? Will you actually make an effort beyond the happy hours and free lunches to improve your culture?

?Amazon's RTO mandate is the first of many, but are we headed in the right direction?

RTO mandates might be the saddest way to show you’re doing something to justify your importance as a leader of any global organization. The most recent and extremely public mandate came from Amazon’s CEO. Five days in the office beginning January 2025 — I just had an idea: what if to support flexible work environments all of Amazon’s customers failed to renew their prime memberships and chose to shop locally using Ubereats, Shipt, Instacart or Target and Walmart online since we don’t get our stuff in two days anymore anyway, until Amazon embraced more flexible workplaces that were inclusive of EVERYONE? I know some of you are thinking about how inconvenient such a boycott would be right? I am an avid Amazon shopper and totally get it but maybe the people who have helped these companies grow by continuing to spend money we don’t have on what they are selling to us every day might be able to have some real impact and get these companies to do what we all believe is right: flexible workplaces are the best option with little to no barrier to people who prefer a particular option.

A flexible workplace may help us recreate the boom we experienced during the pandemic.

There are currently four options: pick what’s best for your team (not just you), fully remote, hybrid, return to office. Why not implement all four simultaneously and let employees choose what works for them and the career they want at your company? Why can’t we just embrace flexible workplaces and let the chips fall accordingly? When will we realize the money we made during COVID was a direct result of folks having literally no other options besides working or binge watching Netflix? People were exponentially more productive based on the reported profitability of these companies during that time (unless those financial statements were incorrect). We collaborated our way to exceptional growth, productivity and profitability while everyone was locked in their homes for 18 months. If the current management teams are pushing for RTO, they are stuck in a pre-COVID world that was grossly inefficient and expensive (in more ways than we care to admit) and their obsession with a past no one actually cares to remember will only diminish the future of your business.

Can we care about everything we claim to and maintain the "in-office is better" or "remote is best" bias about workplaces?

It may be the beginning of the end of the companies that double down on this archaic way of being. We can’t say we care about climate change, social issues, sustainability, productivity and profitability and all the fun things we say we care about and push RTO as the sole model simultaneously. I’ve lived long enough to see companies that were too big to fail, do just that, because of leadership’s attachment to how it always was done in a world that no longer exists. The good old days were actually awful for most people who lived them. Why are we desperate to go back to a place from which we evolved? Who knows. Don’t get me wrong and label me as a WFH advocate…I am not that either. I don’t think fully remote is always the option either. A specific type of person thrives when no one is micromanaging their every move, still another needs someone looking over their shoulder in order to do what they’ve been hired to do. A select few thrive regardless of the circumstances in which they need to function and most people only thrive in very specific and tailored, idiosyncratic circumstances.

What are our goals??

No rule is without nuance and many don’t exist without a running list of exceptions. We have to be nuanced in the way we lead to tackle all of the moving parts that exist in the world we currently live and recognize that deprioritizing the needs of the folks that helped us build these massive companies can’t be the fix — unless the fix is to cannibalize what we built yesterday.