The Risks of Return-to-Office Mandates

Are you contemplating mandating that all staff work from the office?

It's a trend. Many firms have announced "RTO" -- Return to the Office -- mandates, rolling back Covid-era flexible work-from-home arrangements. 

Return to the office is a mandate that can have multiple sources. I count three. Only two are valid.

1. There truly are cases where physical co-working is simply better for the organization. That should be easy to demonstrate. A smart leader will take the time to make that demonstration. 
   1. Front desk staff may need to be physically at the front desk to do large parts of their jobs.
   2. New staff may need to be physically co-resident with those they need to learn rapidly from.
   3. Anyone working on physical products or objects needs to be where those products or objects are.
2. There are other cases where productivity might be improved, however proper management of results would reveal that on a case-by-case basis. No mandate is needed to return to the office if there's proper performance management. The worker's or team's own performance would show the need to be in the office -- or not.
3. And there are third cases, where management has over-hired and doesn't want to pay the monetary cost of layoffs, and so creates a plausible-looking mandate that they know will lead to people leaving 'voluntarily' -- which spares the firm the cost of paying for unemployment benefits, layoff packages, etc. 

It's this third category of back-to-work mandates that receives, and deserves, contempt.

It deserves contempt because it is (A) dishonest -- it claims to be about one thing when it's actually about another; it is (B) incompetent -- management should be able to manage performance (and staffing levels) correctly but isn't; and it is (C) cowardly -- for obvious reasons.

I'll add: management that engages in pretextual activities like this will always under-perform, because good performance at all levels (especially at senior levels) requires courage, honesty, and competence.

Worse, by modeling these anti-virtues, management will perpetuate cowardice, incompetence, and dishonesty throughout the organization.

I'm inclined to sell short the stock of such firms, and go long on their competitors who display the corresponding virtues.