According to ResumeBuilder, a quarter of U.S. companies plan to increase the number of days employees are required to be in the office next year, and managers will likely be key in ensuring that employees adhere to those boosted return-to-office policies. But will managers comply?
The answer is likely a resounding “no” if managers’ behavior is similar to what happened this year in the U.K. According to Owl Labs, which surveyed about 500 U.K. employees and managers this year, 70% of managers noted they allowed team members to work from home despite their organization’s formal return-to-office policy.
“It’s a fairly new phenomenon since the pandemic,” says Frank Weishaupt, CEO of Owl Labs, which conducted the survey. He noted that since last year, employers have been nudging employees harder to return to the office, but the workforce largely wants to retain its flexible work arrangements. According to the U.K. workers surveyed, 87% believe a flexible, more “unofficial” RTO policy is better than a full-time mandate for team morale.
“Managers are on thin ice trying to keep employees happy but also stay within the RTO framework that the company has set,” Weishaupt says.
HR leaders can help managers comply with their organization’s RTO policy by facilitating discussions between managers and their organization’s top executives, says Rubab Jafry O’Connor, a professor of management at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business.
O’Connor recently sat down with Human Resource Executive to discuss how HR leaders can tackle the issue of managers openly disregarding a company’s RTO policy.
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