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The best employees are the most likely to leave over return-to-office mandates, new survey says
Women and millennials were also more likely to leave a company that enforced return-to-office policies.
If you force workers to come back to the office, be ready to possibly lose your highest-performing employees, according to this new study.
Connecticut-based Gartner, a research and consulting firm, surveyed strict return-to-office, or RTO, policies and their impacts on employee retainment and found that three groups were more likely to leave a company due to less flexible work arrangements: high-performing employees, millennials, and women.
From May to June, 2,080 employees were asked about their intent to stay at a company that enacted strict in-office policies versus those companies that had more flexibility. Most employees surveyed worked at companies with RTO mandates of 5 days a week, followed by a 2-to-3-day weekly in-office policy.
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There was an 8% drop in intent to stay among all employees surveyed. The biggest drop in intent to stay was among high-performing employees at 16%.
Gartner described a “high-performing employee” as someone “who had progressed faster in their career compared to peers.” The reason these employees were less likely to stay, the study said, was because they feel a strict policy translates to distrust to do their job. The study also points out that these employees also may have an easier time finding another job — one that gives them the flexibility to work from home.
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“High-performing employees are more easily able to pursue opportunities at organizations that offer hybrid or fully remote policies,” said Caitlin Duffy, director in the Gartner HR practice.
Flexibility was key for other groups of employees as well, particularly women and millennials, whose intent to stay dropped to 11% and 10%, respectively, when companies adhered to a strict return-to-office policy.
Women surveyed also said they experienced less microaggressions and biases when working from home. Intent to leave among millennials was higher than that of Gen Z.
Prithwiraj Choudhury, a professor at the Harvard Business School who has studied RTO policies and its impacts on employees, said the groups highlighted in the Gartrner study are “absolutely consistent” with what he’s studied. But he also added that strict RTO policies have hurt racial diversity in companies and has sent people with neuro-diversity conditions looking for work elsewhere as well.
“They’re going to both lose some of their best performers, and they’ll make their workforce less diverse in every possible way,” Choudhury said.
The study also points out that nearly half of employees surveyed, 48%, are skeptical about why they’re being forced back to the office, saying the decision isn’t based on employees’ needs but instead leaders’ wants.
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Where employees are working, and how often that’s from home versus the workplace, has changed drastically during and since the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some workers found that not only could they do their job from home, but they could also better balance their personal life obligations.
But at many companies, gone are the days of remote-only work as it was in 2020, instead adopting hybrid schedules that allow for some collaboration and connecting. Some of the country’s biggest companies are even requiring a full return to the office, 5 days a week, which has resulted in pushback from employees in some cases.
Gartner surveyed 170 HR professionals and found that 63% of them now expect workers in the office more often, with some responding that their more flexible hybrid policies resulted in low compliance from workers.
Still, Gartner said that designing a successful RTO policy that retains employees means it can’t be rigid.
Choudhury’s research found a sweet spot — 25% in-person days, which can and should be structured differently depending on the team.
“Instead of recommending a top-down, one-size-fits-all policy, which is come to the office two to three days a week, what I found is that some of the leading companies in this space allow teams to experiment, both with the frequency and venue of in-person days,” Choudhury said.
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Gartner’s suggestions are in line with Choudhury’s research, which said keeping RTO policies flexible can impact an employee’s attitude and performance. The HR research organization said considering per-year requirements over per-week requirements is more flexible, and letting employees shape their team’s policy leads to better work performance outcomes.
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