Shove your office mandates, people still prefer working from home

Years after the pandemic reshaped working practices across the world, many staff are still resisting corporate efforts to get them to return to the office preferring instead to quit in favor of a more flexible employer.

According to the responses from 5,395 randomly selected US adults, as part of Pew Research's Wave 157 of the American Trends Panel, some 46 percent said that if their current boss no longer allowed them to work from home, they'd be "unlikely to stay in their current job."

"This includes 26 percent who say they'd be very unlikely to stay," the nonpartisan think tank based in Washington DC added.

A similar response was expressed by Londoners almost two years ago. In that case, however, three-quarters of the people surveyed say they'd rather resign than get back on cramped train and tube rides every day.

The Pew research comes against a backdrop of corporations across various industries – including technology – initiating mandatory return to work policies to force their staff to come back to the traditional workplace setting. In the tech space, Amazon, Dell, Meta, Google, IBM, Salesforce, Zoom, Roblox, TikTok, SCC, Apple, and plenty of others are among those to enact those plans.

In fact, Dropbox, Atlassian, Nvidia and a handful of others stand out as bucking the trend, despite organizations insisting that how workers worked, not where, was the most important factor in the 21st century.

Pew Research pointed to a report late last year in which President-elect Donald Trump – from the comfort of his Mar-a-Lago estate – blamed the Biden administration for a "terrible" and "ridiculous" agreement between the Social Security Administration and its union that allowed staff to continue remote working until 2029.

Trump claimed "it was like a gift to a union, and we're going to obviously be in court to stop it." He added: "If people don't come back to work, come back into the office, they're going to be dismissed."

These are the same sentiments expressed by his best tech bro Elon Musk, who forced X (formerly Twitter) and Tesla workers to haul themselves back into the office or else. Musk said working from home was "morally wrong" and claimed staff were more productive in a corporate environment.

A little more than a third of respondents to the Pew survey said they'd be likely to stay in their current job if their employer forced them to return, with a fifth saying they'd be "very" likely to do so. Some 17 percent weren't sure either way.

• 'Return to Office' declared dead
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• HR expert says biz leaders scared RTO mandates lead to staff attrition
• Hybrid working? Buckle in, there's no turning back as survey takers insist: You can't make us go back

Pew found women were more likely than men to resist the office overtures (49 percent versus 43 percent), and those below 50 were also more likely to prefer to work outside the traditional office (50 percent versus 35 percent).

For tech companies, the reasons given for asking staff to ditch remote work is productivity – though research casts doubt on this. There is also a feeling engineers work better when in-person, and some say younger staff can't get a feel for corporate culture and learn from older colleagues when at home.

This is despite warnings that a bias towards the office could cost companies their greatest talent. It seems that for many, productivity paranoia trumps trust and flexibility. ®