Return-to-office policies are 'creeping up,' researcher says. Many workers would rather quit

cnbc.com:

Many workers hate the prospect of returning to the office five days a week — so much so that they'd quit their jobs if told to come in full-time.

To that point, 46% of workers who currently work from home at least sometimes would be somewhat or very unlikely to stay at their job if their employer scrapped remote work, according to a recent poll by Pew Research Center.

Yet, employers have reined in remote work.

About 75% of workers were required to be in the office a certain number of days per week or month as of October 2024, up from 63% in February 2023, Pew found.

«There's a certain creeping up» of return-to-office policies, said Kim Parker, director of social trends research at the Pew Research Center.

Companies like Amazon, AT&T, Boeing, Dell Technologies, JPMorgan Chase, UPS and The Washington Post have called at least some employees back to the office five days a week. President Donald Trump signed an executive action on Monday calling federal employees back to their desks «as soon as practicable.»

Similar to the Pew survey, a poll conducted by Bamboo HR found that 28% of workers would consider quitting due to a return-to-office mandate.

The data «underscores how comfortable people have become with this arrangement, and how it really fits in with their lifestyle,» Parker said.

Workers consistently cite a better work-life balance as a «huge benefit» of remote work, Parker said.

Indeed, they see the financial value of hybrid work as being equivalent to an 8% raise, according to research by Nick Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University who studies workplace management.

Many economists think that the higher prevalence of remote work, relative to the pre-pandemic era, has become an entrenched feature of the