Comment: Insisting on 5-day return to office a bad policy

Not only is it counter-productive, it could cost employers many of their best employees.

By Sarah Green Carmichael / Bloomberg Opinion

Five days a week. That’s the new return-to-office policy at Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post and at Amazon.com, Inc., the retail giant now run by his designated successor Andy Jassy. It’s also the RTO recommendation Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have announced for the U.S. federal government.

It’s a terrible way to manage talent. It seems obvious that these unpopular policies are a way to spur employees to quit, in a kind of “self-deportation” version of layoffs; but without severance payouts, health insurance continuance or WARN Act notification periods. That may sound appealing to some employers, but they should recognize which workers are most likely to leave voluntarily: those with the most sterling credentials, the most in-demand skills, and the best alternative employment options. In other words, the top-tier talent employers are usually desperate to retain.

Jassy has denied that his RTO policy is a backdoor layoff, but the head of Amazon Web Services told staff that if they don’t want to work full-time in the office, “That’s OK, there are other companies around.”

A leaked Post memo shared on BluSky takes the same tone: “If an employee decides they do not want to return to The Post on a 5-day a week office schedule, we understand and will accept their resignation.”

Similarly, Musk and Ramaswamy, whom President-elect Donald Trump has named to spearhead a new government efficiency effort, laid out their thinking in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. A five-day-a-week schedule could result in a “wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome,” they wrote. Ramaswamy told Tucker Carlson that the plan could get perhaps 1 in 4 federal workers to quit.

And Musk has repeatedly slammed those who work from home, announcing the end of remote work at Twitter (now X) in his very first email to staff. Although he later backtracked and has told some staff to work remotely after closing offices — one of his first acts at the company was to stop paying rent at several locations — he’s made no secret of his view that any form of WFH is lazy and even morally suspect.

He’s not the only executive to assume that those who aren’t working five days in the office are less valuable or less committed. Malcontents. Slackers. Dead weight.

But these assumptions are dead wrong. The employees likeliest to stay after the imposition of a strict, five-day in-office mandate are not necessarily the most talented or the most committed, but those convinced they have no better employment options; those close to retirement; and those who live nearest the office. That’s not exactly strategic talent management.

The employees who will quit in the face of a strict RTO policy are the very ones who are the most employable; the mid-career stars who will find it easiest to get another job. Remote and hybrid workers tend to be more highly educated, wealthier, and to do the kind of work that isn’t tied to a specific location; that is, the kind of work that would be easy to do for a rival company with a more appealing set of policies.

I am no fan of mass layoffs — I believe the data that suggests they are nearly always counterproductive and corrosive — but if an organization must cut staff, it would be far better to make strategic choices about which departments should go, rather than simply let the people with the most options walk out the door.

The idea that five days a week in the office is better rests on several false assumptions that simply are not backed up by the data. There are both upsides and challenges to fully remote work; hybrid arrangements, on the other hand, show only upsides.

Nevertheless, there are some CEOs —a minority, but a vocal one — who keep saying remote and flexible work just doesn’t work; studies keep proving those assertions wrong. Faced with facts that don’t confirm their beliefs, even executives who usually demand rigorous evidence for major decisions simply decide to throw the data out. (Bezos in particular made Amazon synonymous with data-driven insight, and brought to the Post more attention to customer analytics.)

Here’s just some of the information they’re choosing to ignore: A 2024 meta-analysis of over 100 research papers on remote and hybrid work found such arrangements had a positive impact on “job satisfaction, organizational commitment, perceived organizational support, supervisor-rated performance, and turnover intentions.”

Sometimes such studies are criticized because of the possibility that the employees who want to work remotely may be different in some way than those who work in the office; more responsible, more self-motivating, or with more family commitments. To allay those concerns, Stanford’s Nick Bloom and his colleagues conducted a randomized experiment where employees were assigned to work in the office five days a week, or told to come in three days a week, based only on their birthdays. The randomized hybrid arrangement was so successful — reducing turnover and increasing satisfaction among both employees and managers — that the skeptical company decided to expand the program to all employees.

By ignoring such evidence in favor of a strict in-office policy, Musk, Ramaswamy, Jassy and Bezos are essentially daring their most credentialed, in-demand workers to quit. That’s a game of chicken they’re ultimately going to lose.

Sarah Green Carmichael is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and editor. Previously, she was an executive editor at Harvard Business Review.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Opinion

THis is an editorial cartoon by Michael de Adder . Michael de Adder was born in Moncton, New Brunswick. He studied art at Mount Allison University where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drawing and painting. He began his career working for The Coast, a Halifax-based alternative weekly, drawing a popular comic strip called Walterworld which lampooned the then-current mayor of Halifax, Walter Fitzgerald. This led to freelance jobs at The Chronicle-Herald and The Hill Times in Ottawa, Ontario.

 

After freelancing for a few years, de Adder landed his first full time cartooning job at the Halifax Daily News. After the Daily News folded in 2008, he became the full-time freelance cartoonist at New Brunswick Publishing. He was let go for political views expressed through his work including a cartoon depicting U.S. President Donald Trump’s border policies. He now freelances for the Halifax Chronicle Herald, the Toronto Star, Ottawa Hill Times and Counterpoint in the USA. He has over a million readers per day and is considered the most read cartoonist in Canada.

 

Michael de Adder has won numerous awards for his work, including seven Atlantic Journalism Awards plus a Gold Innovation Award for news animation in 2008. He won the Association of Editorial Cartoonists' 2002 Golden Spike Award for best editorial cartoon spiked by an editor and the Association of Canadian Cartoonists 2014 Townsend Award. The National Cartoonists Society for the Reuben Award has shortlisted him in the Editorial Cartooning category. He is a past president of the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists and spent 10 years on the board of the Cartoonists Rights Network.
Editorial cartoons for Wednesday, June 11

A sketchy look at the news of the day.… Continue reading

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer testifies during a budget hearing before a House Appropriations subcommittee on Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday, May 15, 2025. (Al Drago/The New York Times)
Editorial: Ending Job Corps a short-sighted move by White House

If it’s jobs the Trump administration hopes to bring back to the U.S., it will need workers to fill them.

Marcus Tageant (Courtesy of City of Lake Stevens)
Welch: Marcus Tageant embodied the spirit of Lake Stevens

I served with Marcus on the city council, witnessing an infectious devotion to his community.

Comment: Why Trump’s Guard deployment is threat to democracy

Trump claims rebellion and invasion; there is neither. Policing protests must be left to states.

Comment: Hegseth renaming ships dishonors memory of ‘warriors’

Navy vessels were named for Harvey Milk, Cesar Chavez and others in recognition of their service to country.

Goldberg: Watch carefully; this is what autocracy looks like

Trump, in stepping past state officials, has over-reacted to discourage legitimate protest of his actions.

Comment: Reclaim and fly the American flag for ‘No Kings Day’

For those defending the nation’s ideals, there’s no better complement to a protest sign than the flag.

toon
Editorial cartoons for Tuesday, June 10

A sketchy look at the news of the day.… Continue reading

Comment: Trump’s tariffs could ground aerospace’s rebound

Just as Boeing and Airbus had worked out most of their supply chain kinks, the threat of tariffs looms.

French: Trump, as he hoped, gets his excuse for conflict

It’s on the slightest of pretenses, but Trump is getting the showdown he desired in California.

Goldberg: Musk should be a warning to CEOs aligning with Trump

Even if they chafed under Democratic policy, now they’re left to a president’s unpredictable whims.

Comment: Heat is on for workers, but RFK Jr. sees no problem

Even as a summer of record heat approaches, protections for workers are lagging, if not being canceled.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.