Fourteen percent of workers in American work from home full time, according to data published by USA Today, a number that’s expected to increase to 20% by next year. While many business owners and leaders are pushing for a return to office, 58% of white collar employees want to work from home at least a few days a week.
Well-known CEOS such as Amazon’s Andy Jassy and Tesla’s Elon Musk are vocally against remote work, with the latter stating that it’s “morally wrong” for some employees to work at home while service workers are required to be on site. Michael Bloomberg previously suggested that remote workers don’t actually work while at home.
The push to return to the office could be because the companies have invested in buildings and need the employees to use them, or it might be a general belief that workers are more productive while on site.
“Our findings are consistent with employees’ concerns that managers use RTO (return to office mandates) for power grabbing and blaming employees for poor performance,” researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Katz School of Business wrote earlier this year. “We provide evidence that RTO mandates hurt employee satisfaction but do not improve firm performance.”
