Return-to-Office Mandates Are About Control

Five years ago, the pandemic forced millions of people to work from home. Overnight, our offices collapsed into our kitchen tables. By April of 2020, about 40 per cent of Canadians were working primarily from their homes. When schools started reopening in September, parents could pick their kids up from school and still clock in for their last meeting of the day. People could take the dog for a walk between calls. Digital nomads could log on from halfway across the world, as long as they had half-decent Wi-Fi. CEOs, managers and interns were all in the same boat, often working four feet from where their families were making breakfast. It was a strange and stressful time, but it also decisively proved that office workers didn’t really need to be in the office. 

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By November of 2023, the share of Canadians working primarily from home had dropped to about 20 per cent. From 2023 through early 2025, the average person worked from home just once per week. Now, employers are looking to reset work culture all over again with mass return-to-office mandates. Companies like Google and Dell are still improvising the details of their RTO pushes as they go: shifting recommended office days into required ones, changing rules with just days of notice, or announcing attendance policies that differ from team to team. In Ottawa, federal public servants were ordered back into the office three days a week, a decision that the workers’ union called purely political. The union head called for an investigation into the move, saying there was a complete unwillingness from the government to provide any data or backing for the decision. 

Publicly, companies frame the shift away from remote work as a decision motivated by productivity. When RBC announced in 2023 that employees had to return to the office at least three days a week, CEO Dave McKay cited productivity as the main reason. When Apple CEO Tim Cook called workers back into office, he said it was to restore “in-person collaboration.” The Bank of Montreal talked about the office’s power to “shape culture and organizational productivity” when it announced its own mandate earlier this year. The message is consistent: the office is where the real work happens.

But, as many workers groups have noted, there is little data supporting these productivity claims; a study by researchers at Stanford found that hybrid employees are actually just as productive as their in-office counterparts. If the RTO decisions were purely about output, we would see far more evidence behind them. Instead, companies fall back on vague arguments about culture, mentorship and other concepts that are difficult to measure. That’s a clue that productivity is not the main story. The real concern is power: who sets the terms of work, and whose preferences become the default.

Instead of commuting as a default, many workers now expect at least a hybrid model. When remote work is seen as a viable norm, employees begin to ask hard questions: Why do I need to be in the office four days a week for a job that I did perfectly well from home for two years? Why is my commute time unpaid? If remote work is accepted as the new normal, employers also lose out on a powerful bargaining chip. We’re already watching this tug of war play out in negotiations. With most knowledge workers now accustomed to at least some flexibility, many are willing to trade other benefits—including money—to keep the ability to work from home. A recent Harvard study found that workers were willing to take an average pay cut of 25 per cent if they could partially or fully work remotely.

That’s why we’re seeing a concerted effort from these companies to rebrand working from home as a special favour. Remote work can now be packaged as a perk that must be negotiated for, like bonuses or extra vacation time. Remote work becomes a benefit used to attract, retain or even discipline workers, instead of an assumed benefit of a modern workplace.

This push is possible because of the state of the labour market. During the height of the pandemic, employees had a ton of mobility. One American study found that over 22 per cent of working adults spent a year or less at their jobs in 2022, a peak in job-hopping. Now, with hiring stagnant across much of Canada and layoffs in many white-collar sectors, that freedom has tightened. Workers who might once have walked away from a rigid office policy are more likely to suck it up and stay put. If employers are going to pull back a widely enjoyed benefit, they’ll do it when people are worried about their jobs, not when they’re flush with options. And if it’s a big company, it helps when their peers move in the same direction. A united front by large employers limits the risk that workers will simply jump ship for a competitor with more flexible policies. 

Some employers justify the crackdown by pointing to the small but notable group of workers who took advantage of their remote arrangements. People bragged online during the pandemic about quietly juggling two full-time jobs and effectively doubling their salary. A recent LendingTree study found that more than half of remote workers are earning extra income from side hustles while they’re on the clock for their full-time job. At the same time though, 66 per cent of those remote workers said they feel more productive working from home.

Confidentiality and privacy add another layer to employers’ concerns. It’s much easier to control who walks into your office than who walks into an employee’s living room. Companies worry about sensitive documents on kitchen tables, confidential calls taken in crowded cafés, and family members or roommates inadvertently exposed to proprietary information. These are legitimate issues, and they complicate the romantic picture of remote work, but they don’t justify the all-out clawback of work flexibility that’s taking place. 

There is a huge opportunity here for startups and smaller firms in particular to use flexible work as a strategic advantage. As traditional companies tighten their policies, there will be top performers willing to jump ship to stay remote. It could prove to be a talent boon for companies who are willing to break with the united front and embrace a hybrid model, but the relatively small startup workforce is unlikely to tip the scales on remote work. 

Employees may have to negotiate for the right to work remotely now, but they aren’t totally without leverage. At the end of the day, companies care about performance. Hybrid employees, for example, can quietly track their own output on remote days compared to office days and bring that evidence into contract negotiations or performance reviews. It’s far harder for a manager to insist that “remote doesn’t work” when you have concrete deliverables that say otherwise. Another way workers can push back is by simply demanding clarity. Remote or hybrid work policies are far more equitable—and far less prone to biased decisions—when the criteria are transparent and not left in the hands of individual managers. 

Employers may win some battles in the short term, especially in a weak job market, but the deeper change—the recognition that many jobs can be done from anywhere—won’t vanish. Workers understand this now in a way they didn’t in 2019, and that won’t disappear, because the return to office was never about productivity. Remote work isn’t gone, it’s just not free anymore.

Ope Akanbi is an associate professor of communication and culture at Toronto Metropolitan University.