Work-from-office mandate? Expect top talent turnover, culture rot

Work-from-office mandates are accelerating as the world moves further away from the COVID-19 pandemic, but the push toward in-person work environments will make it more difficult for IT leaders to retain and recruit staff, some experts say.

Over the past year, many companies, including IT giants Amazon and Microsoft, have required employees to work from the office, with many other organizations mandating on-site work in previous years.

Nearly half of all workers, and nearly two-thirds of IT professionals, were feeling pressure from their employers to work from the office as of early 2025, according to the 2025 Technology at Work Report, released by IT security firm Ivanti.

Advocates of in-person work expect increased productivity and improved collaboration as employees work from the office, although several studies have suggested that workers can be just as productive when working remotely, and employment experts say collaboration gains can be difficult to measure.

There is value in cross-functional teams working together in person, says Lawrence Wolfe, CTO at marketing firm Converge. “When teams meet for architecture sessions, design sprints, or incident response, the pace of progress, as well as the level of clarity, may increase simply because being in-person caters to the way most people in the business interact,” he says.

However, there are potential downsides for IT leaders, with strict work-from-office policies making it more difficult to attract and retain top IT talent. “In addition to resistance, there would also be the risk of talent turnover,” Wolfe adds. “The truth is, both physical and virtual collaboration provide tremendous value.”

IT workers value flexibility

Ivanti’s survey suggests that IT workers are skeptical of return-to-office (RTO) mandates. Eighty-three percent of IT workers surveyed say flexible work arrangements are either “high value” or “essential,” compared to 73% of office workers.

Meanwhile, IT workers facing work-from-office mandates are two to three times more likely than their counterparts to look for new jobs, according to Metaintro, a search engine that tracks millions of jobs.

IT leaders hiring new employees may also face significant headwinds, with it taking 40% to 50% longer to fill in-person roles than remote jobs, according to Metaintro.

“Some of the challenges CIOs face include losing top-tier talent, limiting the pool of candidates available for hire, and damaging company culture, with a team filled with resentment,” says Lacey Kaelani, CEO and cofounder at Metaintro.

Despite possible resistance, it makes sense for some IT jobs to be tied to an office, says Lena McDearmid, founder and CEO of culture and leadership advisory firm Wryver. Some IT roles, including device provisioning, network operations, and conference room IT support, are better done in person, she notes.

She sees some other benefits in specific situations. “In-person work is genuinely valuable for onboarding and mentoring early-career technologists, especially when learning how the organization actually operates, not just how the codebase works,” McDearmid says. “It’s also powerful when teams need to think together in high-bandwidth ways: whiteboards, war rooms, architecture reviews, incident response, or when solving messy, cross-functional problems.”

Presence alone doesn’t create value

There is weaker evidence that blanket in-office mandates improve day-to-day productivity across all IT roles, she adds.

“Many technologists, especially engineers, data scientists, and architects doing deep, complex work, often perform better in controlled environments with fewer interruptions,” McDearmid says. “In those cases, presence alone doesn’t create value. Purpose does.”

Effective collaboration can happen remotely when teams have clear norms, strong documentation, and psychological safety, she adds. “I’ve also seen teams sitting next to each other collaborate poorly because decisions are unclear or leaders equate visibility with progress,” she says. “Collaboration doesn’t automatically improve just because people share a building.”

There are several downsides for IT leaders to in-person work mandates, McDearmid adds, as orders to commute to an office can feel arbitrary or rooted in control rather than in value creation. “That erodes trust quickly, particularly in IT teams that proved they could deliver remotely for years,” she adds.

The mandates can also create new friction for IT leaders by requiring them to deal with morale issues, manage exceptions, and spend time enforcing policy instead of leading strategy, she says.

“There’s also a real risk of losing experienced, high-performing talent who have options and are unwilling to trade autonomy for proximity without a clear reason,” McDearmid adds. “When companies mandate daily commutes without a clear rationale, they often narrow their talent pool and increase attrition, particularly among people who know they can work effectively elsewhere.”

Instead of asking how they can get people to work from the office, successful CIOs focus on what types of work are better when employees are together and how to intentionally plan for those scenarios, McDearmid says.

“When return-to-office is aligned to real value creation, teams usually understand it,” she adds. “When it isn’t, it shows up quickly in engagement and retention.”

Focus on outcomes

IT leaders facing commute-to-office mandates should focus on data that measures work outcomes, not badge swipes, adds Rebecca Wettemann, CEO at IT analyst firm Valoir. CIOs can help IT teams by enabling them to automate repetitive works so they can focus on measurable outputs, she adds.

IT leaders enforcing in-person work mandates can also focus on making the workplace a real place to collaborate, she adds. CIOs can align office space, meeting schedules, and in-office days so they reinforce the goals of collaboration and knowledge sharing, Wettemann adds.

CIOs should look for ways to remove friction from the workplace through automation, should allow for flexibility, and should communicate how work-from-office policies are data-driven, she says.

“The real danger is when RTO is a corporate mandate that isn’t aligned with the realities of the workplace, or even worse, when it’s being used as a Band-Aid for poor management,” Wettemann says. “When IT professionals feel they’re being evaluated based on badge swipes, not real accomplishments, they will either act accordingly or look to work elsewhere.”