In their great wisdom, Microsoft have announced that instead of improving the user experience of their software so that I don’t feel the need to defenestrate my laptop (it’s a Windows joke, see?), they will be putting effort towards mandating a Return To Office policy from February 2026, for any employees within a 50-mile radius of their Redmond HQ. Other lucky office locations to come next, goes the threat.
They claim - way before anyone asked - that this isn’t an attempt to reduce headcount, which makes me squint my eyes, furl my brow and place my right hand onto my chin. I look ridiculous.
So tempting. Doesn’t it just call to you?
It’s not only Microsoft; mandating RTO is possibly the number one option in the Bad Management Toolkit (patent pending) for those who consider that their company is done innovating, would like to spend some time spinning their wheels, and could the nice, expensive people who helped them do all that innovation please leave at the nearest exit and stop clogging up the payroll thankyouverymuch.
Companies implementing such policies will claim that they’re not making the waters unpleasant to chase people away, but the dirty truth is that it’s the least morally-reprehensible reason for it. Times are indeed tough, so rather than making huge layoffs (which they’re also doing), they are at least giving some people agency to decide if they will tolerate The New Way. What alternative reasons are there?
“We just loooove to control people”: Ew. Definitely worse than saying you can’t afford everybody.
“We don’t trust our staff”: That’s kind of on you, Scamp. You hired them, and if they’re not doing the job then you have performance management tools at your fingertips. If you took your eye off the ball and hired so wildly in the past that you’re stuck with underperformers then that’s not the fault of the folks who are totally competent when working remotely.
“We don’t think people do their best work from home”: Prove it. Explain how we managed during COVID lockdown, and how that entire span of time didn’t prove that most people were absolutely fine from home. Your company delivered through a pandemic, and still exists now thanks to the efforts of those people. Did your middle managers not get to belittle someone that dared to take their lunch break? Careful now, I might squeeze out a tiny tear for them.
“We think people need to be in-person for full collaboration”: Then why aren’t you sacking anyone outside of your arbitrarily-chosen radius? You’re saying that any remote staff you hired can’t fully do their jobs, which automatically puts them at a disadvantage in any career path at your company. Enjoy the lawsuit if you say that out loud.
Even if you pick one of these reasons and double-down, it avoids the human aspect completely. You’re no longer an investor in people. You will cause untold mental, physical and financial upheaval for many employees who now have to spend money on commuting, childcare, pet care, to name but a few.
Just try not to touch your eye, or your lunch.
Mental health will be greatly affected. Many people who work remotely do so because travelling to a central location with thousands of other people is a stressful experience. If you and your C-suite role get choppered onto the helipad every morning so you can galivant about the office showing how big and powerful you are, of course you don’t see that side of it.
For a lot of people, crowds and/or the possibility of your transport being late (and therefore getting a tick in the Column You Don’t Want A Tick In on your next review) is of huge mental detriment. Being forced to leave your home can be detrimental too - dark early mornings locking your pets in the house and dashing to a busy train, is soul-crushing. If you actively decide to make this a reality for more people, you are increasing the unpleasantness in people’s brains, the overall misery in the world, and you deserve to be held accountable.
If you’re a terrible leader, you might be thinking; “Brilliant! I’m so behind the times that I haven’t got mental health awareness in my company, so I’m off the hook!”. Not so fast. Running a medium to large company, if for no motive other than pure profit, will require certain standards to be met if others will work with you. A glaze of professionalism is generally expected in the form of an environmental policy and although you’ll probably copy it off the internet, it will at least imply that you’ve given a sideways glance to your carbon practices so that our great-grandchildren don’t have to speedrun the evolution of gills.
“Year 2060” by Busted, featuring your niece
The fact is, if your company has a mental health or environmental policy and you mandate RTO, you are simply liars. You can’t actually care about mental health or the environment because if you did, you’d note gleefully that it’s much better for people and planet to have a choice, and to not be forced to contribute to the commuting energy wasted on going to a place to do a thing they could have done from a different, more comfortable place. You would pride yourself on it, in fact.
Of course, I’m not saying everyone prefers working from home, or that every job can be done from home - keep oil rig workers on the oil rigs, I say - but forcing everyone to do the same thing removes agency and adds pain for many. If I preferred office work and I could choose a Zoom meeting or threatening everyone in my team with unemployment unless they join me in the meeting room at 4pm on a Friday, I would pick the Zoom call.
I honestly don’t know what today’s bosses are hoping to achieve with RTO, but it’s a sure-fire way to rid yourself of those pesky skilled and experienced employees. Good engineers want an employer they can trust; once the opposite reputation sets in, it’s very difficult to reverse it the next time you need good people.