In September, Amazon announced staff would be required to work from the office five days a week from January 2025. 

The Australian staff of Flight Centre and Dell were recently issued with similar mandates. And in August the NSW Premier's department ordered public servants to work primarily from the office.

Both Australian and international companies are increasingly requiring employees to return to the office. This was borne out by a recent KPMG survey that showed 83 per cent of CEOs want to get staff back into the office.

Yet these directives are a stark contrast to how most employees feel about coming back into the office.

"Most people want to come into the office, they just don't want to be there five days a week," John Hopkins, associate professor of management at Swinburne University of Technology, tells ABC Radio National’s This Working Life.

"They can see the value in it but they also like to retain that flexibility, so they can combine some home tasks and work tasks."

So why are CEOs trying to get everyone back into the office? And what is the evidence that this makes us more productive?

Why the return to offices?

Steven J Davis, a senior fellow at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, says when it comes to determining whether working from home or the office is more productive, the "evidence is mixed".

"Interestingly … [there's not] much evidence that return-to-the-office mandates [impact] performance one way or the other," he says.

That's because there is such a range in the requirements of individual jobs. For example, in most customer-facing roles, "there is little scope for working remotely". 

Yet, Dr Davis explains there are many jobs where working remotely is possible.

"I've been a college professor most of my career. If I want to teach my students, then it's really beneficial to be there in person when I'm teaching them.

"On the other hand, if I'm grading their papers, writing the exams, or trying to sketch out my lecture notes, I don't need to be in the office to do that," he says.

Dr Davis says, given many jobs have a range of tasks, one size doesn't fit all when it comes to return-to-work mandates.

However, he says it seems the companies most likely to introduce office mandates are those not performing well on the stock market.

"So it's like, 'We need to do something here because things don't look very good — let's try a return to the office'."

For those companies that do mandate it, they often need to implement them more than once.

"In some cases, [companies] are implementing two or three or even more return-to-the-office mandates because the first ones didn't work out, and they often didn't work out because there's so much employee resistance or talented people just leaving," he says.

And while a company may appear to be taking a hardline approach, "quietly, behind the scenes, they make exceptions for the most talented employees that they really want to keep and would otherwise lose," Dr Davis says.

Who is still WFH?

In Australia in the past two years, there has been a surge in hybrid work.

"Back in 2022 around 56 per cent of workers split their time between the office and working remotely and now that's risen to 73 per cent," Dr Davis says.

In terms of the balance, he says it's roughly a 50:50 ratio between the office and home.

"So that sweet spot does tend to be around two to three days in each mode," he says.

Richard Wynn, the CEO of the CEO Institute, says there's definitely a trend towards mandating a return to the office.

"They're moving from one day to two days, from two to three, three to four, so you can sort of see they're [gradually increasing] over probably a number of years," Mr Wynn says.

But there are some CEOs bucking that trend.

"Others are saying … we're getting better productivity and better performance from our people in a hybrid environment," he says.

What are the risks of mandates?

Mr Wynn says for CEOs considering introducing mandates, their greatest concern is around talent selection, development and retention.

"I think these are the experiments that CEOs and leaders need to play with to understand what their culture is within their organisation to help them define, 'Do I need to mandate or not mandate?''" he says.

Mr Wynn favours a hybrid workplace, which he says will give companies a competitive advantage.

"We, as CEOs, sometimes sit in our little ivory towers when we actually need to see what the people want … The world of work has changed, so why can't we have the businesses having this hybrid model?"

Jennifer Overbeck, a professor and associate dean of research at Melbourne Business School, says employees most impacted by mandates are women.

"We do see evidence in the data that the people who are most likely to be lost if we have a full return to office … are first women and then other parents with young kids," she says.

Therefore, hybrid work can have a positive effect on diversity within the workplace, Professor Overbeck says.

How to make mandates work?

Dr Davis says if companies require employees to work from the office for at least a percentage of the week, it's important to make the return intentional.

"When you bring them into the office … make sure they're actually doing the mentoring, the networking, the culture transmission when they are there … You need to be intentional about them in a way that you could probably take for granted in the pre-pandemic working environment."

And for CEOs still deciding whether or not to introduce mandates, Mr Wynn says communication is key.

"It's no good just sending an email out saying, 'From Monday you're back in five days a week'," Mr Wynn says.

"Ask your people first. Ultimately, it's the CEO's decision, but get some insights, get some facts and get some data to support or counter your potential mandate because if you don't, you will end up with a retention issue."

Before implementing mandates, Professor Overbeck encourages companies to shift their focus beyond productivity and to consider the well being of their staff.

"[Think about] what it means to have employees who are having more space in their lives, who can be focused and alert, who can feel less sense of stress, who can feel less sense of conflict between work and family," she says.

"That is going to make employees potentially more valuable contributors, even if the metrics of productivity don't look any different."