CEOs will admit returning to office didn’t impact productivity, experts predict

“By the end of 2024, executives will be forced to admit their RTO mandates did not improve productivity,” read the top-line prediction from Annie Dean, longtime flexible work evangelist and head of Team Anywhere at software firm Atlassian. 

For years now, experts like Dean have said flexibility is key, and employees have made that priority clear on their own terms, too—often with their feet. So why do so many bosses nonetheless hold out?

“There are two camps on RTO mandates: Small companies and large companies,” Robert Sadow, Scoop’s CEO and co-founder, tells Fortune. Small companies, those with under 500 employees, “overwhelmingly” let workers choose whether or not to go in. It’s the bigger companies, especially those with over 25,000 employees, that tend to set mandates. 

Dean went on to cite a recent Atlassian survey of Fortune 500 executives, which concluded that low productivity is expected to be a prime challenge for most of them in the coming year—as it’s been in years past. That’s despite the fact that nearly all (91%) of the leaders surveyed currently mandate some amount of in-office presence per week. 

“It seems like many already know that these mandates aren’t the answer,” Dean commented. “Only one in three executives with an in-office mandate are convinced that their in-office policies have had a positive effect on productivity.” Rather than where work happens being of significance next year, how work gets done will become the “key cultural touchpoint.”

Dean’s held this line for over a decade, even before the pandemic forced everyone to be a remote work proponent, if only temporarily. Another leader featured in the report, Cara…