COMP NEWS – Companies who enforced a return-to-office mandate usually lose senior employees in the immediate aftermath, according to new data from a case study by researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan.
Return-to-office mandates at some of the most powerful tech companies — Apple, Microsoft and SpaceX — were followed by a spike in departures among the most senior, tough-to-replace talent, according to a case study published last week by researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan.
Researchers drew on resume data from People Data Labs to understand the impact that forced returns to offices had on employee tenure, and the movement of workers between companies. What they found was a strong correlation between senior-level employees departing directly after a mandate was implemented, suggesting these policies “had a negative effect on the tenure and seniority of their respective workforce.” High-ranking employees stayed several months less than they might have without the mandate, the research suggests — and in many cases, they went to work for direct competitors.
At Microsoft, the share of senior employees as a portion of the company’s overall workforce declined more than 5 percentage points after the return-to-office mandate took effect, the researchers found. At Apple, the decline was 4 percentage points, while at SpaceX — the only company of the three to require workers to be fully in-person — the share of senior employees dropped 15 percentage points.
Many prominent tech evangelists and CEOs have criticized remote work while lavishing praise on the benefits of in-office work. However, evidence for the benefits of return-to-office mandates has been thin.
Tech executives have extolled the values of in-person work, citing benefits to connectedness and innovation. CEOs such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla’s Elon Musk have criticized remote work’s effects on company culture and productivity. In an April interview with CNBC, Nike’s CEO John Donahoe attributed a slowdown in innovation at the company to remote work, saying that “it’s really hard to do bold, disruptive innovation, to develop a boldly disruptive shoe on Zoom.”
Executives have not provided much evidence that a return to office actually benefits their workforces, said Robert Ployhart, a professor of business administration and management at the University of South Carolina. For example, there’s nothing pointing to a widespread drop-off in productivity as hybrid work has increased, he said.
“The people sitting at the apex may not like the way they feel the organization is being run, but if they’re not bringing data to that point of view, it’s really hard to argue why people should be coming back to the workplace more frequently,” Ployhart said.
Senior employees, Ployhart said, are “the caretakers of a company’s culture” and having to replace them can have negative effects on team morale and productivity.
“By driving those employees away, they’ve actually enhanced and sped up the very thing they were trying to stop,” Ployhart said.
To read more about the study, click here.
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