Some bosses exempt from return to office

Bosses are hellbent on getting their staffs back into the office. It’s just that the rules don’t necessarily apply to them.

While 35 percent of nonexecutive employees are in the office five days a week, just 19 percent of executives can say the same, according to a survey by Future Forum, a research consortium backed by messaging channel Slack. Of the share of employees who are making the commute, more than half say they’d like at least some flexibility, and nonexecutives broadly report having a much worse worklife balance than their bosses.

Furthermore, the disparity is growing. In the fourth quarter of 2021, nonexecutives were about 1.3 times as likely as their bosses to be fully in office. Now it’s nearly twice as likely, and the share of nonexecutives who are in five days a week is the highest since the survey began in June 2020, according to the more than 10,000 white-collar workers polled in the United States, Australia, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom.

The gap points to a double standard in return-tooffice messaging — executives from Bank of America Corp. to Alphabet Inc.’s Google are prodding their workers to return in part to boost in-person collaboration, but bosses themselves are somewhat exempt. Companies are also trying to justify long-term office leases or state-ofthe-art headquarters such as Apple Park in Cupertino, Calif.

Employees aren’t having it. According to the survey, workers who are unsatisfied with their flexibility are now three times as likely to say they will “definitely” look for a new job in the coming year. It also showed a feeling of work-life balance fell twice as much for full-time office workers, compared with those with flexible schedules. “Top down mandates just generally don’t work,” said Brian Elliott, executive leader of Future Forum.

In addition to improving workers’ mental health, offering more options can move the needle on diversity, equity and inclusion. Some 82 percent of Asian/asian American and 79 percent of Black respondents would prefer a hybrid or fully remote work arrangement, compared with 77 percent of white respondents. Women and working mothers expressed a desire for location flexibility more than ever, as child care costs continue to rise.

As the debate on returnto-office policies evolves, Future Forum recommends schedule and location flexibility in order to retain top talent, even if it means breaking cultural traditions and developing new workflows. “People being in the office gives you the illusion of control, but it’s just an illusion,” Elliot said. “It doesn’t mean they are being productive.”