What Employees Say About Returning To The Office
In many traditional brick-and-mortar workplaces, employees are still grappling with unresolved questions about where work is best done. Whether that’s fully in the office, remote, or somewhere in between.
Among employees, opinions on returning to the office vary. A good 64% of U.S. employees would prefer not to return to the office full‑time, says Marc Shorb with Founder Reports.
“Employees overwhelmingly prefer remote and hybrid arrangements and experience significantly better work-life balance because of them.”
The latest research from recruiter Howdy, published by the company’s internal research team this May, shows just how wide the perception gap has become.
WHAT EMPLOYEES REALLY THINK RTO IS ABOUT
Why are employers asking their teams to come back into the office?
Workers have a few ideas as to why. In Howdy survey of 1,009 U.S. workers, 50% said they think that the RTO (Return to Office) mandates are really about management control. One respondent said that RTO feels less like a culture strategy and more like “a trust issue dressed up as team building.”
Trust and transparency in the workplace definitely have a part to play. The Howdy report outlines what workers truly think RTO is about, but not what employers are actually telling their employees.
At the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), reporter Patrick DiDomenico says employers are asking employees to return to the office because they’ve experienced everything from reduced collaboration, innovation and productivity due to a perceived lack of supervision and training, especially for younger employees. Plus, some employers are still paying for empty office space.
DiDomencio quotes Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, president and chief executive officer of SHRM, who says, “We’re returning to the office because we are in an uber-competitive environment on the verge of an economic downturn, and we need everything going our way – which means innovation, collaboration, efficiency.”
According to the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer, employee trust in leadership transparency is slipping. A solid 78% of respondents say they trust their employer, but only 44% believe CEOs are doing a good job at bridging trust divides. What can be seen is somewhat of a leadership credibility and transparency problem.
PRODUCTIVITY, CULTURE, AND HAPPINESS
Over half of workers across industries are aligned on one thing, and that’s productivity isn’t tied to being in an office. In Howdy’s survey, 53% said they think a hybrid workplace is the most productive setup. A whole 61% actually thought that being fully in‑office was the least productive structure.
Even among people already in the office, only 38% said their current setup is ideal, and half said hybrid would be better.
When it comes to workplace culture, 82% said fully remote teams can still have great culture according to Howdy’s survey. Nearly half pointed to factors like engagement (80%), shared goals (73%), and simply liking your coworkers (73%) as the real drivers of how strong they feel the workplace culture is.
Workers today also deeply value having an environment that will make them the happiest at work. The biggest morale‑killer overall, said 60% of Howdy survey participants, was constant monitoring. What actually encourages workplace happiness is flexibility (32%) and salary (26%).
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