The trend of working from home, which gained momentum during the pandemic, is not going away, even if some CEOs wish it would. The shift towards remote work was accelerated by the pandemic and changing views on work-life balance. Today, 14% of U.S. workers work at home full-time, and that number is expected to increase to 20% by next year. In total, 58% of white-collar employees want flexibility in their work schedules to work at home a few days a week.
However, there are mixed messages about returning to the office post-pandemic. Some companies like IBM and Amazon have been pushing hard to get people back to the office. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy reportedly told employees if they wanted to stay remote, it probably wouldn’t work out well for them. Big tech CEOs like Jassy and Elon Musk have been pushing back hard against remote work; Musk called it “morally wrong” for some people to work at home while service workers had to show up.
Despite the push from some executives to return to the office, research from the University of Pittsburgh Katz School of Business suggests that return-to-office mandates may not necessarily lead to increased productivity. The study found that employees are concerned that managers use return-to-office mandates for power grabbing and blaming employees for poor performance.
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