Return-to-office mandates apply to everyone, except a chosen few

Millions of workers across the country are being given return-to-office marching orders. But the rules are different for stars and top performers.

Companies including Amazon.com, AT&T and JPMorgan Chase have called workers back to the office five days a week recently, with bosses citing a need for collaboration and connection. Nearly 80% of 400 CEOs in a 2024 KPMG survey said they expect employees to be in offices full time within the next three years.

Employees with unique skills and talents, however, are often being offered more flexibility than their peers, labor researchers and recruiters say. The privilege gets extended to those with a proven record of exceeding performance quotas, or whose brains and personal brands make them a hot target for competitors to poach. Sometimes it is also about seniority. In other cases, your work-from-home status depends on what team you’re on.

Work-from-home days once arranged with an empathetic boss have now become a privilege.

“It’s a little bit more selective, more quote-unquote perky," said Ron Porter, a senior partner at organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry, which referred to the phenomenon as the “new hybrid hierarchy" in a recent report. “In certain roles, you could see it as that’s what it took to get them, or that’s what it took to retain them."

Still, the tiered return-to-office policy can lead to tensions about fairness among peers, as well as between managers and their staff.

Hadejah Alford, who works in sales for an advertising company in California, is allowed to remain hybrid while managers have had to start going into the office five days a week. Work from anywhere is important for her as a mom of four, she said, allowing her to easily schedule her children’s doctors appointments or help with school projects.

“From the managers’ perspective, I think they’re looking at it as like, OK, if we can do it, you can do it too, so there’s that resentment," she said.

Work-from-home haves and have-nots

Many employees are frustrated about why some of their colleagues don’t have to comply with RTO mandates.

Ryan Essenburg, a business development director in Mountain View, Calif., wasn’t happy when a former employer moved from hybrid to five days a week in office last year, with the exception being those who exceeded their performance quotas.

He and colleagues who didn’t exceed the quota went into the company’s office every day and “were routinely treated like children and micromanaged," he said.

Essenburg parted ways with the company shortly after and continues to look for other hybrid opportunities.

“I believe hybrid is the most optimal, productive and beneficial form of work regardless of seniority, title or quotas," he said. At one previous employer, everyone from the chief executive officer to rank and file went into the office on the same day every week. “It worked great, there was no tension."

Chris Pelesky, a 26-year veteran of AT&T, resented a company RTO mandate.

After AT&T began implementing mandated in-office days for management employees in 2023, Chris Pelesky, a former lead channel manager at the company, said he found the policy inconsistent, with “many cases of favoritism." Certain employees were allowed to work remotely more often than others.

“Some people were correctly protected by classification, that’s understandable, but there were a lot of ‘teachers’ pets’ situations as well," he said.

An AT&T spokesperson said business units have some flexibility to determine a workplace model that best serves customers, and that some employees will continue to work remotely or on a hybrid schedule.

Pelesky, who worked at AT&T for 26 years, lost his job last year after he couldn’t relocate from Abingdon, Md., to a Dallas hub to comply with the company’s mandate.

He now works in a chief sales and marketing role at a 3-D printing business in Newark, Del. His salary is 40% lower than his AT&T pay, but he has a hybrid schedule that includes one remote day.

Who gets to work from home?

Five days a week in the office was the norm for most office workers until the pandemic forced millions to work from home. Many workers discovered a new work-life balance, with the flexibility to start preparing dinner earlier while still getting work done.

As offices started reopening in 2021, many employers stayed remote or settled on a hybrid schedule of two or three days in the office. When some workers still wouldn’t come in, bosses started putting their foot down, mandating and even tracking attendance.

Today, one in 10 working professionals in the U.S. who want to change jobs cited a desire for hybrid or remote work that their current company doesn’t allow, according to a new LinkedIn survey.

Fields where the share of hybrid job listings increased the most in 2024 include technology, finance and insurance, and nonprofit, according to jobs platform ZipRecruiter. Overall, the increase in job listings for hybrid roles slowed in 2024, according to jobs site Indeed.

Remote workers are more likely to be white, older and wealthier, according to new Census Bureau data.

Seemingly each week, more companies are pivoting back to making sure everyone comes back to the office. They believe in-person time leads to better communication, camaraderie and productivity.

At WPP, an advertising and marketing-services group, Chief Executive Mark Read announced in a New Year’s memo to staff that most employees would be required to spend an average of four days a week in the office. The policy applies to every employee at the company, including Read, he said, with some exceptions that would have to be agreed upon with a manager.

“This is not about asking our junior staff to do something that our most senior staff are not going to do," he said. “In fact, we’re rolling this out with our most senior people now, at the beginning of the year, before the whole organization in April."

Write to Ray A. Smith at Ray.Smith@wsj.com