When Your Boss Tells You to Come In 5 Days a Week, Here’s What You Can Say

“Unprecedented.”

That’s the word that, five years ago this month, wormed its way into our everyday lexicon, as almost every country on earth went into lockdown. Everything became unprecedented.

Schools shut. Shops shuttered. Offices closed. 

As people were driven back into their homes to work, the unprecedented levels of uncertainty created intense stress for one group in particular: women. One study focused on the U.S. found the gender gap in mental health widened by 61% during lockdown—in fact, wrote its authors, “the significant negative impact of state-wide stay-at-home orders on mental health scores is entirely driven by women.”

Indeed, it was women, more than men, who found themselves managing the childcare, overseeing school from home and overseeing the care of vulnerable family members—while also holding down a job. By April 2020, women were spending 3.5 hours on childcare and more than two hours on homeschooling each day; men were spending an hour less (2.5 hours) on childcare and “less than two hours” on homeschooling. 

But Then Things Improved…

After the initial shock of the first few months of lockdown, for many, things improved—at least as far as working from home was concerned. As the months wore on, schools and daycares began to reopen—but work-from-home mandates remained in place. 

Instead of sinking hours into their commutes, people had more flexibility and time to juggle work and get on with their home lives. 

One day I did a Very Serious Interview, then finished the call, walked into the room next door, and read my daughter a bedtime story. When I tweeted about what a joy that was, a new father replied: “I saw my little one’s first steps. I clocked the time, and realized I would have been on my commute and missed it.”

The advantages of work from home were taking root—and employers seemed OK with it—for now. A report published in November 2020 by the British flexible working campaigner Anna Whitehouse found 72% of employers were happy with their work from home mandates and wanted to keep them in place. Almost three-quarters of women said their work-life balance had improved.

But the love affair didn’t last. 

At first, it was a trickle. In June 2021, Goldman Sachs told workers to “be ready” to return to the office (though it was forced to put it off because further lockdowns were introduced); in April 2022, Google asked employees to return three days a week; and in August 2022, Apple employees launched a petition to protest the company’s return-to-office mandate. The following year, the floodgates opened. By 2023, four in 10 companies were back in the office five days a week, while 92% required their workers to be in the office at least a few days a week. The delicate balance of hybrid work that benefited so many employees was unravelling. 

And now? Companies in sectors as disparate as sport, retail, banking and tech have pulled staffers back into the office full time—whether they like it or not.

Hardly Any Data

But here’s the thing: Although return-to-office mandates are everywhere, there’s no solid, data-driven reason for it.

Employers rely on vague language anecdotes and observations, like the idea that being in the office allows workers to be more collaborative. The British pharmaceutical retailer Boots used the thoroughly convincing argument that the office is a "much more fun and inspiring" place to be; Andy Jassy, the chief executive of Amazon, a company which is ordinarily so data-driven that it tracks every minute of its warehouse workers’ shifts, focused on the joys of “collaborating, brainstorming and inventing… [and] teaching and learning from one another.”

Since employers don’t want to look too closely at the data, we will. 

How Do Workers Really Feel?

To begin with, many workers hate the office. There’s a reason so many television shows about drab, monotonous existences—like Severance, or The Office—focus on office life. Workers dislike being at the office so much that in one survey, almost one-fifth said they’d gladly sacrifice up to 20% of their salary to work remotely, while 63% said being able to work remotely was more important to them than salary, work-life balance and a good boss. 

Another survey showed that almost half of employees said they’d rather quit than return to the office full time. And when the technology company Dell told its workers that they had the choice of returning to the office or staying remote, but that remote workers would not be eligible for promotion, over half of its employees still chose to work from home.

Research also shows that remote working increases happiness. And happiness can have a direct effect on productivity; lowering the likelihood of having to replace disgruntled employees—a costly endeavor. 

One survey found three-quarters of employees felt less burned-out, while almost 80% felt less stressed when they followed a hybrid working pattern. Another half said they were exercising more than they had when they were at the office full-time.

The Productivity Paradox

All this research directly flies in the face of the idea that comes up again and again as employers defend their decisions to bring workers back: that working from the office increases productivity. 

It was a claim Elon Musk made when he took over Twitter (now X) in 2022 and immediately put an end to remote working. The “road ahead is arduous and will require intense work to succeed,” he told staff in an email calling them back to the office, as if to imply that working from home and “intense work” were mutually exclusive. As of October 2024, Twitter (or X’s) value had fallen by 80% since Musk’s takeover, though to be fair some of that may have been owing to staff layoffs.

Some studies have shown that working from home can actually boost productivity. This seems particularly true of women: A 2024 British survey showed that women “significantly outperform” their male counterparts when working remotely, while three-quarters said their productivity had increased since they’d gone remote. 

Other data has been less conclusive: When Goldman Sachs economists analyzed six studies on the topic, they found three stating that working from home increased productivity and three that found it decreased productivity. Of course, there is also the case to be made that in-office work is undeniably helpful for young people: Many of those at the beginning of their careers feel they have missed out on workplace mentors, and for those in house shares or living with family members, simply finding a space to set up workstations is tricky. Interestingly, though, research has found that only one in 10 under-27s want to work in the office full-time.  

Still… none of this can single-handedly explain employers’ enthusiasm for bringing people back. So what’s going on?

The Drive to Get Everyone Back in the Office

I like the idea that it's curmudgeonly bosses looking for reasons to get out of the family home who are to blame, but more realistically real estate is a factor: At the beginning of 2019, the average length of an office lease was 4.3 years—since businesses were tied up in leases, they might as well use them—although one study has shown that operating costs are up to 55% less for employers that retain WFH mandates. And even real estate leases eventually age, so it doesn’t really explain the sudden enthusiastic uptick.

Another factor is a simple one: bad management practices. The return to office is an opportunity to, as one study put it, “reassert control over employees and blame employees as a scapegoat for bad firm performance.”

As with so many things, women are the ones who will bear the brunt of the change back to office life. Almost 40% of mothers with young children have said that without flexibility, they will have to quit their jobs, while more than 60% of business leaders who have enforced a return-to-office mandate have seen a disproportionate number of women quitting. 

In 2020, the world had the opportunity to improve workers’ lives while easing the tension between holding down a job and the business of caring. Five years on, we have returned to the deeply-flawed, tired and failing status quo. Sadly, returning to the status quo isn’t unprecedented. It happens all the time.