The Great Resistance: Return-to-Office Enforcement Collapses

Suddenly, businesses across the United States are still grappling with a powerful “Great Resistance” to strict return-to-office (RTO) mandates, even as the pandemic recedes and the labor market cools. Many large employers have formally tightened office requirements since 2023, but a significant share of employees continue to resist or work around these rules, keeping hybrid and remote work far more common than before 2020.

This ongoing standoff is clearest in the data from the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (SWAA), an ongoing monthly study of about 5,000 US full‑time workers conducted by Dr. Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University, Dr. Steven Davis of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Shelby Buckman, and Dr. Jose Maria Barrero of ITAM Business School. As of 2025, SWAA-based estimates and related research indicate that work-from-home accounts for roughly one-quarter to just under one-third of all paid workdays in the United States, a level that is far above the 7 percent seen before the pandemic and has largely stabilized since 2023.

Other recent analyses reinforce the picture of a new, durable equilibrium rather than a temporary glitch. Global research led by Bloom and colleagues shows that average work-from-home days fell slightly after the pandemic peak but then leveled off through early 2025, suggesting that hybrid and remote arrangements have become a permanent feature of knowledge work. At the same time, surveys summarized by outlets such as Pew Research Center, FlexJobs, and other labor‑market trackers find that majorities of US workers still prefer some form of remote or hybrid schedule and say they would consider changing jobs if forced back to the office full-time.

These trends help explain why RTO enforcement has remained uneven and contentious. Even where companies have introduced badge tracking or stricter attendance rules, many employees comply only minimally, arriving briefly to register their presence or negotiating informal exceptions with managers, rather than fully embracing a five‑day in‑office routine. For corporate leaders, this leaves a difficult question unresolved as of 2026: if collaboration still depends heavily on video calls and digital tools, and if a sizable share of staff continue to work from home several days a week, what exactly is gained by forcing reluctant employees back into the office at all?

The Challenges of Enforcing Return-to-Office Policies

Consider these eye-opening facts from the latest SWAA data in 2025, which continue to highlight massive gaps between company rules and what workers actually do.

At businesses with a strict five-day-per-week return-to-office (RTO) policy, full compliance remains rare. Recent SWAA surveys show that if employers demanded five office days, only about 44 percent of US workers would follow through, down from 53 percent just two years earlier, a clear sign of growing pushback. This means more than half would find ways to avoid it, much like the 52 percent defiance rate seen back in 2022.

At hybrid companies that allow some work-from-home days, SWAA finds 27 percent of full-time workers now have hybrid schedules. Employers plan for just 1.4 days of work-from-home per week on average. But workers want about two days at home, a stubborn half-day gap that never goes away.

Companies asking for four or fewer office days per week see higher overall compliance, around 70 to 80 percent. Yet Dr. Bloom’s team notes what this truly means: in a standard seven- or eight-person team scheduled for in-person work, one or two members typically stay home each day, forcing hybrid meetings. This pattern holds steady into late 2025, turning office collaboration into a mix of live and virtual interactions.

These realities have forever changed office life in America, far from the fully in-person norm of the postwar years. Zoom and similar tools are now everyday essentials, even for those physically in the building, because no meeting can include everyone without them.

Why go through the hassle and cost of commuting? Employees rightly question it when their in-office colleagues must still join remote teammates via video all day anyway.

Managers face a tough spot. SWAA shows companies have tightened enforcement since 2022, tracking badges and attendance more closely. Still, the gap between worker preferences and company rules persists.

Workers keep fighting for remote work. SWAA finds they want a full half-day more work-from-home each week than bosses will give. This mismatch shows no sign of closing. When asked about a full five-day office mandate, many say they’d look for new jobs with better remote options, just like in 2022.

Reasons for the Inaction of Managers

Managers supposedly required to enforce return-to-office policies find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place. Here’s their dilemma: If the managers don’t attach negative consequences to insufficient attendance, the company’s leadership appears weak. But on the other hand, the past years of record company profits and growth would never have happened if most workers weren’t getting their jobs done. That amazing performance record makes it difficult for supervisors to justify punishments for hardworking employees, merely because they complete their assignments away from their companies’ workplaces.

This logic holds in 2025. Middle managers often prefer hybrid work themselves. Stanford economist Nick Bloom notes they are typically in their 30s and 40s, a group that strongly favors work-from-home. These supervisors focus on team results, not office time, so they rarely push hard rules.

A second reason for this non-enforcement is that working from home makes finding a new job vastly easier. “Searching and interviewing while working at the office can be hard, with several hours away under some dubious excuse,” says Dr. Bloom.

Working from home lets quick interviews happen. Managers fear mass quits if they crack down. This worry makes sense in today’s market, where losing talent hurts.

What is an “Impulse Quit?”

The term “impulse quits” describes employees who suddenly resign after a bad review or boss conflict. They quickly search jobs, interview online, and accept new offers in days, or even on the same day. This happens fast in tech, where someone might apply in the morning, interview in the afternoon, and quit by evening.

Managers worry these quick exits could hit top tech leaders at major companies. Losing rare experts risks future success.

For example, in May 2022, The Verge’s Zoë Schiffer reported that Apple’s director of machine learning, Dr. Ian Goodfellow, suddenly left the company after four years because of the firm’s return-to-office policy: “I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team” he told his staff in an email message, saying Apple’s policy change accounted for part of the reason for his decision to leave the company.

An artificial intelligence expert, Dr. Goodfellow, earned a PhD from the University of Montreal in 2014. Before taking his job at Apple, the researcher had worked for Google, and he had also worked for Elon Musk at the machine learning developer OpenAI. CNBC reported that during only 13 months with Musk’s firm, Dr. Goodfellow had earned a staggering $800,000.

Today, Dr. Goodfellow works as a research scientist for DeepMind, an artificial intelligence developer headquartered in London. Prominently displayed at the top of its LinkedIn profile, DeepMind describes itself as a “hybrid workplace” with flexible time on-site.

Requiring that all employees return to their offices in Cupertino for at least three days a week, and advocated by CEO Tim Cook, Apple’s new return-to-office policy has endured fierce criticism from a faction of employees. A letter to the firm’s senior executives obtained by MacRumors contains this language:

Many of us feel we have to choose between either a combination of our families, our well-being, and being empowered to do our best work, or being a part of Apple. This is a decision none of us take lightly, and a decision many would prefer not to have to make.

Other tech firms like Twitter and Airbnb may have instead introduced new work-from-anywhere policies to distance themselves from the rigid stance taken by Apple, and to help them attract talent defecting from competing employers. For example, kicking off a statement released on their website in late April 2022 entitled “Airbnb’s Design to Live and Work Anywhere,” the San Francisco-based company posted this language:

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, a new world of travel has emerged. Millions of people are now more flexible about where they live and work. In response to this trend of newfound flexibility, Airbnb today announced our approach to allow employees to live and work anywhere, and how we will partner with destinations to help them attract remote workers.

In 2025, impulse quits continue. One in three senior executives says RTO mandates push them to quit, per surveys. Amazon, Dell, and AT&T saw talent leave after full RTO rules. Federal workers quit over Trump’s five-day mandate.

Threatened by a Full-Blown Exodus

With this statement, Airbnb became the latest billion-dollar company to join the ranks of work-from-anywhere employers like GitLab, Zapier, and Automattic. Meanwhile, defections have forced hundreds of other firms throughout the technology and financial services industries to dramatically scale back their return-to-office plans.

In early 2022, we witnessed plenty of bravado from Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan throughout the legacy business press about how those firms would insist upon compliance with their 40-hour return-to-office plans. But after Dr. Bloom learned of conversations throughout the ranks of those two firms where professionals had threatened to quit, and after Citigroup, HSBC, and UBS surprised observers by announcing their own hybrid schedules, Goldman and JPM suddenly went silent about their RTO plans.

Moreover, Business Insider had reported back in 2021 that the sole big-tech firm that tried to compel full-time office work, Amazon, didn’t stand a chance when poachers Oracle and Facebook pounced on the Seattle firm’s disgruntled employees as soon as it had announced its 40-hour return-to-office mandate. To stop the bleeding from all the resignations, Amazon drastically rolled back those plans and gave employees two more days every week to work from home.

After observing the brain drain at Amazon, it didn’t take long for Google, Uber, and LinkedIn to scale their RTO policies way back. Facebook then expanded remote-work eligibility to all workers, even junior, early-career employees. Insider’s senior workplace trends correspondent Aki Ito eloquently summed up this widespread collapse in return-to-office enforcement this way:

Almost overnight, employees began quitting their jobs in record numbers. Emboldened by the red-hot job market, Americans felt free to shop for flexible work arrangements that better suited their needs. Threatened by a full-blown exodus, executives suddenly realized they could no longer afford to ignore the uproar over working from home. . .It was a remarkable sight: some of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations being forced to bow to their employees’ work preferences.

The pattern continues in 2025. Overall, US companies may not want the professionals they employ to enjoy the flexibility and freedom of working away from the office. Most never have. Nevertheless, the severe constraints those employers now face have resulted in extraordinarily limited options and bleak alternatives when it comes to limiting remote work. Enforcement of return-to-office policies has largely collapsed across America, and there’s no good reason to expect this situation to change anytime soon.