RTO or remote, where you work doesn't change how happy you are in your job—but this does

RTO or remote, where you work doesn’t change how happy you are in your job—but this does

Posted by author February 18, 2025 Jobs

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Many employers have called workers back into offices in recent years citing a need to improve productivity, innovation and engagement, and it’s doubled the share of people reporting onsite, according to a new report from McKinsey.

However, in-person, remote and hybrid workers all report similar levels of intent to quit, burnout, effort and satisfaction.

“There is no clear winner when it comes to a working model that provides a high level of employee experience and productivity,” McKinsey researchers write.

In 2024, 68% of professionals said they worked mostly in-person (at least four days a week), up from 34% in 2023, according to an October survey of 8,426 employees and 3,531 executives.

The share of remote workers decreased to 17% from 44% during that time period, and hybrid workers slid to 14% from 22%.

Despite the shakeups, people report being happy with their current arrangements: Nearly 8 in 10 in-person and hybrid workers are satisfied with their schedules, compared with roughly 9 in 10 remote workers. This indicates that “some sorting has already happened — people have voted with their feet and chosen their [preferred] working model,” Brooke Weddle, a senior partner at McKinsey and author on the report, tells CNBC Make It.

Still, many workers, 39%, across all work arrangements want to quit, and whether they’re remote or in-person isn’t their driving factor. That’s similar to the 40% of workers who reported wanting to quit during the Great Resignation.

According to the report, people across working models say their company is doing a poor job in fostering collaboration, connectivity, innovation, mentorship and skill development — five key components of organizational health that help people feel happy and fulfilled at work, per McKinsey, and practices that leaders frequently cite as top reasons for getting their people back in the office.

It’s important to note that intent to quit isn’t true attrition, Weddle says, and that many workers stay at their organizations despite being highly dissatisfied with certain aspects of their job.

But there’s a wide gap in how well leaders think things are going in the workplace versus what employees are actually experiencing, Weddle says: “That’s a big problem.”

How to maximize office time

Just bringing workers back into offices won’t automatically mean their sense of collaboration, connectivity, innovation and so on are being met, Weddle says. If senior leaders want people onsite to improve those factors, they should maximize the upsides of activities and practices that enable them.

Weddle gives one example of an organization that brought workers back to offices while also supporting their desire to learn new skills. The organization created a system where workers could be deployed to one team to gain skills and knowledge for a period of time, then move on to another department to repeat the experience. Leaders outlined how gaining these new skillsets would impact career growth and opportunities, and bosses were encouraged to manage their teams with this in mind.

“Once you get people back, you will need to shift focus to creating the right conditions for collaboration, connectivity, innovation, mentorship and skill development,” Weddle says. “You can’t just wave the magic wand of a policy and expect those things to to be high-performing.”

When bringing workers into shared spaces, people managers should spend time with their reports to support mentorship, skill development and leadership connectivity. They should design the workweek with a combination of individual time and collaboration time, with clear goals for each set of time, McKinsey notes.

Then there are practical things to adjust, like making sure there’s actually enough desks and parking spaces for workers who need them.

Employees, meanwhile, can make the most of in-person time by scheduling regular check-ins with managers, leaders and colleagues, and make an effort to attend gatherings in-person.

How to maximize remote and hybrid flexibility

Businesses that choose to support hybrid and remote working models need to be even clearer in helping managers understand what work needs to be done together (even virtually), versus asynchronously, versus at a physical location or offsite, Weddle says.

Notably, hybrid workers are the most likely to want to change their working model.

“It’s possible hybrid is hardest because it requires more consistent and constant management in the working week,” Weddle says. “It simplifies things when you’re mostly remote or mostly in-person. With a hybrid working model, you have to really constantly be deciding where you think work is best done.”

Organizations should be more intentional about designing a week that helps shape their worker productivity, she adds, “versus the other way around and having meetings take over the calendar” to justify in-person time.

Choosing which working model to use is an important decision, but it’s not the end of the process, Weddle says.

Leaders should decide on a policy that “aligns thoughtfully” with the purpose of the organization, Weddle says, and continue to pay special attention to the “impact and value” of the model they choose: “We are seeing organizations really not make that full connection. They stop at the policy. And that is actually the start of the journey versus the end of the journey.”

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