{"id":868735,"date":"2025-08-28T23:14:42","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T04:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/28\/its-getting-harder-to-skirt-rto-policies-without-employers-noticing\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T23:14:42","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T04:14:42","slug":"its-getting-harder-to-skirt-rto-policies-without-employers-noticing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/28\/its-getting-harder-to-skirt-rto-policies-without-employers-noticing\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s getting harder to skirt RTO policies without employers noticing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>For example, while high-profile banks like JPMorgan Chase and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2025-07-29\/hsbc-asks-managing-directors-to-work-in-office-four-days-a-week\">HSBC<\/a> have started enforcing in-office policies, London-headquartered bank Standard Chartered is letting managers and individual employees decide how often workers are expected in the office. In July, Standard CEO Bill Winters told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2025-07-31\/stanchart-ceo-resists-office-mandates-we-work-with-adults\">Bloomberg Television<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>We work with adults. The adults can have an adult conversation with other adults and decide how they\u2019re going to best manage their team.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The differing management methods come as numerous corporations have pointed to in-office work as driving collaboration, ideation, and, in some cases, <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/tech-policy\/2024\/09\/dell-says-sales-team-must-work-on-site-5-days-a-week-to-drive-productivity\/\">revenue<\/a>, while numerous studies point to RTO policies <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/science\/2024\/03\/job-flexibility-and-security-linked-to-better-mental-health-among-workers\/\">hurting employee morale<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/r\">risking employee retention<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are some markets where there\u2019s effectively peer pressure to come in more often, and there\u2019s other markets where there\u2019s less of that,\u201d Winters said. \u201cPeople come into the office because they want to come into the office.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Office space<\/h2>\n<p>After the COVID-19 pandemic forced many businesses to figure out how to function with remote workers, there was speculation that the commercial real estate business would <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/07\/01\/nyregion\/manhattan-vacant-office-space-real-estate.html\">seriously suffer long-term<\/a>. CNBC reported that the US office vacancy rate (18.9 percent) is currently near the highest we\u2019ve seen in 30 years (19 percent).<\/p>\n<p>However, CBRE, which has big stakes here, found that out of the companies it surveyed, more are planning to expand office space than reduce it. Per the report, 67 percent of companies said they will expand or maintain the size of their office space over the next three years, compared to 64 percent last year. Thirty-three percent of respondents overall said they will reduce office space; however, among companies with at least 10,000 employees, 60 percent are planning to downsize. Among the companies planning to downsize, 79 percent said they are doing so because more hybrid work means that they need less space.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEmployers are much more focused now than they were pre-pandemic on quality of workplace experience, the efficiency of seat sharing, and the vibrancy of the districts in which they\u2019re located,\u201d Julie Whelan, CBRE\u2019s global head of occupier research, told CNBC.<\/p>\n<p>Although <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2025\/08\/sonos-says-it-is-forced-to-raise-prices-while-trying-to-win-back-customers\/\">tariffs<\/a> and broader economic uncertainty are turning some corporations away from long-term real estate decisions, Whelan said many firms are ready to make decisions about office space, &#8220;even if there\u2019s a little bit of economic uncertainty right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p> Scharon Harding<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/information-technology\/2025\/08\/its-getting-harder-to-skirt-rto-policies-without-employers-noticing\/\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For example, while high-profile banks like JPMorgan Chase and HSBC have started enforcing in-office policies, London-headquartered bank Standard Chartered is letting managers and individual employees decide how often workers are expected in the office. In July, Standard CEO Bill Winters told Bloomberg Television: We work with adults. The adults can have an adult conversation with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":868736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29038,2370],"tags":[5587,5517],"class_list":{"0":"post-868735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-its","8":"category-getting","9":"tag-getting","10":"tag-its"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}