In 2025, nearly half a decade after the COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses to shift to remote work, a significant majority of U.S. companies have implemented return-to-office (RTO) policies.

In a 2024 survey from Resume Builder, 64% of the 764 surveyed companies said they already require employees to work from the office, 23% plan to implement RTO policies by 2025, and 7% by 2026 or later. Only 6% said they have no plans at all for RTO. And all 764 of these companies adopted a fully remote model during the pandemic.

Another survey from Resume.org found that nearly three-quarters of companies with existing RTO policies expect employees to work in the office at least three days a week by the end of 2025.

Before you fly into a potential fit of rage – HOW DARE THEY?! The truth is, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for doing so — prior investments in office spaces, infrastructure, or a new HQ, for example. It’s also easier to monitor workflows and accountability when everyone is in one place. And new hires and junior employees do benefit from on-the-spot guidance.

But for your team members who were hired remote or adjusted to that work model, the thought of returning to the office will likely create mixed emotions. Some may welcome the change, but many will feel anxious or even resistant.

And can you blame them?

As noted, for the past five-plus years, remote has jumped tremendously for the many workers that are able to work remote (as essential employees were excluded from this trend). Whether or not you agree with it though, if your organization is one that is rolling out ‘back to the office’ announcements, there is a right and wrong way to go about it.

So, how can you make RTO more inviting for your people? In today’s guide, I’m going to show you exactly how.

How do Returning to Office (RTO) policies work?

A return-to-office (RTO) policy is a set of guidelines and procedures outlining how your employees are expected to work in the office. It covers when employees need to be in the office, what safety measures you’ll put in place, and how remote work will still be accommodated (if at all).

There are three ways you can model an RTO policy:

• Optional RTO: Giving employees a choice in whether or not to return to the office. For instance, Spotify has allowed employees to work from anywhere since 2021, with no mandated office days.
• Hybrid RTO: Continuing to allow remote-capable employees to work from home part of the week. Apple, Citigroup, Google, J.P. Morgan, and Meta are all examples of companies requiring employees to show up three days per week.
• Full-time RTO: Mandating that all employees be office-based during regular working hours. Amazon, for instance, has mandated that its corporate employees return to the office five days a week starting in January 2025.

Hybrid RTOs are the most common — 2024 data from Gallup shows that more than half (55%) of remote-capable employees in the U.S. employees work on a hybrid schedule.

Designing a successful RTO policy

1. Understand the potential impact RTO policy will have on your workforce.

The reality is that with many employees working remotely so long, return-to-office policies will uproot employees’ lives and force them to retrofit their entire schedules around a new work paradigm. This is especially problematic for working parents, caregivers, and those who have established routines based on their remote work schedules. 

It’s also an issue for those who moved during the pandemic, as so many did, to be outside of high‐cost, traditional office hubs. In fact, according to “The New Geography of Remote Work” by Dr. Adam Ozimek, about 2.4% of Americans (~4.9 million people) reported having moved because of remote work since 2020.

Beyond the impact it’ll have on your employees’ lives, you have to consider the following:

Direct costs

Unless you’re renting a space through a service like WeWork, you have the costs that come with operating a physical office space, like utilities, cleaning, security, and general upkeep.

Talent acquisition and retention

In a late 2024 study, the University of Pittsburgh tracked over 3 million tech and finance workers’ LinkedIn employment histories and over 2 million job postings to analyze the effect of RTO on S&P 500 firms.

Among companies with RTO mandates, they found that on average:

• Turnover rates increased by 14%.
• Time-to-hire rose by 23%.
• Hire rates decreased by 17%.

Some of your best employees might leave. The indirect costs of hiring and having job vacancies are going to rise significantly. Attracting top talent will be more difficult. And being less competitive in the labor market could result in not filling that position at all.

Resource commitments

If you’re taking out a lease for a new office building, know that commercial leases generally last 3-5 years. Even if the decision has unforeseen negative consequences for your team, you could be locked into that agreement (and its corresponding payments) for almost half a decade.

Collaboration and team cohesion

Back in 2022, when U.S. COVID guidelines started to ease, Envoy surveyed 1,000 American office workers. 90% said being back is “better than they expected,” and 36% said priority meetings and collaborative work are reserved for their days onsite.

Many will argue there is no substitute for the connections you can make when you’re face-to-face with your peers and managers every day.

In-person interactions facilitate spontaneous discussions and relationship-building. And they (can) create stronger bonds that lead to a unified team culture.

But the flip side of that is worth considering: Remote work can mean fewer distractions and interruptions from that constant colleague banter. This could be why the Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that, across 61 different industries, productivity increases as remote work increases.

There’s also a lot of evidence challenging the common belief that ‘collaboration is better in the office.’ For instance, data from Culture Amp indicates remote employees feel more positively about collaboration, consultation, and communication compared to their in-office or hybrid counterparts.

2. Evaluate whether RTO is truly necessary.

If you don’t align your RTO with your employees’ needs, there might be significant consequences (potentially leading to total RTO failures). Consider Amazon’s January 2025 policy requiring everyone to return to the office: one survey found that 73% of employees are considering quitting because of it.

To determine whether an RTO policy is truly beneficial, start by surveying your employees. Ask them:

• How they feel about each RTO option (optional vs. hybrid vs. full-time)
• What their reaction to returning to the office would be
• How important in-person interactions are for their job role
• What they need from you to succeed in an onsite or hybrid position
• Their thoughts on the biggest challenges or benefits of each RTO option
• Which perks and benefits would make their lives easier during the transition

Based on that feedback, you can run a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the benefits of RTO are worth the projected costs, and how you can best implement it.

Once you draft the policy, you can send a follow-up survey to see how comfortable they are with what you’ve created and what could improve it. Making your employees feel a part of the decision, rather than being told what they can and can’t do can make all the difference in how they approach new policies.

3. Make your RTO policy as flexible as possible.

Nine times out of ten, you’re going to want to avoid the ‘5-days in-office’ mandate.

PwC research finds that hybrid workers tend to feel more engaged and satisfied than both their five-days-in-the-office and fully remote counterparts. And according to the aforementioned “Global Indicator” report from Gallup:

• Six in 10 remote-capable employees want hybrid work.
• Just over one-third (34%) prefer fully remote.
• Fewer than 10% want full-time onsite.

As an employer, the hybrid model can give you the best of both worlds. You can still reap the potential benefits of in-person collaboration and communication, without the drawbacks of forcing everyone to completely change their schedule.

Beyond going hybrid, you can make your return-to-office policy even more flexible by requiring in-office presence X number of times per week or month, but giving them the option to choose which days they actually come in.

You could also implement core team hours, set flexible start/finish times, minimize time spent in meetings, and give your team a flexible time-off policy.

4. Offer commuter benefits.

With remote work, there are no commuting costs. For those who need to come in, the average commute costs $8,466 per year. Compared with the median annual salary ($61,984, as of January 2025), that’s 13.66% of their entire pre-tax income.

In 2024, about 72% of companies offered commuter benefits, which are fringe benefits that offset transit and parking expenses that come with commuting.

Payments for employees’ parking, public transit, and vanpooling expenses are non-taxable. Others, like gas stipends, toll reimbursement, and stipends for ridesharing apps, are not.

You can offer commuter benefits through Compt. Read our employer’s guide to commuter benefits to learn how to implement them.

5. Give them a meal allowance.

It’s easy to control food costs when you work from home because you have your kitchen at your disposal. Meal prepping is possible, but the reality is, we wind up spending more money on food out of the necessity for convenience.

While the nation’s largest companies might be able to provide lunches in their cafeterias or weekly catered lunches, the easiest way to accommodate is to offer a meal stipend.

This is easy to set up with stipend software and it’s wildly popular among employees — among Compt users, “Food” was the second most popular stipend category by employee spend in our 2025 Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report.

6. Provide resources for child care.

Between 1991 and 2024, expenses for daycare and preschool rose at nearly twice the rate of overall inflation. By 2024, childcare costs often comprised 10-20% of a family’s household income, surpassing the federal benchmark of 7% for affordability.

A recent Harris Poll and KinderCare survey found that 85% of HR leaders say RTO mandates impact their childcare support approach. Despite recognizing the importance of such benefits, 78% of HR leaders report challenges in convincing executive teams of the long-term value of providing childcare assistance.

Dan Figurski, President of KinderCare for Employers and Champions, emphasizes the enduring nature of childcare challenges, stating, “Some CEOs are likely betting that pushback against returning to the office will fade, but I think childcare challenges will persist into 2025 and 2026.”

There are several types of childcare benefits — subsidies, FSAs, and on-site daycare, to name a few. Stipends are the least complicated. Compt makes it easy to offer childcare stipends to working parents through payroll, and it’s 100% tax-compliant.

Best practices for managing your RTO transition

Involve your employees from Day 1.

A collaborative approach will significantly increase your employee retention rate during the RTO transition. Surveying your employees before moving forward and after drafting the policy will help you create one that’s fair, balanced, and takes into account your workforce dynamics.

Standardize and communicate the RTO policy effectively.

In a 2023 survey, 49.2% of workers told Fishbowl they didn’t understand their company’s return-to-office policy. If your team doesn’t understand the reasoning or benefits behind the decision, they won’t be on board.

You want to avoid being vague as much as possible. Clearly outline your expectations, the policy’s purpose, and its start date. Share it via multiple channels — email, meetings, messaging apps, and your company intranet.

You should also give employees a contact list for their RTO questions. Besides their direct manager, they should be able to reach someone from your HR or leadership team for additional support.

Set up in-person growth and development opportunities.

Personal and professional development are two major areas where remote work falls short. They’re promoted 31% less frequently than their office-based counterparts, and limited in-person time hinders networking and mentoring.

If you’re going to require your team to come into the office, in-person growth opportunities make it worth their while.

Training, team-building, and development sessions are a good start. Mentors are also valuable for new employees and those who want to take their career to the next level.

It’s also a good idea to have managers hold in-person meetings with their direct reports. There, they can set professional goals, evaluate each person’s progress over time, give and receive actionable feedback, and help them reach the next step.

Pro tip: If there aren’t many in-person opportunities within your organization, you can supplement this with at-home opportunities by using Compt to offer an inclusive professional development account.

Don’t expect (or mandate) change overnight.

Change takes time. Your policy won’t be well received if your team members find out they have to make arrangements for childcare, commuting, and personal responsibilities within a few weeks (and definitely not a few days!). Give them enough time to make the necessary arrangements and adjust to your RTO policy.

One approach is to gradually phase in your RTO policy. This way, employees can adjust to the transition first, and you can modify it based on feedback and employees’ responses.

You could also create incentives that make the RTO more doable, like Starbucks is currently doing with its three-day in-office policy. CEO Brian Niccol is offering perks and accommodations like a gym, daycare, and subsidized transit to bring workers back to the Seattle headquarters.

Use the right tools.

There are hundreds of tools and methods to facilitate remote, hybrid, and in-office alignment. You’re probably already using a few, like Zoom, Slack, and Microsoft Teams for communication and project management software for tasks.

For return-to-office policies, you’ll have a few more considerations:

• Wayfinding apps (so employees can find offices, conference rooms, and each other from their phones and laptops)
• Workplace analytics tools (to track metrics like office attendance and badge swipes and gauge the employee experience)
• Hybrid work scheduling (that adapts to the nuances of your team’s RTO preferences and onsite collaboration times)
• Benefits software (to administer stipends, reimbursements, and other return-to-office perks)

When you approach it thoughtfully and strategically, you can make the transition back to the office as smooth as possible and minimize the pushback. With the right tools working together alongside your incentives and employees’ input, you can create a policy that works for your business and your team.

Make RTO painless with the right incentives for your people

With Compt, you can offer tax-compliant stipends and perks to reduce the burden of commuting, meals, child care, and dozens of other work-related expenses. To learn more, request a personalized demo with us today.