Companies say RTO mandates make work more creative — it might take more than that

Many major companies, such as Starbucks, Amazon, and BlackRock, have asked staff to return to the office.

Companies are betting that asking employees to return to the office will help boost creativity. HR pros say that’s only the start.

While being physically present may boost collaboration and the flow of ideas, workplace specialists told B-17 that RTO mandates alone might not be the answer.

To get the rest of the way, companies need bosses and a culture that fosters creativity.

“You can have a fully in-person organization and still not optimize those things because your culture and your leadership don’t bring them out in their people,” said Leena Rinne, the vice president of coaching at the corporate training platform Skillsoft.

“If you have a really stifling and unsafe culture, but you’re trying to get more creativity, bringing people back together is not going to get you there.”

‘Water cooler effect’

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently told all corporate employees they had to be in the office five days a week. Goldman Sachs, Salesforce, and JPMorgan have done the same.

Bosses want “the water cooler effect” of spontaneous collaboration, said Cary Cooper, a professor of organizational psychology and health at the Manchester Business School.

Whether they get it is another question — research on RTO benefits has been inconclusive.

Some studies found that returning to the office doesn’t really improve employee performance and may drive them to quit. Others suggest it can improve collaboration and strengthen bonds between employees.

Alongside any office-return rules, employers should “rethink the role of the manager,” Cooper said. He recommended prioritizing soft skills that will help leaders motivate their teams, particularly Gen Zers new to the workplace.

“We’ve been recruiting the wrong kind of manager for this generation,” he said.

Those staff “want a better work-life balance,” Cooper said.

“And they want a good quality of working life. That means somebody has to create that, and that somebody has to have good social skills.”

Workers often don’t love being asked to return to the office. At Dell, almost half of US staff rejected the back-to-office call. At Amazon, some employees have joked that they would rather be fired than comply.

Jeri Doris, the SVP of people at the HR and payroll platform Justworks, said companies need to justify the working setup they choose, not just mandate it.

“We need to treat people like adults,” Doris said. The goal should be “creating an environment where people can grow, thrive, and feel seen.”

Doris recommended tying office attendance to particular tasks, like coming in for particular meetings.

The pull of ‘executive nostalgia’

Rinne, the workplace-coaching pro, cautioned against an “executive nostalgia” that pushes old-school bosses to want workers where they can see them.

“We’re not going back to the workplace of yesteryear,” she said. “It’s different now. We feel different. We have different skills.”

She said that creativity and personal resilience at work both proliferated with the rise of remote work. Poorly-executed returns can erode them.

“If we want more collaboration, what do our people and our leaders need to be doing to accelerate collaboration?” Rinne said. “Because it’s not just me and you sitting in the same room that makes us collaborate.”

Overall, strategy isn’t what gets results, Rinne said. “It’s your people who get your results,” she said.

“How I show up to work every day drives what I accomplish and how I contribute to this organization,” she added. “If I’m leaning in and excited about it, that’s very different from leaning out and doing the bare minimum.”