Return to office (RTO) is on the rise. But in the words of talent expert and McKinsey Partner Bryan Hancock, “It doesn’t matter where you ask someone to be. What matters is what you do with them once they’re there.” On this episode of McKinsey Talks Talent, Hancock and McKinsey Senior Partner Brooke Weddle speak with Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly about surprising soon-to-be-published research on the opportunities and challenges of RTO—and about how leaders can make the most of this transition to drive productivity, collaboration, and innovation successfully.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
The state of RTO
Lucia Rahilly: Today we’re talking about a hot headline for 2025: return to office. Let’s start with what the research tells us is happening in practice. Are many employees being called back to the office?
Bryan Hancock: Folks are definitely coming back into the office. We ran a talent survey in 2023 and again in 2024. In 2023, 35 percent of respondents said they were working mostly in person. In 2024, that figure went up to 68 percent working mostly in person, four-plus days per week, with the remainder being either hybrid or mostly remote.
Brooke Weddle: This is true across all sectors. We saw a big jump in consumer and retail in 2023, with 33 percent of the workforce reporting that they were working in person. In 2024, that number more than doubled to 87 percent. Healthcare systems and services jumped to 73 percent in person. Advanced industries—think manufacturing, aerospace and defense, automakers—rose to 73 percent, up from 42 percent.
Lucia Rahilly: And this was mandated, presumably?
Bryan Hancock: We presume, based on our experience and what we’re seeing in the research, that most people are coming back into the office because they’re being asked, formally or informally, to be there more often.
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What do employees want?
Lucia Rahilly: And what does the research tell us about how employees feel about these different models? Are in-person workers more beleaguered, for example? Or are they happier because they have more IRL [in real life] collegial interaction than their remote counterparts do?
Bryan Hancock: What we’re seeing is folks are generally satisfied regardless of their work arrangements.
Some of the responses I found most interesting were to the question, “Do you want to switch?” If you’re mostly in person, would you like to switch to hybrid? Or vice versa? Seventeen percent of both mostly in-person and mostly remote workers said they would be interested in switching, but we didn’t see a big desire among any cohort to switch.
Brooke Weddle: There’s almost a binary split. In certain conversations, in-person work is good; remote is bad. The other thing is that in-person workers express the lowest intent to quit. It’s not as though people who work in person have a higher willingness to quit versus those working in other arrangements.
Bryan Hancock: One of the top three reasons people who work mostly in person leave is lack of workplace flexibility. While some may be called into the office and then consider moving because they lost flexibility, we’re not seeing a massive spike in attrition.
Is one model likelier to lead to burnout?
Lucia Rahilly: What about burnout rates? Any differences there?
Brooke Weddle: Burnout levels for remote and in-person workers are roughly similar, with around a third of people feeling burned out. That is higher compared with hybrid workers, where just over a quarter say that they feel burned out.
One of the things we’ve been talking a lot about is when you come back to the office, your work is not just about completing individual tasks. In an office environment, people might be more likely to stop by your office, and there might be an apprenticeship moment or a conversation about a new idea that could lead to a series of discussions, projects, or initiatives. In-person work could lead to more productive outcomes, but it also might require more work, which could be associated with higher levels of burnout.
Lucia Rahilly: Serendipitous interaction has a benefit but also takes time.
Brooke Weddle: Exactly. And so does, it turns out, developing people. Serendipitous interaction could be exchanging notes on a new idea, but it could also be, “I have a problem. Do you have 15 minutes to chat?” That could be a good use of a leader’s time but not a predicted use of time, which can lead to not feeling in control of one’s schedule.
Do different generations see RTO differently?
Lucia Rahilly: Is there a generational dynamic at play—for example, where people earlier in their careers have fewer sponsorship and mentorship opportunities than more seasoned folks did?
Bryan Hancock: The satisfaction rate for in-person work for baby boomers is 80 percent; Gen X is 73 percent; millennials, 72 percent; and Gen Z, 68 percent. In general, everyone who’s been called back to in-person work is satisfied with their model, but baby boomers are even more satisfied than younger generations.
Lucia Rahilly: Is gender a factor in the impact of return-to-office mandates?
Brooke Weddle: I think that’s an important question. We did see some similarities in how male and female workers rated their satisfaction with different working models. But there were also differences.
Women reported lower scores and lower satisfaction for the in-person working model. They also perceived lower maturity in some of the practices that make these models work. For the in-person format, women rated all the different practices—including collaboration and skill development—lower compared with men. And they especially rated mentorship lower.
Lucia Rahilly: Part of the discussion about women is almost intrinsically about caregiving. But in fact, all genders engage in caregiving. Was caregiving a factor in the research?
Brooke Weddle: There is a caregiving effect. And, unfortunately, we found that intention to quit is higher for caregivers who do in-person work—and that’s true for both men and women. I think it’s very important to explore the gender part of this but also to ask more broadly, how does this affect people with dependents, whether young children or older adults?
Lucia Rahilly: And what about geography? Many folks have relocated in the remote period and are no longer within commuting distance to their office. How are you seeing companies manage that complexity vis-à-vis return to office?
Bryan Hancock: I think a return to office means a return to office. If your office is in Atlanta and you now live in Chattanooga, which is a two-hour drive on a good day, you’re still going to be asked to come in.
A number of people have made life decisions to move, changing the commute. And now we are starting to see some of those patterns moving back. I spoke with an executive recently who, instead of commuting, now has a crash pad with a few buddies—former remote workers who now need to be in the office. They’ve found a way to meet the return-to-office mandate.
So when employers say return to office, they mean it and may have varying degrees of flexibility in terms of time frame. Brooke, what have you seen?
Brooke Weddle: Anecdotally, it’s very similar. I’ve had conversations with senior leaders who have made some tough choices. In those cases, you can decide to recommit to in person or not. What’s troublesome is not the most senior leaders having to make those calls, but rather some of our middle managers and even more junior employees making those calls, which becomes more complicated. You don’t have the network, the relationships, the same levels of social capital—not to mention financial capital—to be in a position where you can choose your working model.
Which model is the right model?
Lucia Rahilly: Suppose I am a leader trying to determine which working model is the right one for me. Where do I start in terms of assessing the trade-offs?
Bryan Hancock: Start by asking what business outcome you want and how best to get there. One of the most striking parts of our research is how respondents rated their companies on their maturity in collaboration, innovation, and mentorship.
And you know what? Folks who were called back to work mainly in person had basically the same scores on collaboration, innovation, and mentorship as did people working remotely or on a hybrid model. What that tells me is it doesn’t matter where you ask somebody to be. What matters is what you do with them once they’re there.
And that requires intentionality, whether your model is remote, hybrid, or in person. For example, once you have a new idea, you may need to spend time developing it. This is when heads-down time is helpful. Now you need to do research and build out a plan. Some of that may be more effective in a place where you’re not interrupted. But, again, getting the right type of collaboration for the idea development stage requires managers to be intentional about creating space for heads-down time.
And when you think about scaling the idea, connecting it to other parts of the organization, that also takes intentionality. It doesn’t just magically scale because you’re walking through the cafeteria line next to somebody who says, “I came up with a great idea.” You’ve got to be deliberate about which parts need to connect to make it scale.
Brooke Weddle: Pick a model, then spend the time thinking about how to make it work for your employees to really obtain the benefit of the model that you’ve chosen.
Let’s be honest. It’s not like collaboration, innovation, and mentorship were all happening perfectly before the pandemic, when the whole workforce dispersed into many different models. To bring people back and think that is enough to foster those things is a little bit crazy. Even if organizations have an existing model, they need to dust it off and say, “How does this need to evolve to really deliver on our aspiration here?”
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Bryan Hancock: To me, that’s the single biggest thing. This is a great opportunity for leaders to reset what they want new norms to be. I’m worried companies will miss the opportunity if they just focus on, “We came back to the office, and people are happier than we thought. End of story.”
Lucia Rahilly: In your experience working with clients, do you see leaders being very explicit about their objectives in bringing people back to the office?
Brooke Weddle: I have seen leaders be fairly explicit. I know one organization that has really embraced a set of new norms. They build on the heritage of the culture and the very proud legacy that they have. They are an in-person-first culture. But that doesn’t mean that everyone’s in person every day.
They’re adapting those cultural norms and investing in upskilling their leaders to lead through complexity—not just because of the postpandemic work environment but because of all the things happening in the world. Leaders need to be equipped to do that well. And then they’re celebrating moments where it works.
There’s also the physical space of the office. A lot of employers have changed what their offices look like over the past five years. Downsized office space created different expectations for what was going to be needed. Now we’re seeing more advanced analytics being done to show things like, “We designed a coffee bar—how full is it? At what time of day is it full? What types of people are meeting there? How full are our meeting rooms?”
We’ve downsized, yet we’re coming back to the office needing collaboration. Now we have even more pressure on the rooms. It creates the need for a new set of analytics—a new tool kit somewhere at the intersection of corporate real estate and HR to determine, “Now that we have to be more efficient in our space and we want to be collaborative, are we succeeding?”
Lucia Rahilly: The way that we work has obviously changed so much. And here I’m thinking about the advent of virtual meetings, which means that sometimes, even when I’m in the office, I spend the day alone on my own ice floe with my door closed—just interacting over Zoom or Teams rather than collaborating with my colleagues in real life. And that has space implications as well, right? In reduced office space, not everyone has an office. There’s hoteling, hot desking. The way we work has meaningfully altered the culture of collaboration as well.
Brooke Weddle: True. We’ve experienced something different, and you can’t undo that. It’s almost like a greater self-awareness around how we want and need to work to accomplish our objectives but also to feel a bit more authentic about who we are and how we experience work and life.
When I come back into the office, it better be pretty good. It’s like any culture transformation. You’ve got to have the leaders role modeling it. You need culture carriers who are excited about it and role modeling it.
I recently spoke with a manager at an organization who goes out of her way to ensure that when her team is on-site, they are all in the same room. “That’s how we learn,” she said. And if you don’t have those more junior people championing whatever culture you’re trying to create, it’s going to be hard to do that at scale.
That’s an in-person example, but even if you’re fully remote, the same applies. You need to have people who are willing to be incredible role models for the kinds of behaviors you want to see. But first, you need to define those behaviors and create a consistent model by which you can ensure that people are upskilled in them.
What does RTO mean for HR?
Lucia Rahilly: Bryan, you mentioned HR and the intersection between HR and corporate real estate. We recently talked on this podcast about rising stress and burnout rates in HR as a function.1 Does return to office compound that challenge for HR team members?
Bryan Hancock: Any employee transition puts stress on HR. I can imagine return to office making it easier in some ways—say, for HR to facilitate having difficult conversations in person. In theory, all the things return to office makes easier are also made easier for HR.
The challenge for HR is navigating the transition and resetting the expectations of folks who may feel personally disappointed or struggle with the move. That will put stress on HR during the transition, but I don’t see it as a sustained source of stress.
Brooke Weddle: We spoke earlier about the number of in-person workers almost doubling. I perceive this as a kind of settling in. The focus needs to be on making it work a little better. “OK, I’m here. You got me. I’m OK with this. But how can we make this the model it is meant to be in terms of driving innovation and collaboration?”
Because that’s the promise—whether it is best accomplished through remote, in person, or hybrid. That’s the real opportunity here, and it is not going to be delivered by HR. It’s going to be delivered by everyone in the organization, led by the leaders who, first and foremost, need to role model it.
Is flight risk real?
Lucia Rahilly: It’s not surprising that there’s a doubling. What’s surprising is—
Brooke Weddle: The satisfaction?
Lucia Rahilly: Yes. When we think about churn and the possibility that folks required to return to the office will leave, top performers often enter the discussion as a particular threat. Since they have more options than lower performers, they can more easily look for flexibility elsewhere. Do we see anything in that regard?
Bryan Hancock: We have recently seen data from other researchers showing that high performers have a higher propensity to leave. It makes sense that middle to lower performers, who may have less value in the market say, “I don’t love that I made the switch, but I’m fine with it, and I’m going to stick with my current employer.”
And some of the organizations that have leaned into remote or hybrid are targeting those high performers, getting talent they might not otherwise have had access to because they offer an alternative in the labor market.
Lucia Rahilly: If the risk of top performers leaving is higher, is there also a risk that managers will treat them differently in terms of latitude for working from home?
Bryan Hancock: I think that’s a real risk. And that becomes a more complicated job for managers. If a manager has a star performer who says, “I need to work remotely three days a week,” they may acquiesce. And that can cause perceived fairness problems and perhaps even more significant problems for the company down the road. Organizations must be clear on the policy, clear on where there’s discretion and how it should be applied, and clear on how they upskill their managers and frontline leaders to implement the return to office.
The thing that’s fascinating is we have this narrative of CEOs, plus a lot of research, saying, “We’re going back to the office, and we want to go back.” But we don’t yet have a similar body of research saying, “We’re getting this incredible productivity boom. We’re getting this incredible satisfaction boom or innovation boom.” We’re also not seeing research that says return to office is creating a bump in any individual metric.
So while the world hasn’t ended from massive turnover or massive employee dissatisfaction across the board, companies are introducing a risk into the system—a risk that some of their star performers could leave, a risk that comes with any transition—as they’re moving back to the office. And if they’re taking that risk, they need to make sure that it pays off. Invest in the collaboration infrastructure, the innovation infrastructure, the mentorship infrastructure so that the risk pays off. Otherwise, you’re going through a lot of change and introducing risk with a very unclear benefit on the other side.
Lucia Rahilly: Any final messages or words of counsel, either for leaders or for employees who are on the precipice of a return-to-office mandate?
Bryan Hancock: Be very clear on what you’re trying to do. Be very clear on the rules of the game. And then be clear on, “Here’s how we’re going to work differently to achieve the outcome that we’re hoping to get from a return to the office.” The folks who said, “I don’t know when I can get dispensation to be remote,” were the ones who were most dissatisfied with the way the process has rolled out.
Lucia Rahilly: It will be interesting to see whether this sticks.
