Opinion | Bosses must be honest that return-to-office mandates are about lease costs

A new study surveyed 1325 CEOs across 11 countries and found that 60 percent of managers and business leaders want to see an end to hybrid and remote work.

This isn’t a surprising fact, especially considering many leaders are mandating their employees come back to the office. What is surprising, however, is that these leaders have said that one of the main reasons they want an end to hybrid work isn’t to encourage more productivity, but because of expensive office leases that have already been signed.

Iva Durakovic, one of the researchers on the study, said: “This will sound harsh, but I think the desperation to get everyone back in the office is largely to do with money and real estate.”

Business leaders have been encouraging their staff back to the office in harsh ways. Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy, famously said that staff would risk never being promoted if they opted to work-from-home, and many remote employees, who were employed over the pandemic and lived far away from the office, were forced to quit.