Here to stay? | Remote working survey shows limited employee appetite for return-to-office moves

Despite high-profile return-to-office (RTO) announcements from major organisations including Amazon, JP Morgan and Starbucks, new data suggests remote working is not going to disappear from the US workplace anytime soon.

The latest Survey of Business Uncertainty (SBU), conducted in February 2025 by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, indicates that remote work continues to account for roughly 20% of all paid workdays, with only minimal reductions anticipated in the coming year.

The study, which surveyed over 1,000 business executives across industries, found that just 12% of firms with hybrid or remote workers plan to implement an RTO mandate within the next 12 months. Even among those firms, many will not require a full-time return to the office, with more than a quarter mandating onsite attendance for only one to four days per week.

The findings challenge the narrative that widespread RTO policies are reshaping the work-from-home (WFH) landscape. The projected impact of these mandates is marginal, reducing the share of remote workdays from 21.2% to 20.8% - a decrease of just 0.4 percentage points.