It’s getting harder to skirt RTO policies without employers noticing

Companies are monitoring whether employees adhere to corporate return-to-office (RTO) policies and are enforcing the requirements more than they have in the past five years, according to a report that commercial real estate firm CBRE will release next week and that Ars Technica reviewed.

CBRE surveyed 184 companies for its report. Among companies surveyed, 69 percent are monitoring whether employees come into the office as frequently as policy mandates. That’s an increase from 45 percent last year.

Seventy-three percent of companies surveyed said that employees are coming into the office as frequently as their employer wants, which is an increase from 61 percent last year. The average number of days required in-office by companies surveyed was 3.2 days, but actual in-office attendance on average is 2.9 days or, at companies with 10,000 or more employees, 2.5 days.

Meanwhile, the share of companies that said they are enforcing in-office attendance policies more than doubled, from 17 percent last year to 37 percent this year.

Enforcing RTO policies is a way to ensure that corporate rules are followed and that some employees aren’t working remotely more frequently than their coworkers without permission. However, some have criticized employer techniques for tracking in-office attendance as babying employees and demonstrating an unwarranted lack of trust.

For example, Dell has reportedly tracked VPN usage and badge swipes, frustrating some workers. Amazon, Google, JPMorgan Chase, and Meta have also reportedly tracked badge swipes, and TikTok reportedly started an app to monitor badge swipes and contact workers who didn’t go into the office when expected. We’ve also seen companies tell employees that they would be ineligible for bonuses or promotions if they didn’t adhere to RTO policies.

Speaking with CNBC, Manish Kashyap, CBRE’s global president of leasing, said:

I think it was pretty loosey-goosey for the last year or two, and I think the companies have got a lot better at that right now. They’re coming up with policies that allow hybrid structures and allow flexibility, but whatever their new policy is, their implementation around that, and the governance around that, is definitely a lot better.

However, while many companies have taken to monitoring employee behavior for the sake of RTO rules, others are using the remote work culture fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic as leverage for recruiting and keeping employees.