LONDON - Three years after the Covid-19 pandemic closed down offices around the world, the remote-work revolution has morphed into a tug of war between frustrated bosses and fed-up staff.

While workers do not want to give up flexibility, leaders want teams back to boost collaboration and avoid a productivity slump. The impasse is the latest phase in a high-stakes battle that is putting careers, profits – and mental health – on the line.

Some executives are losing patience with remote and hybrid working. “Things changed over the course of the pandemic,” said Mr Martin Sorrell, founder of WPP and chairman of S4 Capital, who has performed an about-turn on the issue.

“At the beginning, it worked well. Then the productivity levels and enthusiasm waned a bit and the lack of engagement on a face-to-face basis was an issue,” Mr Sorrell said in an interview.

Mr Sorrell now fears that corporate culture is being eroded as workers stay at home. “If you are paying people to look at a screen, they’ll end up going to the highest bidder. There’s no glue.”

Corporate return-to-office mandates are multiplying, and they are coming with extras. Google last week told staff to head into the office three days per week, with attendance to be taken into account during performance reviews. A union representing staff quickly pushed back against the ruling.

IBM’s chief executive warned that it is harder to get promoted if you are not in the office, which his company requires three times a week. From September, BlackRock will allow staff to work from home for only one day a week.

Executives know that these rulings will likely mean losing some staff. AT&T, the largest United States telco, expects to shed about 15,000 employees. On Wall Street, which has some of the most stringent in-office requirements, one in two people who work in finance would rather quit than spend more time in the office, according to Bloomberg’s latest Market Live Pulse survey. Just 20 per cent of respondents globally prefer working from the office, the survey showed.

Few companies are insisting on a full-time return to the office, with most preferring hybrid models that allow some flexibility. Even backers of face-to-face contact are now thinking of ways to engage their teams.

“The problem isn’t that hybrid doesn’t work,” said Ms Christine Armstrong, a Britain-based workplace researcher, adding that it remains popular, especially for parents or people with long commutes. “The problem is that most organisations haven’t done the work to make it work.”

Without guidance on when to go in, staff can easily spend days in the office on back-to-back video calls. That makes train tickets feel like a pointless expense, according to Ms Armstrong.

In theory, days spent in the office offer cultural benefits and greater opportunities to collaborate. That does not always happen, Ms Armstrong said. “If it’s not well organised, when they do go in, they don’t get those things anyway.”

She suggests that managers sit down with team members to discuss which situations require everyone in the office – for example, welcoming a new hire – and agree to a schedule that fits everyone’s personal circumstances and expectations.

While bosses wrestle with how to manage hybrid workers, about a third of Americans whose jobs allow them to work from home still choose to do so all the time, according to a Pew Research Centre survey in March. That is down from 43 per cent in January 2022 but much higher than before the pandemic, when the figure stood at 7 per cent.

Against this backdrop, there are signs that output is stagnating, with leaders unclear on how to motivate employees who choose to stay away. US productivity fell in the first quarter by more than forecast, even as working hours and pay increased, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics.

Ms Hannah Ingram, a marketing manager in Derbyshire, England, felt loneliness settling in after about 18 months of working from home, estimating that her productivity dropped by about a third once her children came home from school.

Economics and behavioural science professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, from the University of Oxford’s Said Business School, co-authored a 2019 study that showed that happy workers are more productive. Today, he is concerned that too much working from home can have the opposite effect. “Your social capital, your intellectual capital, your sense of belonging are undermined over time” while working remotely, he said. “The negatives of working from home only really creep up after awhile.”

Managers often do not have the tools to even measure the work that is produced at home. Speaking at a MindGym conference in London, Dr Tessa West, a professor of psychology at New York University, said: “People who work from home do a lot of invisible labour. That is eroding their sense of purpose because their manager literally doesn’t see them do it.”

Covid-19 lockdowns made many employees realise it is better to feel lonely at home than come back to a “toxic work environment”, according to Mr Caleb Parker, founder of Bold, a co-working company in London.

Meanwhile, leaders are still clinging to old ways of working and lack experience managing hybrid teams. “What they grew up with, what they succeeded in their career, was everybody being in the same office,” Mr Parker said.

“It’s very uncomfortable to have to learn something new, especially when you’re already at the top.” BLOOMBERG