- Studies show that resistance to RTO mandate continues
- Many workers say they will look for a new job, or just leave, if forced to go back to full time
- Women are more resistant than men, but BME workers were also affected
A new study has shown that the attitudes towards full -time withdrawal in the office (RTO) are still incredibly resistant, as workers seek more flexibility and productivity in their roles.
More than one million observation from Labor Force Survey (LFS) and the system and approach to work from the early days of 2022 and 2024 were some 50,000 reactions from the UK survey Analysis Researchers at King’s College London (KCL) and Kings Business School changed the opinion of the worker on whether the RTO mandate had changed.
Unexpectedly, the report found that many activists were still opposed to policies, with less than half (42%), saying that they would agree to return to the office throughout – and the overall figures shown there are “there is no clear tendency to return a large scale to the office in the OK in the UK”.
RTO resistance
“Despite the increasing public announcement of the CEO and a large-scale returns-to-office mandate of companies, we do not see any evidence based on two large-scale representative surveys of the UK Labor Market,” the authors’ professor Hazung Chung and Research Fellow Yuan said in their report.
“We do not see any clear indication of workers returning to the office, nor do we see evidence of banning the employers in our policies to restrict the homework possibilities of workers.
Overall, data suggests that the rates of householder (WFH) remained stable since 2022, more than a quarter of all workers say that the housework is the main place of household work, and about 40% of workers work at least once per week, working more than 25% of the day three or more days.
The report indicates that the RTO mandate is a potential deal -selling for many workers, as half of them stated that they would look for a new job instead of full -time return to their current employer – 40% increase in the earlier survey.
Women were not much likely to search for a new job (55%) or leave (9%) completely (9%) than men (43%and 8%), not more likely to comply with young mothers.
However, black and minority ethnic workers were found to be slightly more obedient with returning to the office, the study can be due to the hypothesized “insecurity of the job and workplace”.
“For HR leaders and policy makers, the message is clear: well -designed hybrid working models provide significant benefits for both employers and employees who support equality, genius retention, cooperation and business flexibility,” the authors concluded.
“The rigid RTO not only took the risk of reversing these benefits, but can also create serious recruitment and retention challenges in a labor market where flexibility has become a basic expectation.”