Leadership   //   January 27, 2025

Avoiding attrition: How HR leaders can ease RTO pain points

Issuing an RTO mandate is one thing, executing it well is another. And it’s only too easy to fumble it.

HR leaders are often stuck in the middle between the wishes of the boardroom, and the ire of their employees, particularly when it comes to divisive topics like RTO. But that’s why experts say their role in RTO transitions is crucial. 

“There are lots of decisions that impact employees that HR advised against,” said Kristen Leverone, global managing director of Leadership Development at global recruitment firm LHH. “But they [HR leaders] really can help, both in terms of keeping the workforce engaged, and retaining top talent. They need to keep leaning in and making sure that their strategic voice is heard,” she said. 

Two clear camps are emerging, those whose business models work best with hybrid or remote models, and those who want people back in the office throughout the full week. Last week President Trump ordered all federal workers back into the office, news which unsettled many workers, just as it did when advertising holding group WPP mandated its 114,000 workers return four days a week, earlier this month. 

Speculation about leaders’ RTO motivations – behind the productivity rhetoric – ranges from job cuts to offsetting real estate losses. HR leaders need to get a handle on the real business objectives, whatever they may be, if they’re to ensure a smooth transition, according to Oliver Shaw, CEO of Orgvue, a workforce planning and organizational design company that helps companies with their organizational and workforce challenges. 

“If you’re in a Fortune 500 and you spent $42 billion on severance last year, you might actually be doing RTO mandates, because it’s a cheaper way of doing a reduction in force than actually going through the process of identifying a population and then managing them through a consultation and asking them to leave,” said Shaw. “So that might be your objective. And I think providing people are clear that’s what the objective is, it’s not morally wrong. It is what it is. If that’s what you’re doing, fine, be clear that that’s going to be the impact, and that’s how it’s going to roll through your organization. But more tactically, you’ve got to have in your mind as a leader, as a manager, as an HR person: what does the business hope to achieve?”

Pinning productivity drop-offs on people not being together collectively every day, is overly simplistic and vulnerable to criticism, he added.

For those businesses that are dug in on pushing through a full RTO, the work has only just begun. And the cost for not doing it well could be, well, disastrous. 

Here are some things to keep in mind if you want to have a smooth, longstanding RTO transition. 

Maintain equity in how all staff are treated 

RTO isn’t bad news for everyone. Some employees will welcome it. They may live alone, not have a good home/work setup, or simply miss the energy lift they get from seeing their coworkers in person every day. Others will be in the middle – they like some office time but doing it inflexibly on a 9-to-5 model for five days is hard with their other responsibilities, or they may have a long and exhausting commute. Then there will be those for whom RTO is simply a hard pass. The business’ most talented individuals may be in any or all of these buckets. 

That’s where HR leaders need to lean in hard, experts say, and not fall back on a blanket approach. “They need to get the micro view,” said Leverone. To get that, they need to speak with everyone. “In any change process, you’ve got what we call the people out in front: the change leaders who are really quick to get on board. So it’s about, how do we continue to keep them really engaged around the process, to help pull people in, get them involved and supportive of the overall journey that people are going to go through as they work on this,” she said. 

You also isolate the cohort who are in the middle, get to the root of what issues it may raise for them, and start to address them, she stressed. Then find out which people want to leave and assess the impact that will have on the business. Basically, if they’re worth fighting for. “That’s where I think HR can help so that you continue to provide parity and fairness across the board because you don’t want to just go making these amazing exceptions for a handful of people. That then creates the inequity that we all need to manage against,” she added. 

“They need to keep leaning in and making sure that their strategic voice is heard.”
Kristen Leverone,
global managing director of Leadership Development, LHH

Involve your managers

Managers will play a huge role in how RTO transitions play out. But they’re not always in the loop themselves with the business objectives, and that’s a failure in the executive team’s communication. “If you’re coming back in and you’re making these big changes in your life again, you feel like you’re adding a lot of stress to your life,” said Leverone.

It could be that heading to the office more increases your childcare costs significantly. “It needs to feel valuable to you. Like when you come back into the office, are you sitting two floors up from the five people who you work with because there’s no space for you? Then you’re sitting there saying, ‘Why did I make all these sacrifices to come in and I’m not getting any value out of coming in?’ So I think that’s where the leader, the manager of those individuals has an important role they need to play here. They really need to spend time. They need to have a plan.”

That plan involves details like: Where will my team be sitting, how are we going to come together in person, and make sure we see each other? What can I do to improve how I run my team meetings to create more involvement for collaboration and creativity? “I also think each manager really needs to understand person by person who reports to them, where they’re at with this transition. Can you bring care to each person and to that team as a whole, to really support them through this transition,” said Leverone. 

That’s going to involve coaching conversations. Ask people how they feel about the decision, what their concerns are and how you might help with that, she added.

Watch the long-term effects on productivity 

For now, most eyes will be on the effect RTO has on short-term attrition. Sure, some leaders may be hoping for that, even welcome it. But the long-term effect of losing top performers to other, more flexible workplaces, is yet to be measured. If it’s badly handled, it can “get out of control quite quickly,” stressed Shaw. “If you think about the cost of losing high quality, highly talented people, they’re quite hard to replace. We have the largest skills gap that we’ve ever had,” he added.  

“There's a number of areas that efficiency might start to drop off, and that might mean less good customer outcomes, less performance, less creativity, less innovation, and that might start to show through in your numbers, in your performance.”
Oliver Shaw,
CEO, Orgvue

There is another risk to mishandling an RTO rollout, that could have a corrosive effect on the bottom line over time. “We see this in other change management programs that don’t really hit the mark,” said Shaw. “A drop in engagement immediately affects efficiency. People are not as motivated or engaged, you lose goodwill.”

It could be that a person works fewer hours once they’re commuting again. So, instead of starting work at 8 a.m. and finishing at 6 p.m. they’re losing two hours of productivity to their commute. These “invisible” and incremental drop-offs in productivity will build up, stressed Shaw. “There’s a number of areas where efficiency might start to drop off, and that might mean less good customer outcomes, less performance, less creativity, less innovation, and that might start to show through in your numbers, in your performance.”

Get creative on where you can flex RTO 

There’s a lot of rhetoric around RTO mandates and how they’ll be the death knell for flexible working at those companies, but that’s not necessarily the case. Experts advise not to simply follow the herd.

“It’s important for companies to continue to do what is best for them. What’s best for one organization may not work for another,” said Caroline Walsh, managing vp in Gartner’s HR practice, where she advises CHROs and their teams on strategy. “HR leaders that want to continue to attract top talent should keep in mind that RTO mandates can be a serious hindrance,” she added.  

Leverone believes HR leaders have a lot of tools they can use to help provide more flex for people. “It could be something as simple as starting at 9.30 a.m. instead of 8.30 a.m if you need to drop your child off at daycare. And likewise, similar flex around school pickup times. “I think some companies have said it’s five days a week but when you get underneath it, people aren’t really comin in five days. They’re coming in three or four. It’s that push to five days that increases the number of people coming in overall. You [the organization] set a big goal, and then even if you get 80% [of staff back in the office], as an organization you’re satisfied with those results.” 

It could also involve examining internal data to understand better what people’s roles are, so that assessments can be made on where and how they will actually do their best work, added Shaw.

Get the space right 

Some RTO mandates have fallen short….of desks, as has been reported by several media outlets. Accounts started to emerge of staff having to work in the corridors because there weren’t enough desks. Staff at holding group WPP claimed they were blindsighted by the announcement that all 114,000 staff must return to the office by April. A common complaint reported: there just isn’t enough space for everyone to do so.

Organizations have never had 100% occupancy though. Studies from architect design firm Gensler, and Cushman & Wakefield over the years put the average desk occupancy in offices at about 70%, long before the pandemic and its effect on driving up remote and hybrid working. There was always a component of workforces that worked off-site before, whether they were with clients or simply at other locations including their homes.

But those companies that have reduced their real estate footprint post-pandemic, to save money, may need to think hard about how pulling everyone back into the office full-time will actually work. “Psychologically, we’re very territorial,” said Shaw.

Reconfiguring the space is also important. No one wants to commute into an office and sit on Zoom calls. But that’s what a large number of people still do, because that’s what work has centered on in desk-based jobs for the last five years. Orgvue is among countless organizations that have redesigned their workspaces to cater better to post-pandemic working expectations. But it’s not universal.

“CHROs should provide compelling reasons for on-site work, design purpose-driven RTO requirements and highlight the positive emotions employees experience when working on-site,” said Walsh. And they must pay attention to how the importance of the work spaces themselves. “Architect on-site environments that foster positive, rather than negative, emotions,” she added.