Rigid return-to-office mandates hinder IT recruitment and retention
If you’re pushing a blanket return-to-office policy in tech, particularly in IT, and expecting business as usual, you’re misreading the current talent landscape. The demand for top-tier IT talent is increasing faster than most companies can adapt, and flexibility is no longer a perk, it’s a baseline expectation.
The 2025 Technology at Work Report from Ivanti makes that clear: 83% of IT professionals consider flexible work arrangements either “high value” or “essential.” That figure alone should be a signal. If you’re ignoring that, you’re likely losing talent faster than you think. Metaintro tracked movement across millions of job postings and found IT workers under return-to-office (RTO) mandates are two to three times more likely to start job hunting.
Hiring in-person IT roles is taking 40–50% longer compared to remote ones. That delay can block momentum on critical infrastructure upgrades, new product rollouts, or security overhauls. Teams that could ship updates or scale faster end up slowing down, not because of performance, but because the talent pipeline is choked by geography-based limitations.
Companies want innovation but keep structuring work like it’s 2010. If your competitors are offering the same salary and more freedom, the choice becomes obvious for talented, mobile individuals. And if you’re forcing people back just because “that’s how it’s always been,” you’re not creating alignment, you’re creating friction. Lose enough high-skilled engineers and retention becomes more than just an HR problem, it becomes strategic overhead.
Lacey Kaelani, CEO and cofounder of Metaintro, nailed this when she said that such mandates damage both hiring and internal culture. When flexibility is table stakes, rigid policies become self-inflicted wounds. Smart leaders are adjusting, not because it’s easy, but because it works.
Blanket in-person work policies often fail to improve productivity and can backfire
A lot of people still buy into the idea that sitting in an office leads to automatic productivity. It doesn’t. Just being physically present doesn’t generate output. Productivity happens when teams operate with clarity and focus, something that can just as easily happen from home as it can from a desk next to a coffee machine.
Many technologists, whether they’re engineers, architects, or data scientists, work on deep, complex systems that require big blocks of uninterrupted time. Offices, with constant meetings and background noise, aren’t always built for that. If you force these roles into a fixed environment, you’re probably making their jobs harder.
Strategic collaboration, like joint architecture design or critical incident response, benefits from fast iteration and real-time decision-making. But those are moments, not daily routines. One-size-fits-all mandates flatten these differences and ignore the real dynamics of effective work. Leaders who don’t get that risk turning their biggest value drivers into disengaged assets.
Lena McDearmid, Founder and CEO of Wryver, made the point directly: “Presence alone doesn’t create value. Purpose does.” That’s where focus belongs. The moment you tell highly skilled people that creativity and problem-solving only count when they happen in your line of sight, you create a culture where badge swipes matter more than actual outcomes.
There’s a better use of leadership’s time and organization design energy: make sure the right people are in the right places when it truly matters. Abandoning deep work in the name of visibility is a mistake. Embrace flexibility, driven by outcomes, not outdated assumptions. That’s how you stay ahead.
Not all IT work benefits equally from in-office settings
In IT, context matters. Grouping every tech worker under a blanket policy makes no sense when the actual work varies so widely. Some roles genuinely benefit from being on-site, supporting physical infrastructure, handling network operations, provisioning devices. These functions deal directly with physical environments, and the in-person mode is often more efficient. That’s clear and practical.
But most IT roles don’t require a permanent seat in the office. Tasks like software engineering, systems architecture, DevOps, and cybersecurity analysis often function best in focused, distraction-limited settings, which, for many, isn’t an open-plan office. Forcing these people into an environment that misaligns with their work mode limits their contribution.
Leaders need to segment work based on execution needs, not outdated expectations. If a task requires structured collaboration, then schedule that. If it requires uninterrupted system design, then optimize for that. Real alignment starts by matching environment to function, not the other way around.
Lena McDearmid, CEO of Wryver, highlighted this nuance. She pointed out that in-person time is valuable when onboarding junior talent or tackling messy, cross-functional problems. That’s a strategic use of face-to-face work. But then she explained the reverse: many deep-tech contributors, like engineers and analysts, do their best work without constant oversight. Failing to recognize this distinction leads to wasted talent and artificial bottlenecks.
Smart leaders don’t drag everyone into the office out of habit. They build workplace strategies around execution, intention, and results. That’s how strong IT functions scale without burning talent or wasting cycles.
Poorly-justified RTO mandates risk morale and culture deterioration
Culture matters, and so does trust. When your IT teams worked remotely for two years and hit targets, maintained security, and delivered outcomes, they earned trust through performance. If you reverse that overnight with no clear reasoning, it’s not just a policy shift, it’s a signal that trust has a limit.
Mandates without clear value feel arbitrary. And tech workers, especially at the high-skill level, read between the lines. When return-to-office policies are framed vaguely or enforced universally without logical grounding, it creates a zero-sum dynamic between leadership and execution. That leads to frustration, lower morale, and eventual attrition.
Teams aren’t judging mandates by headline, they’re evaluating rationale. Is this about better performance, or about control? If it’s unclear, leaders lose credibility fast. And credibility is hard to rebuild.
Lena McDearmid spoke directly to this risk. Pressuring teams back into the office “erodes trust quickly,” especially when it follows years of remote delivery that proved successful. The problem intensifies when IT leaders are forced to spend time managing compliance and policy exceptions, time that would otherwise be spent on system upgrades, infrastructure planning, or innovation.
This isn’t theoretical. When experienced engineers who’ve delivered under pressure are told proximity trumps performance, many will simply opt out. The market still favors high-skill talent, and those with proven track records know they have options.
If your team sees the office as a consequence, not a value-add, you’ve already lost alignment. Fixing that requires more than a new seating chart. Start with purpose, explain the why, and don’t assume people will tolerate decisions that feel rooted in ego over strategy.
Purposeful hybrid planning outperforms mandatory in-person policies
In serious work environments, time and space have to serve a clear function. That applies just as much to your work policies as it does to your product roadmap. A hybrid strategy isn’t about compromise, it’s about getting the environment aligned with the work. The goal should be intentional design, not default mandates.
Mandating universal in-person attendance fails to account for the broad range of tasks across IT teams. Not everything needs face-to-face interaction. But some moments absolutely benefit from it, when you’re solving big systems problems, conducting high-complexity architecture reviews, or onboarding juniors who need exposure to culture and process. These aren’t things that occur daily, and they don’t require constant presence. What they do require is planning.
Get specific. Plan intentional collaboration days tied to business milestones, critical reviews, or live problem-solving. Avoid turning office time into a check-the-box exercise. Because once you do that, top talent will disengage, and once that happens, your retention problems start piling up.
Lena McDearmid, Founder and CEO of Wryver, explained this clearly: teams understand the value of being in-office when it supports actual outcomes. She highlighted how onboarding and cross-functional initiatives can benefit from co-location, but warned that when presence isn’t tied to value, buy-in erodes. This is a leadership responsibility. You can’t expect people to rally behind logistics that don’t connect to meaningful objectives.
If you lead in tech, you already know that alignment beats access. Organize the office around real needs, bring people together when the stakes justify it, and get out of the way when deep work needs space. That’s what effective hybrid leadership looks like.
Outcome-focused management empowers hybrid success
What you measure shapes how your teams work. In post-pandemic IT operations, measuring badge swipes does nothing for output, it just signals a lack of trust and poor operational focus. High-performing teams don’t need incentives to show up. They need clear goals, smart tools, and autonomy.
Start with data. If you’re an executive pushing workplace changes, make sure you’re using outcome metrics tied to actual business value: features shipped, system stability, customer responsiveness, response times. Leave vanity metrics out of the conversation. Talent knows the difference, and evaluates company quality through that lens.
Process automation also matters. Too many IT leaders are stuck managing low-leverage, manual tasks that burn time instead of creating value. Strip those out. Give your teams systems that let them focus on strategic execution, code delivery, architecture, security scaling, not repetition. That’s what moves output forward in a hybrid model.
Rebecca Wettemann, CEO of Valoir, summed it up sharply. She warned that when RTO is misaligned with reality, or worse, becomes a Band-Aid for bad management, the real damage shows up in team behavior. When professionals feel like they’re being evaluated by physical presence instead of what they deliver, they either leave the company, or mentally check out.
Your workplace strategy should be structured like your technology strategy: data-driven, efficient, and rooted in performance. Outcome-driven leadership isn’t a philosophy, it’s operational discipline. And it’s the difference between teams that scale and teams that stall. Make the distinction clear. Your future workforce already has.
Key takeaways for leaders
- Rigid mandates reduce talent loyalty: Top IT talent values flexibility, rigid office mandates increase attrition and make hiring slower. Leaders should offer remote options to stay competitive in talent acquisition.
- Presence doesn’t equal productivity: Not all in-person time drives output. Decision-makers should focus on results especially for roles requiring deep, uninterrupted work.
- Match work mode to task type: Some IT functions require physical presence, but many don’t. Leaders should segment roles and design hybrid policies around how work gets done most effectively.
- Poorly justified RTO erodes trust: Culture takes a hit when mandates feel arbitrary. Leaders should communicate the purpose behind office policies clearly, or risk morale, engagement, and retention.
- Planned hybrid beats blanket return: Office days should be purpose-driven. Align in-person time to specific high-impact moments like collaboration sessions or onboarding, rather than default policy.
- Measure outcomes: Productivity metrics should focus on deliverables, not physical presence. Leaders should prioritize automation, reduce friction, and reinforce goals aligned with business outcomes.
