RTO forzado: 6 claves para sanar una cultura laboral rota

Name: RTO forzado: 6 claves para sanar una cultura laboral rota
Uploaded: 2025-06-26T20:11:10+00:00
Duration: 10 min 52 s
Channel: MIT Sloan Management Review México
Description: Los líderes deben dejar de obsesionarse con el tiempo en la oficina y comenzar a centrarse en los seis facilitadores que cambian la forma en que trabajan sus colaboradores.

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Los líderes deben dejar de obsesionarse con el tiempo en la oficina y comenzar a centrarse en los seis facilitadores que cambian la forma en que trabajan sus colaboradores.

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00:00New research shows that not everyone is jumping on the return to office bandwagon.

00:05It turns out that 68% of companies are maintaining flexibility

00:08and they're outperforming their peers in the process.

00:12We sat down with Brian Elliott in late 2024 to discuss return to office mandates.

00:18That conversation struck a chord.

00:20Hundreds of thousands of people have watched that video.

00:23Clearly, the future of workplace flexibility matters.

00:26Six months later, the landscape continues to evolve.

00:30Political changes, economic uncertainty, and high-profile CEO announcements

00:35have all shaped the conversation around where and how we work.

00:39But what's actually happening beyond those attention-grabbing headlines?

00:44Today, Brian returns with fresh data and insights that might surprise you.

00:48He'll share new research on productivity,

00:51examine how companies like Neiman Marcus Group are achieving remarkable results through flexibility,

00:56and explain why even retail workers are benefiting from a more autonomous approach to work.

01:08Brian, we're so glad that you could join us again today.

01:12So, when we spoke with you back in November of 2024 about the return to office mandates,

01:17you shared some really compelling research showing that RTO mandates weren't producing the productivity boost

01:24or the financial benefits that companies were expecting.

01:28So, what are you seeing happening now around forcing employees back into offices?

01:32Yeah, let's just start off with where we are in terms of policies and how many people are actually doing this.

01:38The headlines tend to get written about the CEO who's demanding people to get back in the office

01:41that sort of changed their mind about flexibility.

01:45It's not the majority case.

01:46Flex Index tracks about 9,000 organizations in the U.S.

01:50At the end of the year, last year in Q4, 68% of them had a flexible work policy.

01:55And that number didn't really change Q2, Q3, Q4,

01:58even after Andy Jassy and some others started making demands.

02:02What we see more recently is a study that came out of Stanford and the Federal Reserve of senior leaders.

02:08And what that showed, even like a month ago, was that only 12% of CEOs who have a flexible work policy

02:15plan to push something more stringent this year, plan to push return to office.

02:20And even when they asked them about, like, what happens if there's a recession?

02:24What happens if unemployment goes to 8%?

02:26Will you use that leverage against employees on flexibility?

02:29The answer was not really.

02:30The 12% became 14%, not exactly a big shift.

02:34And in fact, there was a couple percentage points of CEOs who said they would actually get more

02:38flexible, which probably means they're going to save money by reducing office space instead.

02:43What we are seeing in the data, though, is one kind of key thing, which is more people are

02:47coming back to three days a week.

02:49There's more drive around that, which if your team is co-located in the same city,

02:53most people are actually pretty happy with.

02:55So your big argument then has always been that that kind of flexibility in when and where people

03:01are working can really benefit employee productivity and a company's profitability.

03:07Are you seeing any new data that continues to support that?

03:10Yeah, there was a new study that came out of the UK recently, an academic study of government

03:14workers, interestingly, that showed on average people who had flexibility to work from home

03:19more often, even a couple of days a week, were 12% more productive.

03:23They measured their output, they measured output quality, and that 12% was sort of the center

03:28of it.

03:28It ranged as high as 25%, it ranged as low as like one or two points, which kind of goes

03:33back to the fact that if you talk and work with your manager, people often figure out

03:37what's best for them to optimize for outcomes.

03:41Financially, there's also a really interesting study that came out of the University of Melbourne

03:44that showed that companies that have flexible work policies outperform their peers and outperform

03:49the stock market.

03:50They have what gets called alpha in the stock market, which is they sort of unexpectedly

03:54do better.

03:55And I think that's because we all fall back on conventional wisdom that being in the office

03:59is being tough on employees and must be good for profitability, when in fact, the research

04:04and the data is showing that the opposite is actually more true.

04:07The giving people some degree of flexibility that works with their team actually gets more

04:11engagement, gets more productivity, and it turns out drives higher financial performance

04:16as well.

04:16So obviously, with the new Trump Republican administration, we've seen a shift in the

04:22political climate since January, both in the U.S. and around the world.

04:26How are these changes impacting workplace policies?

04:30You can see the impact of the Trump administration's demands on a return to office almost entirely

04:35within the federal workforce itself, which we should get into.

04:39More broadly, though, the impact of that outside of the administration isn't as large.

04:43You're seeing for every CEO that presses people back into the office, a couple of other CEOs

04:48aren't doing that because they see it as an opportunity to steal talent.

04:52A good example there is recently there was reporting about the fact that Verizon was basically running

04:56ads saying, hey, AT&T workers, if you're not happy going back into the office five days

05:01a week, you might want to look at our job boards.

05:04Sure, you're picking off people like data scientists in particular.

05:07Brian, let's step back and talk about some good news.

05:10Are you seeing any innovative retention strategies that are successfully balancing in-person

05:16collaboration with the kind of flexibility that employees want?

05:20You know, I'm thinking, for instance, of the Neiman Marcus Group, which has this remarkable

05:24business success with pairing flexibility with accountability for really great results.

05:30You wrote about that for us in March.

05:32I think the Neiman Marcus story is a great one, both in terms of helping people understand

05:37how flexibility and outcomes management go really hand in hand and how flexibility can

05:42be applied to the front line.

05:43So what Neiman Marcus did is they moved away from the sort of annual performance appraisal

05:47to quarterly assessments of how people are doing.

05:50Every manager with every employee, and this took a fair amount of investment on their part,

05:55set goals and assessed how they were doing on a regular basis.

05:57That meant you weren't waiting until the end of the year.

05:59But they gave people more flexibility and held them really deeply accountable to achieving

06:04those outcomes.

06:05The results were fantastic.

06:07That actually resulted in higher retention among employees.

06:10They had store employees, for example, where 75% of them stayed on through the end of the

06:14year, when often in stores and operations, the number is the opposite.

06:1875% of the turnover within those organizations, typically.

06:22Neiman Marcus also saw that they were able to drive better financial performance and higher

06:26productivity.

06:27They had, for example, when they sold in a private transaction, they sold at twice the

06:32EBITDA multiple, the profitability multiple of their nearest competitor, Nordstrom.

06:37So the financial performance was great.

06:40Retention of employees was high.

06:42And that's because they figured out that these two things can really go hand in hand, flexibility

06:47and accountability for outcomes.

06:49Brian, you talked about frontline workers having more flexibility.

06:54How does that even work in, say, a store situation where you have retail workers?

06:59Yeah.

07:00Most people assume that frontline workers, people who work in stores and warehouses, the

07:04flexibility doesn't pertain to them.

07:06What Neiman Marcus did was a couple of things.

07:07They actually did invest in tools and technology to support location flexibility on some days for

07:13those workers.

07:14So store associates, for example, at Neiman Marcus also manage customer lists.

07:19They have customers that they work with on a regular basis.

07:21What they did is they enabled them to work from home a day a week to manage those customers to the

07:25interactions and the back and forth.

07:28Store managers could also do things like staff planning and merchandising layouts working from

07:32home because those are activities that can be done on a computer from anywhere.

07:35The bigger deal in both store associates and people in operations roles is schedule flexibility,

07:41allowing people more choice in things like which location do you work in?

07:45What shifts do you take?

07:47That kind of flexibility helps people balance out their personal lives and their work lives.

07:51It was a big contributor to industry-leading retention rates that they had for frontline workers.

07:57Okay, so let's move away from some of these really specific examples and look more at the big

08:04picture.

08:05Back in November of 2024, when we talked to you about RTO for the first time, you said that

08:11the main takeaway for leaders who are contemplating an RTO mandate is that they should ask themselves,

08:17what problem am I trying to solve?

08:19They should also consider whether there are better ways to solve problems than blanket mandates.

08:24Is that still the same question?

08:26Absolutely.

08:27What problem you're trying to solve is really a key one because often these are conditioned

08:31off of a leader who just feels uncomfortable about too many people working from home too

08:36many days and a lack of trust.

08:37If your issues, you're concerned about whether people are really working while they're working

08:40from home, then an approach like Neiman Marcus's where you're focused on how do we make sure

08:45that we're measuring everyone on the basis of quarterly goals is really important.

08:49Brian, is there any kind of additional takeaway that you would add to that now in the current

08:55political and economic climate?

08:58The number one issue right now is not return to office or even generative AI.

09:01It's chaos.

09:02It's the concern those leaders have about the economy as well as culture inside of their

09:06organization.

09:07And it's a lot of the uncertainty and fears that are being created by the sort of fears

09:12of recession, the fears about, you know, the backlash against the backlash on DEI.

09:17I think in today's climate, the biggest thing that we all need to think about as leaders is

09:21what's our job in building resilience and trust within our own organizations.

09:25So things like a return to office mandate aren't going to help on either one of those in terms

09:29of especially trust among people, but spending time with your team and organization, being

09:35realistic and open about the challenges you're facing, but enlisting them and helping you think

09:39through what are our solutions to approach this are going to be really important because

09:44those stress levels aren't going down.

09:45They're only going up.

09:46And if you're not spending time building resilience, both in yourself and your team, you have a

09:51greater likelihood that something's going to break over the course of the next few months.

09:55And so for a lot of leaders that I'm talking with, that's where the concern lies.

09:59The concern lies in, how am I going to help my team navigate and get through this successfully?

10:04Because if we don't stand together, we'll all hang apart, to quote Benjamin Franklin.

10:09Thank you once again, Brian, for talking with us and for your insights into this really

10:14important topic.

10:15Thanks, Leslie.

10:16Great to be in with you.

10:18The future of workplace flexibility continues to evolve rapidly.

10:22As Brian Elliott's comments reveal, the key is finding the right balance.

10:26If you haven't seen our previous conversation with Brian, it's linked in the description below.

10:31And for more on the return to office debate, see his article,

10:34RTO Mandates Won't Fix a Broken Culture, on our website.

10:38What's working for your organization?

10:40Share your thoughts in the comments below.

10:43And for more insight from our authors, check out this curated playlist.

10:46Thanks for watching.

10:47Thanks for watching.

RTO forzado: 6 claves para sanar una cultura laboral rota

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