Remote work could become a secret weapon in the battle for top talent

• Amazon has announced a five-day return-to-office policy for corporate staff starting in January.
• Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and others have also enforced strict RTO mandates.
• Flexible work is likely to become a key recruitment perk, experts say.

The list of companies abandoning remote work is growing.

Last week, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told corporate staffers that they would need to be in the office five days a week starting in January, up from the previous three-day policy. This is part of the firm’s bid to return to how things were before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier this month, Big Four firm PwC announced to its 26,000 UK employees that they must spend at least three days a week on-site or with clients starting in the new year. The accounting giant will begin tracking their working locations to ensure these requirements are being met.

Citigroup, HSBC, Barclays, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs are all among the companies that have mandated at least some workers to return to the workplace five days a week.

The office isn’t dead. But for some experts, remote work won’t die either. If anything, it will only become more of a perk.

Remote work as a competitive advantage

For Kate Palmer, the employment services director at Peninsula UK, a human resources, employment law, and health and safety services provider, if return-to-office mandates become even more common, the companies that continue to offer flexible work patterns will start to really push them to recruit new staff.

“There’s a big race for talent out there,” she told Business Insider, adding that “attracting talent into a business is hard these days.”

Palmer said if remote and hybrid work options make a business stand out as an employer of choice, it will likely start highlighting that in job ads and descriptions. The firm would also probably raise it as a perk in interviews to differentiate from the competition.

Daniel Wheatley, a reader in business and labor economics at the University of Birmingham, said applicants in a post-pandemic world probably just expect remote work to be part of the package.

Now that high-profile employers like Amazon are beginning to reverse this norm, flexible work will once again become an important part of the recruitment process for companies that stick to it.

“That would have been very common before the pandemic,” Wheatley told BI, referring to working remotely’ pre-pandemic status as a perk.

RTO policies could hurt recruitment

The work-from-home experience is different for everyone.

Some have expressed feeling isolated from their colleagues and unable to adjust to online communication. One tech startup remote worker previously told BI that they eventually quit their job because they felt less connected to their company, having lost the personal trust and camaraderie of being in the office.

For others, flexible work has become a game changer and one they can’t see themselves looking back on. Many cite being more productive and are grateful for the money saved from cutting back on transportation, work lunches, and in some cases, even rent.

Wheatley said some employers will start to move back to pre-COVID-19 work habits, trying to replicate what the office used to be like. In contrast, other companies will continue to embrace the advantages of flexible work.

Strict RTO mandates could be quite detrimental to recruitment, he said.

“I think there are a lot of benefits to be had from maintaining this push for remote and hybrid work,” he said, adding that we may start to see a rise in people applying for companies that offer these options.

Amazon declined to comment when contacted by Business Insider but pointed to the memo Jassy sent to employees, in which he said the company continues “to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant.

“We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another,” Jassy wrote.