CEOs who demand five days in the office live in the Echo Chamber: expert

• For a while, hybrid work seemed like the new normal for many workers.
• But CEOs are increasingly demanding that workers be in the office five days a week.
• Brigid Schulte, author of Over Work, spoke to BI about the CEO mindset that drives these policies.

Most workers have understood that the days of working completely remotely are over with the pandemic and that they should show up at the office sometimes.

But increasingly, CEOs at big companies are saying that even hybrid work won’t cut it.

This month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that all corporate staff must return to the office five days a week starting in 2025.

“We continue to believe that the benefits of being in the office together are significant,” Jassy wrote in an internal memo to staff.

Computer maker Dell just followed suit, changing the requirement that its hybrid sales staff be onsite from three days a week to five. Dell executives said it would help the team exploit a “high-energy” environment and develop staff skills.

Several employees BI spoke with said they suspect the policy will eventually be implemented company-wide. A Dell spokesperson said they would not speculate on future plans.

Other CEOs also seem to be on board: 79% of the 400 CEOs of major US companies surveyed in a recent survey by KPMG US said it expects workers to return to the office full-time within the next three years.

This marks a significant jump from a similar KPMG US survey of 100 chief executives, which found only 34% expected workers to return full-time to their on-site offices.

Their shift in attitude flies in the face of data, expert warnings and employees themselves who insist that having some flexibility in their work lives is good for them and the business.

So why are some CEOs who spend their days strategizing how to increase productivity and generate profits not listening to these arguments?

Brigid Schulte, journalist, director of the Better Life Lab and author of “Over Work,” told Business Insider that’s because they operate in an “echo chamber.”

“Reinstatement is based on a leader’s faith,” Schulte explained. “It has nothing to do with evidence. It often has nothing to do with performance and who is a really good worker or an innovator or who comes up with great ideas. It’s all to do with confirmation bias. “

Too many leaders simply believe that the way they’ve achieved success is the best way to work and it’s all they’re comfortable with, she said.

“If you think that businesses want to be efficient, effective and profitable, it’s amazing to me how powerful that leadership mindset and belief is,” Schulte told BI.

Their resistance to new approaches is reinforced when they talk to each other and see others make statements to the media, Schulte continued, describing the model as a “circular echo chamber.”

“I worry that more are looking at the audacity of these return-to-office mandates and thinking, well, if they did it, they can,” she added.

Exacerbating this echo chamber structure is the fact that CEOs are “overwhelmingly white men,” Schulte said.

“Many of them either have no care responsibilities or have someone else look after them. So they were able to devote 150% to work.”

Schulte said it’s no surprise that some of the worst offenders when it comes to strict RTO mandates are in “very male-dominated overwork cultures like finance, technology and law.”

Pop the echo chamber bubble

Schulte’s research for the book showed him that many companies have taken advantage of the disruptions caused by COVID to rethink their methods and make positive and lasting changes.

“They started by talking to people in their organization, not just in this rarified bubble of the C suite,” Schulte told BI.

She said there is no one-size-fits-all outcome; organizations are different and have different cultures and priorities. But what is key is that leaders are willing to listen and act.

If it doesn’t come from your CEO, there are things you can do as an individual and as an organization to bring about change.

“Run an internal pilot, collect your own data, make a case, and keep doing it,” Schulte said.

It is also important to recognize that working effectively in a digital work environment means that you need to be much more explicit about tasks, transparent in communication and have a clear system of accountability.

With this echo chamber, a few brave leaders will have to be willing to do something different, but it can certainly happen, Schulte said. Some of the CEOs he spoke to had “aha moments.”

Public policy is another avenue that will play a role in the future of how we work, Schulte added.

“That can have some important guardrails that can then create pressure for leaders to change, for organizations to pay attention to what they’re doing, rather than just continuing with this inertia of the status quo.”