The majority of UK employees say they would not accept a full-time return-to-office (RTO) mandate from their employer, according to a study from the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London and King’s Business School.
The research found that just 42 percent of workers would obey a five day RTO requirement, representing a drop from 54 percent in early 2022.
The proportion of workers who said they would look for a new job with homeworking opportunities if their employer mandated RTO full time rose from 40 percent to 50 percent from early 2022 to the second quarter of 2024.
There have been pronouncements from business leaders that people should return to the office and some media reports that a “great return” is already happening.
But researchers found no evidence of a mass return to in person attendance. The data shows rates of people working from home has been stable since 2022.
For the study, more than one million observations from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and 50,000 responses from the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes UK (SWAA) were analysed. Researchers said this ensured a comprehensive picture of remote working patterns across the UK workforce from early 2022 through to the end of 2024.
The results reveal that the share of workers who said they would quit immediately if their employer demanded they attend the workplace five days a week doubled from 5 percent to 10 percent for the same period. Overall, 58 percent of workers now say they would either quit straight away (9 percent) or start looking for a new job (49 percent) if told to return full time.
The percentage of women who said they would quit straight away or seek alternative employment was 64 percent, compared to 51 percent of men.
Working parents in particular are showing growing opposition to full time office demands.
In early 2022, 38 percent of fathers with school-age children (aged six to 17) said they would leave or start job hunting if RTO mandates came in. By the end of 2024 this had risen to 53 percent, researchers found.
Only 33 percent of working mothers said they would obey a full time office mandate.
Black and minority ethnic workers show higher rates of willingness to adhere to full time RTO mandates, which researchers said may reflect job insecurity and workplace discrimination.
The data shows hybrid working has become established in the UK labour market and that employer policies have not shifted significantly towards ending remote work.
Analysis of the LFS dataset shows that 26-27 percent of women said their home was their main place of work between the first quarter of 2022 and the fourth quarter of 2024, which represents a stable percentage reporting this.
For men, the rate has stayed at 27-30 percent, although researchers observed a slight decrease of around 1-2 percentage points in the most recent data.
However, overall the researchers found there has been “a slow increase in average permitted work-from-home days”. This has increased from less than one day a week in 2022 to about 1.3 days in 2024.
But researchers added that they also found that employers are less likely to allow fully remote working. The data shows a slight increase in the number of homeworking policies that permit staff to only work from home one to two days a week.
Analysis of the SWAA data shows that 25 percent of workers report working remotely at least three or more days a week, while 40 percent work remotely at least once a week.
There is a risk women and parents may be forced out of the work, while those that continue to work remotely are likely to face a greater flexibility stigma and potential career penalties, especially when it is generally parents or mothers who work from home, they said.
In addition, employers that bring in inflexible mandates risk significant recruitment, skills and retention challenges, the researchers warned.
To avoid this, the study recommends businesses frame flexibility as a long-term business strategy rather than a temporary perk. It emphasised that hybrid and remote working have become baseline expectations in the modern labour market.
Heejung Chung, professor of work and employment and director of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London, and lead author of the report, said: “An increasing amount of research shows that well-designed hybrid working models offer significant benefits for both employers and employees.
“Alongside this, there has been a marked shift in attitudes, with workers now seeing flexibility as the norm. Managers need to understand and adapt to this new reality. Rather than forcing a return to pre-pandemic working patterns, organisations should be looking to formalise hybrid models, invest in remote collaboration tools, and set up coordinated in-office days to maximise engagement.
“Where possible, workers should feel emboldened to hold their ground in the face of RTO mandates, as the weight of the evidence demonstrating remote working does not harm productivity is growing. In fact, many studies are finding flexible workers tend to work longer and harder compared to those who do not work flexibly – and importantly, those who are able to work remotely tend to be more loyal and committed to their jobs.”
