Where You Work Shouldn't Be Up for Debate. The Data Agrees.

A few months ago, I learned that a company I used to work for had implemented a full return-to-office mandate. Not hybrid. Not flexible. Everyone, back in the building, five days a week.

My first reaction wasn't surprise. It was frustration. Because I had worked for that company both before and after COVID, and I remembered exactly what both looked like.

Before COVID, I had an hour-long bus ride each way to get to the office. Two hours of my day, every day, just getting there and back. I wasn't productive on that bus. I wasn't with my family. I was just in transit, burning time I couldn't get back.

Then COVID happened, and everything shifted. I got up in the morning, took the dogs for a walk, and was at my workstation without losing two hours of my life to public transportation. I was productive. I was present. I was happier at work than I had been in years.

And now, apparently, that was over. Not because anything had changed about the work. Just because someone decided it was time to come back — without understanding how the individual teams not only worked, but needed to work efficiently and effectively.

I want to ask that question out loud: why?

The Data Has an Answer. Leadership Won't Like It.

Owl Labs has been tracking how people work for ten years. Their 2026 State of Hybrid Work Report — now in its tenth annual edition — surveyed 2,000 full-time workers across the United States, and the findings are about as clear as workplace data gets.

If given the choice, nearly 1 in 2 workers (46%) say they would choose to work hybrid. Requiring employees to work in the office full-time is the top policy that would prevent workers from accepting a job offer — cited by 39% of respondents. And if those same workers were told they could no longer work remotely or hybrid, 41% would start looking for another job that offers more flexibility, and 6% would simply quit.

That is not a minor inconvenience. That is a retention crisis waiting to happen.

Workers themselves believe return-to-office policies are being driven by a desire to maintain leadership oversight and visibility (76%), improve productivity and collaboration (74%), and reinforce company culture (71%). But there's another reason on that list that deserves more attention than it typically gets: 63% of workers believe employers are requiring in-office work to justify office leases and real estate investments.

Half a century of office real estate doesn't justify disrupting a workforce that has demonstrated it can do the job from anywhere.

The Productivity Argument Doesn't Hold Up

The most common justification for return-to-office mandates is productivity. People aren't as productive at home. They're distracted. They're not collaborating. The work suffers.

The data says otherwise. 69% of managers say their teams have become more productive since adopting hybrid models, and workers who work remotely or hybrid report being more productive than their fully in-office counterparts. The clear productivity killer, according to the report, is the commute — with 86% of workers commuting up to 45 minutes one way, daily.

Think about what that means in practice. An hour and a half of a person's day, every day, spent getting to and from a building. That's time they're not working. That's time they're not with their families. That's time they're spending an average of $53 a day just to show up — on commuting, parking, breakfast, and lunch — compared to $20 a day when working from home.

You're not getting more productivity with a return-to-office mandate. You're getting more resentment.

Why Instructional Designers Are a Particular Case

I want to bring this back to our field specifically, because I think instructional designers are uniquely positioned in this conversation.

The work we do — needs analysis, content design, storyboarding, course development, evaluation planning — is almost entirely independent work. It requires focus, creativity, and the ability to think without constant interruption. The Owl Labs report found that 51% of workers say they work more independently and productively when remote, versus 30% who prefer doing solo work in the office, and about half say they think more creatively when working remotely.

That describes instructional design work almost perfectly.

The collaboration that our work does require — stakeholder meetings, SME interviews, review cycles, client check-ins — can happen in person when it genuinely benefits from being in person. Quarterly planning meetings, relationship-building sessions, onboarding. Those are the cases where an in-person presence adds something. Not the Tuesday afternoon when you're writing a storyboard for a compliance module and the only thing the open office plan is contributing is background noise.

The work doesn't care where it gets done. What matters is whether it gets done well.

The Return-to-Office Question Nobody Is Asking

Here's what I keep coming back to when I think about that former employer's mandate: what changed?

The work didn't change. The tools didn't change. The people didn't change. By every measure, the remote work model was functioning. And then, five years after it was implemented out of necessity, someone decided it was time to reverse it — not because of evidence, but because of preference. Because that's how it was done before. Because the building is there and it should be full.

The Owl Labs report found that 76% of workers believe return-to-office policies are being enforced because of traditional expectations — that's just "how it's always been done." Not because the data supports it. Not because productivity suffered. Because someone in a corner office decided that people should be in buildings again.

That is not a strategy. That is nostalgia dressed up as policy.

If you are an instructional designer — or any knowledge worker — working in a role that can be done effectively from anywhere, you have every right to ask why you are being required to come in. Ask what problem the mandate is solving. Ask what evidence supports the decision. Ask what the organization is measuring that would indicate the policy is working.

And if the answer is "because we said so," you have the data to push back.