The Mandate Episode: Why Return to Work is a Losing Fight

If you read the headlines, you'd think nearly every major employer marched its workforce back to the office five days a week. The data says otherwise. And so does the human cost when companies push it anyway.In this episode of The Catalyst, Brian Elliott, CEO of Work Forward, an anonymous 30-year IT veteran and former Marine, and Softchoice's Lisa Walkden lay out what return-to-office mandates are actually about — and what they cost the leaders who issue them.Here's what you'll take away:Why only about a third of US companies actually went back to five days — and what's really driving the ones that didHow a 30-year tech veteran ended up quiet-quitting his job, and what that reveals about the real cost of a mandateThe reframe one Softchoice leader uses with executives weighing RTO — and the data that backs it upWhy the same companies still picking the RTO fight are often the same ones struggling with AI adoptionFeaturing: Brian Elliott, founder of the Flex Index and CEO of Work Forward; Lisa Walkden, Senior Manager of Workplace Experience at Softchoice, a World Wide Technology Company; and an anonymous IT leader who agreed to share his story on condition we don't name his employer.#ReturnToOffice #HybridWork #ITLeadership #WorkplaceStrategy #FutureOfWork #FlexIndex #TheCatalystGuestsBrian Elliott — Work ForwardFlex Index (Brian's data set) — flexindex.comLisa Walkden — SoftchoiceAnonymous — 30-year tech veteran and former US MarineResearch & Data CitedFlex Index quarterly reports — flexindex.com/reportsStanford Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (Nick Bloom, WFH Research) — wfhresearch.comRichmond Fed Economic Brief No. 24-16 (May 2024) — "Return-to-Office Orders: A Survey Analysis of Employment Impacts" by Grey Gordon and Sonya Ravindranath Waddell — richmondfed.org"Return-to-Office Mandates and Brain Drain" — research from the University of Pittsburgh and Baylor's Hankamer School of Business (3M+ workers tracked via LinkedIn data) — hankamer.baylor.eduCBRE data on workforce-manager geographic distribution (cited by Brian Elliott in interview)More from BrianWork Forward newsletter — theworkforward.substack.comThe Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology.