Leaders Need to Reframe the Return-to-Office Conversation

A steady stream of high-profile companies across a wide range of industries — including Google, Farmers Insurance, Disney, UPS, Boeing, IBM, and Amazon — have required employees to return to their offices. While their messaging about these RTO mandates has ranged in form and tone, much of it has felt tone-deaf at best and in many cases adversarial or even dictatorial. Unsurprisingly, the result has been backlash from employees and an explosion of social media fervor, as in the case of the viral appeal of Internet Brands’ recent video message to employees.