Return-to-office mandates are here to stay, writes workplace expert Alison Green, which means any colleagues who refuse to comply, no matter how talented, might be on the chopping block.
I am a high-performing, respected, well-liked senior contributor on a 25-person team at a global tech company. Since COVID, we have all been successfully working remotely. Recently, the company has enacted a “hybrid work” policy, which for me means I am supposed to go to the office three times a week.
Because our team and those we work closely with are scattered around the globe, this means we are often going to the office to sit on virtual calls. Our team also has 12 contract workers who are not required to be in the office due to the terms of their contracts and desk availability. Additionally, the director of our team, Scott, is considered a teleworker and is grandfathered in, so the in-office policy doesn’t apply to him. There is one other noncontract employee who doesn’t live near an office and is also grandfathered in. I give you all this context to ask for advice on advocating for a high-performing colleague, Molly, who has been given an ultimatum: Move to be close to an office , or she will “exit the company” in the next few months. Molly started as an intern with the company and performed so well that she was hired full-time. She’s now been with us nearly five years and has been fully remote the entire time. She is one of the top performers on our team and is my star mentee who is expected to follow in my footsteps. This is important to note as my skills and knowledge make me somewhat of a “unicorn,” and my boss is always trying to find people who have similar skill sets. Molly and I share a manager, Claudia, whom we both trust and respect. When this hybrid-work policy was implemented toward the end of 2025, Claudia followed all the correct paths in HR to request an exemption for Molly to be redesignated as a teleworker based on her performance and value to the team and company, but it was denied. Claudia is very upset about this, and I do believe the decision was out of her hands. Scott, Claudia’s boss and our team’s director, also supported this exemption for Molly and said he took it all the way up the chain to advocate for her. I believe both when they say they did all they could. Beyond Molly’s stellar performance, I am outraged that this hybrid-work policy is already being incredibly unfairly applied, that this decision will affect the entire team’s morale, and that the loss of her will mean I will most likely have to pick up the slack. It has not been made clear if we’ll be able to backfill Molly’s role. As her senior peer, what, if anything, can I do to advocate for her to stay? It’s really a simple ask of HR: Redesignate a top performer as a teleworker. As of now, Molly’s situation is largely unknown to most of the team. But I’ve been thinking,Assuming I get Molly onboard, could I campaign to the rest of the team and ask them to “sign” or in some way show their support for Molly, and then share this evidence up the chain of command and to HR? I have a good amount of influence with the team, and I am willing to burn some professional capital on this crusade for fairness to keep my star mentee. I know something like this is a Hail Mary at this point, so I’d appreciate any guidance! I don’t think you can. The people in the best position to advocate for Molly are her boss and her boss’s boss — Claudia and Scott — and they’ve already tried and failed. It’s very unlikely that HR would respond to what would essentially be a petition from your team. They’ve already been approached by people with more power and influence, and they don’t care. For what it’s worth, HR’s commitment to hybrid work probably isn’t coming from HR; it’s coming from someone above them. And if the message HR has received is that everyone outside of a narrow pool of exceptions needs to spend some of their workdays on-site, period, they’re going to enforce that. Whatever debate was going to happen on that has probably already happened, and anyone arguing for changes has already lost.advocate for people in Molly’s position, particularly when her own manager and director have gone to bat for her. Her manager and director should be the final word on whether her job can be done successfully from afar and, in particular, whether making an exception for her is less costly than the damage from losing her. But that’s clearly not how it’s working in your company right now, and that’s likely because someone higher up laid down the law and isn’t going to compromise, and HR has absorbed that message.So they’re probably not going to change course. If that’s the case — and it sounds like it is — your company is part of a larger trend of employers bringing people back to the office and refusing to make exceptions . After a several-year period spurred by the pandemic when it looked like the move to remote work would be a permanent switch for a lot of employers, a significant number have backtracked and started requiring workers to return to the office, either full-time or for a minimum number of days per week. It’s not that these companies don’t know that policy is unpopular; they do know that, and they’ve decided they’re okay with losing people over it. We can debate whether or not that makes sense, but that’s the current reality for a lot of people. However, to the extent that you might have leverage here, it would be around your own unwillingness to pick up the slack if the team loses Molly. Have you talked to Claudia and Scott about exactly what that means? It’s possible that could give them some leeway to push back again witharguments about the impact on the team’s work, but I’m skeptical that HR will be that moved by it. They’re more likely to say Molly’s replacement will pick up that slack. That wouldn’t necessarily be a ridiculous response, all the rest of this context aside — because in general it’s not a good idea for companies to be held hostage to the idea that they must keep a specific person at all costs . Ultimately, I think this is just a bad situation — Molly will leave, and your team will have to move forward.Are Repetto Ballet Shoes Worth It?What I Hear When You Tell Me ‘You Look Great’ Oh, Now the Trump Administration Wants Kids to Read After her husband’s boss spent a year dismantling the Department of Education, Usha Vance has launched a books podcast for children.A letter signed by dozens of artists, doctors, and policy experts demands that children are released from a notorious detention facility.After I experienced some debilitating complications, I started reflecting on why I felt the need to get plastic surgery in the first place.You'll receive the next newsletter in your inbox.New York
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