JPMorgan, Amazon lead wave of RTO orders in 2025

Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

The age of remote work is fading fast, as the federal government's executive return-to-work order is the latest in a saga of employees being pulled back into the office.

President Donald Trump signed his "Return to In-Person Work" order during his Jan. 20 inauguration, directing the "heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch of the government" to rescind remote work plans and "require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis."

The Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management have since built on this order with guidance for agency leaders to provide a step-by-step guide for complying with the order.

Research released last year by educational insights resource Intelligent.com found that 40% of business leaders surveyed felt Generation Z professionals were unprepared for the job market, in large part due to the lack of development opportunities in remote and hybrid workplaces.

"I feel like we've hit the point since where you can tell that there's like a deficit now in employees that's starting to become obvious when we want young people to step up and accept more responsibility and they're missing certain things that were typically developed prior to the pandemic when we're all in the office," Neil Costa, founder and CEO of recruitment marketing agency HireClix, told Employee Benefit News' Paola Peralta.

Read more: How remote and hybrid work is impacting corporate sustainability

Below is a continually-updated list of noteworthy return to office mandates put together by EBN editorial staff.

MLB issues full week return to office order for employees

Staffers with Major League Baseball have been working on a hybrid policy since the COVID-19 pandemic, but all that changed last month.

According to Bloomberg reports, league executives ordered employees back into the office five days a week starting in February, with two flex days allotted each month for those that need to work from home in spot instances.

MLB joins the growing trend of employers mandating that staff return to the office, but are bound to face some pushback from hesitant employees.

"There are a lot of folks out there who know they function better when they're remote. … So even when companies demand a return to the office, there will be some people who are just not going to go along with the plan," Stacie Haller, chief career advisor at ResumeBuilder, told EBN's Deanna Cuadra.

Tiffany Hagler-Geard/Bloomberg

Will JPMorgan's RTO order spur other banks to do the same?

Executives at JPMorgan Chase are pulling nearly all of its hybrid employees back into the office full time in March, which begs the question: Will other banks do the same?

The decision from the nation's largest bank drew criticism from more than 1,800 of its 300,000-employee workforce, who signed a petition asking JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to retain the hybrid work model and allocate more resources towards strengthening remote capabilities across the bank's operations.

In profanity-laden remarks made during a town hall meeting earlier this month, which were first reported by Reuters, Dimon said he didn't care "how many people sign[ed] that f***ing petition." He later walked back the remarks in an interview with CNBC regretting the choice to curse, but stood by the sentiment that the RTO was for the betterment of the bank and its clients.

Rachel Jessen/Bloomberg

Amazon's path back to the office for employees

Amazon President and CEO Andy Jassy began plans to pull employees back into the office five days a week, which went into effect on Jan. 2 this year.

In a Sept. 16 letter, Jassy said that as part of being "better set up to invent, collaborate and be connected enough to each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business," a full return to a pre-pandemic work schedule was vital.

He noted that emergency situations, instances where more isolation was needed to finish coding and business travel were understood reasons for remote work, and will be acknowledged moving forward along with remote work exceptions approved by team leads.

"We are also going to bring back assigned desk arrangements in locations that were previously organized that way, including the U.S. headquarters locations (Puget Sound and Arlington)," Jassy said in the letter. "For locations that had agile desk arrangements before the pandemic, including much of Europe, we will continue to operate that way."

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

AT&T joins wave of companies issuing RTOs

AT&T began pulling employees back on site five days a week in January through a staggered rollout of its RTO mandate, as reported by Business Insider in December 2024.

The move follows earlier campaigns by AT&T CEO John Stankey in 2023 mandating employees will be required to work at least three days from one of the company's nine locations in Dallas, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Ramon, California, Seattle, St. Louis, Washington D.C., Middletown, New Jersey and Bedminster, New Jersey.

Following the pushback, Verizon launched a recruitment effort seeking to capitalize on the dissatisfaction among workers by emailing AT&T employees to promote openings within the company.

Sergio Flores/Bloomberg

Dell closes its remote work chapter in latest RTO mandate

Starting March 3, remote Dell employees that live in close proximity to a company office will be required to report to offices five days a week.

Those who live farther away will be permitted to keep working remotely. Reports from Business Insider say that according to an internal FAQ composed by Dell, new roles will be formatted to work at specific locations without remote capabilities. Members of the company's global sales division have been working under a five-day schedule since September of last year.

The FAQ also relayed that staffers who opt to continue working remotely will be excluded from promotion discussions as part of the company's yearly pay planning process, unless approval is granted by the SVP, ELT and COO.