Nearly a Quarter of Workers Have Returned to the Office Without a Boss

Even as more employers require their rank-and-file to shuffle back into the office, nearly a quarter of workers have returned without a supervisor to report to, according to a ResumeBuilder survey of 800 office workers.

Since May, many companies and their executives have been recalling workers back to the office, mostly part-time, including AT&T and Chipotle Mexican Grill. Executives of Amazon, Meta have all demanded their workers return to the office in recent months. So has Zoom, the virtual meeting software developer that gained notoriety and profits during the Covid-19 pandemic.

While 23% of workers surveyed said their direct manager goes to the office less frequently than they do, some 36% of people surveyed said their manager comes in more often than they do. The majority — 42% — told ResumeBuilder that both managers and rank-and-file workers go to their offices at roughly the same frequency.

Just more than three-quarters of respondents said they have team members who don't come in weekly, even though they personally have to. A third of workers added that less than half their teams are in the office each week, while 54% said they have some colleagues who still work fully remote.

“There is no point in forcing people back into the office other than to justify paying rent for the office space, especially if most of the team is at home," Julia Toothacre, a resume and career strategist for ResumeBuilder, said. "If the boss is working from home and [so is] part of the team, the rest of the team should be given that option as well."

More than 80% of workers said they want to work fewer days in the office than the policies at their respective companies require, and some 82% of that group — or 69% of all surveyed workers — want to work entirely from home.

Roughly 85% of women said they would prefer to work fully remotely, compared to 79% of men. Notably, 94% of women between 35 years old and 44 years old want to be fully remote.

Since working remotely became popularized during the pandemic, women have consistently been more likely to prefer working from home for a number of reasons. Remote work offers more flexibility for women — who shoulder a greater share of caregiver and household responsibilities — and helps all workers avoid toxic workplace environments.

Some 44% of women have reported experiencing harassment and/or micro-aggressions against them, according to Deloitte's annual Women @ Work study. The most commonly reported behaviors were being interrupted or talked over at meetings and being given fewer chances to speak at meetings than male colleagues, at 22% and 20%, respectively.