Who gets to skip the commute these days? Remote work may have once been hailed as the great equalizer, but these days, it’s looking more like a luxury perk for the rich and powerful. CEOs and executives continue to impose return-to-office mandates on their employees while enjoying the flexibility to work from their own sprawling estates or vacation homes, The New York Times reports.

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Leaders love flexibility (but not for you): Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, for example, who has said, “I don’t work well in an office,” oversees a policy requiring employees to be in the office three days a week — often while managing the company from his estates in Hawaii or California. Starbucks is also asking corporate staff to return to the office three days a week starting in January, while newly appointed CEO Brian Niccol will commute from his Newport Beach residence with the help of a jet, personal assistant, and a private office. The company says he’ll follow the same rules.

Evidence shows remote work favors high earners: Research by Stanford economist Nick Bloom shows that post-pandemic, remote workdays have shrunk for middle-income earners while remaining largely intact for top earners. Only 5% of workers earning under USD 50k live more than 50 miles from their office, compared to 14% of those earning USD 250k or more.

Interestingly, these return-to-office mandates often lack a data-driven foundation. Companies like Amazon — which prides itself on being metrics-focused — have struggled to provide evidence for in-person attendance mandates, instead using vague justifications bracketed by phrases like “we believe” or “we feel.”

This could be because the data are decidedly mixed. Studies of the effect of remote and hybrid work on productivity have found remote work to be associated with productivity losses of 8-19%, while others have found it to be associated with productivity gains of 13% or even 17% — not exactly a clear-cut picture of the relative merits of in-office flexibility. Yet even putting aside the relatively subjective metric of "productivity," advocates of workplace flexibility argue that well-managed work-from-home policies improve gender parity, support workers with caregiving responsibilities, and expand opportunities for workers with disabilities.

For many companies, office mandates appear more tied to shareholder optics than operational needs. Research from over 1.2k companies presented at Stanford University’s October 2024 Remote Work Conference indicates that office return orders are often linked to financial performance struggles, possibly serving as a signal to shareholders rather than a driver of performance.

The ultimate irony is that it’s not rank-and-file workers but long-distance CEOs who underperform when working remotely. A study tracking over 900 executives found that the greater the distance between a CEO’s home and headquarters, the wider the performance gap. Maybe it’s time for the C-suite to lead by example — and swap the jet for a desk.

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