Bosses Push Back on WFH Die-Hards: ‘They Will Need to Show Up’

Office attendance is slumping again and bosses have a warning: We are a worse company when you stay home.

In buildings across 10 major U.S. cities, office occupancy has fallen back below 50% for the past three weeks, according to Kastle Systems, which tracks security swipes into offices. The drop comes despite new return-to-office mandates that affect more than 600,000 workers and counting.

Hundreds of Wall Street Journal readers—many of them bosses and team leaders—responded to our story on the workers who say “it’s not my responsibility” to save the office economy. These bosses say employees who insist they are more productive while working from home are missing the larger picture: Team productivity is taking a hit.

The purpose of an office is to create a dynamic environment where people feed off one another’s energy, bond on a personal level and explore ideas in unstructured ways, many company leaders said. Remote work can’t provide those kinds of casual interactions that build culture and camaraderie, they say, which means it is worse for the organisation and, in many cases, individual careers, too.

“Team collaboration really is much better and more effective with actual face time. Career growth also,” said William McNamara, a hiring manager who lives in Bellevue, Wash. “Sure, zealots will claim you can do it all remotely, but you can’t do it all as effectively for everyone, remotely.”

Still, work-life balance is a vital piece of company culture—one that workers say is helped by the option to work from home, at least part of the time. That leaves bosses to strike a difficult balance, something they are more keenly aware of than their employees might realise.

“We are stuck. Remote work means remote engagement. In-office means less flexibility,” said John Hayes, founder of Blackney Hayes Architects, a Philadelphia-based firm.

Eavesdropping as education

Bosses say that developing young workers and new hires is a priority, and that it’s tougher and slower to accomplish it when people aren’t gathered together in offices. Structured training sessions can often be conducted via Zoom, but the daily rhythms of mentoring and learning on the job require a less-structured exchange of questions and answers that happen organically.

“Eavesdropping is a huge form of education,” Hayes said. “Hearing what other people are saying, how they’re dealing with problems.”

Blackney Hayes asks employees to do their jobs from the office at least two days a week, but doesn’t mandate the face time because so many workers have said they prize flexibility.

“If leadership and all the energy radiate from the office, then people will understand that if they want to be part of the team they will need to show up,” Hayes said.

Jenny von Podewils, co-chief executive of Leapsome, an HR productivity and engagement platform, has taken a similar approach in the hopes of boosting young workers’ professionalism, such as appropriate conversations with colleagues and how to present in client meetings. Without office time, newer staff members take longer to get up to speed—if they catch up at all.

“Learning doesn’t happen on Zoom calls. It happens during meetings, together, through body language, listening to how people approach certain situations,” she said.

Breakthrough problem-solving

Ad-hoc interactions are important for seasoned employees, too, said Kevin Kowalczuk, a technology product manager based in Franklin, Tenn., who retired in April.

“We could literally make progress on a task while waiting for our coffee cup to fill up or while we heated lunch in the microwave,” he said of his return to the office.

Kowalczuk resolved one of his tougher challenges while chatting with colleagues in the company kitchen last spring. After discussing the housing market, their conversation turned to a new application that was only loading for some users despite being released to hundreds. The group quickly determined the problem stemmed from incorrect group permissions being granted to the users.

“That saved us days of time,” Kowalczuk said.

Team productivity vs. individual output

Individual contributors with task-oriented roles and a clear to-do list can perform satisfactorily in a remote setting in a way that doesn’t work for more strategic roles, said Edward Boggs, an information-technology team lead who lives in Durham, N.C., and goes in five days a week.

“If the tasks they are receiving are of the ‘figure it out’ variety, they often don’t do a very good job, or it takes them much longer than it should,” he said. The critical thinking required for those jobs usually requires a team working through issues in real time, Boggs added.

Working from home introduces other performance-related issues, even for conscientious employees with the best intentions, said Kim McClung, a former vice president of clinic operations for a large medical group, who’s now retired.

Managers who reported to McClung struggled to step back from work. They answered emails and took calls after hours, a habit she said she tried to discourage because it leads to burnout.

“If you’re in the car driving or trying to watch your kid’s recital while you’re answering emails, you’re not giving your best to anyone,” she said. “I don’t want your attention under those circumstances.”

McClung would rather her team work shorter hours together in the office, 100% focused on work, then go home and have true downtime.

When people are “on 24/7, the quality of work is going to suffer,” she said.

Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu delivered a warning to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a recent visit to Washington: Already-high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn’t end soon.

Sununu, a Republican who represents some of the biggest airlines as president of the industry group Airlines for America, has for weeks sounded the alarm to Trump administration officials about the economic fallout from high jet fuel prices. The war, Sununu has argued, must come to a close soon, or things will get worse.

Administration officials have gotten the message.

Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war, hoping prices will begin to moderate before November’s midterm elections.

The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli attack in late February has slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, triggering a sharp increase in oil, gasoline and jet-fuel prices.

That means consumers are grappling with high costs ahead of the summer travel season, as they consider vacation plans.

Sixty-three per cent of Americans said they put a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, PBS and Marist.

More than 8 in 10 Americans said struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances.

Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high. Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins.

U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on fuel in March—up 30% from a year earlier, according to government data.

Carriers have been raising ticket prices, hoping to pass the cost along to consumers, and they are culling flights that will no longer make money at higher price levels.

In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21% from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales.

So far, airlines have said the higher fares haven’t deterred bookings and they are hoping to recoup more of the fuel-cost increases as the year goes on.

Earlier this week, Trump said the current price of oil is “a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, the country would have more leverage to keep the strait closed and “make our gas prices like $9 a gallon or $8 a gallon.”

Trump has taken steps in recent days to bring the war to an end. Late Tuesday, the president paused a plan to help guide trapped commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, expressing optimism that a deal could be reached with Iran to end the conflict.

Crude oil prices fell below $100 a barrel on Wednesday, after reports that Iran and the U.S. are working with mediators on a one-page framework to restart negotiations aimed at ending the conflict and opening the strait.

Sununu said Trump administration officials are conscious of the economic fallout from the war: “They get it…and I think that’s why they’re trying to get through the war as fast as they can.”

But he cautioned that it could take months for prices to return to prewar levels.

“Ticket prices won’t go down immediately” after the strait is fully reopened, Sununu said. “You’re looking at elevated ticket prices through the summer and fall because it takes a while for the prices to go down.”

Since the initial U.S.-Israeli attack in late February, Sununu has met in Washington with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, representatives from the Transportation Department and senior White House officials.

A White House official confirmed that Hassett and Sununu have discussed the effect of increased fuel prices on the airline industry. The official said the conversation touched on how the industry can mitigate the impact of high jet fuel prices on consumers.

“The president and his entire energy team anticipated these short-term disruptions to the global energy markets from Operation Epic Fury and had a plan prepared to mitigate these disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said, pointing to the administration’s decision to waive a century-old shipping law in a bid to lower the cost of moving oil.

Rogers said the administration is working with industry representatives to “address their concerns, explore potential actions, and inform the president’s policy decisions.”

A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to Bessent’s recent comments on Fox News that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. The spokesman said Treasury officials have met with airline executives, who have reaffirmed strong ticket bookings.

“We’re cognizant that this short-term move up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident, on the other side of this, prices will come down very quickly,” Bessent told Fox News on Monday.

The war has already contributed to one casualty in the industry: Spirit Airlines. Company representatives have said they were forced to close the airline because the sustained surge in jet-fuel prices derailed the company’s plan to emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Trump administration and Spirit failed to come to an agreement for the company to receive a financial lifeline of as much as $500 million from the federal government.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has argued that the Iran war wasn’t the cause of Spirit’s demise, pointing to the company’s past financial struggles, as well as the Biden administration’s decision to challenge a merger with JetBlue.

Other budget airlines have also turned to the federal government for help since the U.S.-Israeli attack. A group of budget airlines last month sought $2.5 billion in financial assistance to offset higher fuel costs, and they separately wrote to lawmakers asking for relief from certain ticket taxes.

Bosses Push Back on WFH Die-Hards: ‘They Will Need to Show Up’

Managers say team productivity has taken a hit as employees stay remote

Eavesdropping as education

Breakthrough problem-solving

Team productivity vs. individual output

Administration officials have spoken to the airline industry, which has voiced concerns about the rising costs.