Opinion: The case for a more nuanced approach to bringing workers back to the office

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Gov. Tim Walz recently declared that most state employees will need to return to the office at least half of the time starting in June, joining a number of similar, highly publicized efforts by U.S. employers.

Research supports that bringing workers back to the office can build social affinity, transmit knowledge, fuel collaboration and even spur innovation through serendipitous encounters. Additionally, emerging evidence from the University of Minnesota indicates that new hires who spend more time in the office experience greater clarity about their job and understanding of their tasks in addition to feeling more socially integrated into the organization.

Encouraging or requiring a significant portion of the workforce to return to their offices also appears to bring benefits to the areas surrounding office locations, especially if those offices are located in areas with numerous other workers such as downtowns. Downtown businesses could again have a steady stream of customers, providing more jobs to service workers, who we celebrated as “essential workers” during the height of the pandemic as they did not have the option to work remotely.

While these benefits are real for many individuals, there are drawbacks. One-size-fits-all mandates for returning to the office risk overemphasizing these potential benefits while overlooking the costs, collectively and individually. Such mandates fail to recognize how work and travel have changed since 2020 — and these shifts are unlikely to reverse with Minnesota, and the Twin Cities in particular, being strongholds for remote work. According to the Census Bureau, the state leads the region and the nation as a whole in the share of workers who work primarily from home.

Workers have adapted to meeting remotely and accomplishing tasks in cyberspace, and will continue these practices even if they return to their offices most days. Colleagues at the same employer along with customers and clients are likely to be in a variety of locations, and we now default to video meetings rather than physically traveling to a common location. To put it bluntly, doughnuts and coffee in a meeting room have been replaced by headsets and cameras, even when participants are in the same or adjacent buildings.

With this change, downtowns cannot rely on workers alone to support the restaurants, coffee shops and retail that used to enjoy a steady stream of customers. Recreating pre-pandemic demand for services will require the number and density of workers from nearly all employers — not just one, even a large one. Further, a return-to-office requirement that is anything less than requiring all workers to return full-time reduces the set of potential consumers even further.

In addition, broad return-to-office mandates will likely worsen rather than alleviate traffic congestion. Research from the U’s Center for Transportation Studies and MnDOT shows afternoon traffic congestion is returning to pre-pandemic levels, yet demand for transit remains lower. The flexibility and savings from paying for parking only a few days a week, along with the convenience of driving directly, exceed the benefits of buying a transit pass. Remote workers tend to live further away from their office and recognize the benefits of saving the time and financial costs of commuting while making shorter and more convenient trips to stores, restaurants, cafes and social activities located closer to their homes.

And who can blame them? Employees often view remote work as a win-win in terms of work and non-work responsibilities. In the Twin Cities, remote workers have higher educational attainment and are more likely to be mid-career or more senior, to be married and to be women, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Further, employees in professional, administrative and managerial roles comprise the majority of remote workers.

These statistics are not a coincidence. Two main factors contribute to this. First, the Twin Cities has a “headquarters economy.” It ranks highest in terms of Fortune 500 headquarters concentration per capita across the top-30 metro areas in the United States. Second, the Twin Cities ranks highest among top-30 metro areas in the percentage of dual-career couples: More than 70% of partnered couples have two incomes and are the most egalitarian in terms of relative earnings contributions within the household. These two factors are undoubtedly self-reinforcing.

The strong managerial and professional worker concentration combined with the prevalence of dual-earner families has contributed to the high persistence of remote work arrangements in Minnesota since the initial months of the pandemic. Remote work can provide the needed slack for workers to doggedly pursue a career — evidence shows that remote workers are highly productive — and manage non-work needs. Because of gender norms, caregiving of family and the household often resides with women, and as such, remote work has the potential to directly facilitate the careers of women. That said, 47% of remote workers in Minnesota are men. In heterosexual households, the remote work of male partners can facilitate the careers of their female partners through greater sharing of family and household duties. Broad-based return-to-office mandates present a greater risk to the career advancement of those in dual-earner families, which may have a disproportionate effect on women.

So what to do? On the one hand, remote work is often a win-win for employees (increased productivity and facilitates the needs of daily living) and, on the other hand, there is concern for organizations about sufficient opportunities for collaboration, social integration and innovation, which are important for company growth and, in turn, careers, which has spillover effect to downtown economics.

We think the answer is more nuanced than broad-based mandates. While the rapid change to remote work was head-spinning and necessary, the same level of command and control to finding a “new normal” is not needed now.

The Twin Cities, and Minnesota as a whole, have an opportunity to lead in supporting a path that considers the needs of both organizations and workers. Instead of broad-based mandates, we encourage organizations to take a customized approach to balancing business needs alongside the needs of workers. This provides agility to tailor policies for synergistic work teams and respond to seasonal workflow alongside employees’ career interests and non-work responsibilities.

As for downtowns, a new vision of work, transportation and land use that acknowledges these realities will bring the greatest benefits. This vision should recognize that downtowns could evolve from work-centric hubs to having more emphasis on urban living that provides the convenience, amenities and sense of community that workers desire.

The evolution of the urban core may not be quick or cheap, but will ultimately be the way to meet the needs and desires of workers, organizations and regions. And if Minnesota does it right, it could just be another North Star accolade for the state.

Colleen Flaherty Manchester is a professor at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota and faculty director for the Center for Human Resource and Labor Studies. Frank Douma is director of state and local policy and outreach for the Institute for Urban and Regional Infrastructure Finance at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, and a research scholar at the Center for Transportation Studies, both located at the University of Minnesota.