Return to office
Return to office (RTO) is the policy of requiring employees who had worked remote or hybrid to come back to in-person work, usually 3-5 days per week. A contentious topic since 2023; the candidate-attraction cost is well-documented.
The pattern across European SMBs
Most published European data 2023-25 shows the same shape:
- Pre-RTO candidate pool: large, geographically broad, mid-to-senior level interested.
- Post-RTO candidate pool: smaller, geographically narrow to the office region, weighted toward earlier-career.
- Retention impact: 10-20% of senior employees leave within 6 months of RTO announcements, particularly those who relocated during remote periods.
The candidate-attraction cost is real and well-documented. The argument for RTO is usually team cohesion or culture — both legitimate, both harder to quantify than the attrition number.
What “RTO” actually means in postings
For an SMB writing a job posting after an RTO decision, the candidate-experience-honest version is:
- State the days: “Tue, Wed, Thu in office” not “hybrid, mostly in office.”
- State the city: “office is Berlin Schönhauser Allee” — not “our European office.”
- Don’t call it hybrid if it’s actually 4-5 days. Hybrid implies a meaningful remote component.
What companies underestimate
Three things RTO announcements consistently surprise companies with:
- Senior people leave first, not the people the policy was meant to address.
- Hiring slows substantially before the lower-funnel impact (more applications) materializes.
- The internal narrative around the decision matters more than the decision itself. “We’re returning because of X” with a clear reason holds; “we’re returning because” with no clear reason loses trust.