Return to office
A return to office (RTO) mandate is an employer's decision that people who have been working remotely or hybrid must spend more of their week, or all of it, at a workplace. The policy only means something once it names the days, the location and the start date.
Can you mandate a return to the office?
This section covers employment law in England, Scotland and Wales. In the US, the answer turns on state law and on any contract or collective agreement, which this entry does not cover.
The starting point is what the contract says. Acas is direct about it: changes to employment terms “must be agreed by both the worker and employer” (Acas), unless the contract contains a clause that allows the change without agreement (Acas). Terms are not only what is written down. They can also develop through custom and practice, so a home-working arrangement that has run unchanged for years deserves a careful look before you treat it as a perk you can withdraw.
Before announcing a mandate, check:
- The written terms: contract, offer letter, any home-working agreement or policy.
- What happened in practice for the people affected, especially anyone hired as remote.
- Union agreements: if terms were agreed with a recognised trade union, you must consult the union before changing them.
- Your fallback: if people refuse a change to a contractual term, the risks Acas lists include breach of contract and constructive dismissal claims. Acas also tells employers to avoid “fire and rehire” (Acas) and to follow the statutory Code of Practice on dismissal and re-engagement (Acas).
Flexible working requests after an RTO mandate
A mandate does not end the conversation. Every employee can make a statutory flexible working request from their first day in the job, including about where they work (GOV.UK), and can make two applications in any 12-month period (GOV.UK).
Each request then runs on a fixed track. You must decide within two months unless the employee agrees to longer, and you must discuss the request with them before refusing it. A refusal has to rest on one of the business reasons the law lists, such as extra costs that would harm the business or an inability to reorganise work among other staff. If you accept, change the contract within 28 days of approving it (GOV.UK). Decide before the announcement how you will assess these requests, so two managers do not answer the same request differently.
What the mandate should say in a job ad
A job ad written after an RTO decision should state the rule as precisely as it applies internally:
- Name the days: “Tue, Wed and Thu in the office”, not “hybrid, mostly in office”.
- Name the place: “office in Manchester, Ancoats”, not “our northern hub”.
- Give the number even if you call it hybrid. Hybrid covers one office day a week as well as four; the number is what tells a candidate what they are signing up for.