Managers want to keep working from home more than employees do, survey finds

• It looks like managers are more keen to continue remote and hybrid work in 2024 than employees.
• This is according to a Checkr survey of 3,000 employees and business leaders in the US.

Employees are not the only ones complaining about returning to the office, instead, it seems like managers are equally as keen on remote and hybrid working policies.

Checkr, a company that offers employee background screening services, surveyed 3,000 US workers from November 15 to 18 and published the results in December. An equal number of business leaders and employees were surveyed.

In a surprising twist, it found that 68% of managers wanted remote and hybrid work to continue in 2024 while only 48% of employees felt the same way.

Furthermore, 58% of managers expressed concerns that return-to-office policies would cause a significant percentage of the workforce to quit but only 47% of employees said the same.

The RTO battle between executives and employees has grown in the past year as major companies issued mandates to staff to work from the office. This includes Meta, Google, Apple, and Twitter, now X.

Executives like Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg have said that in-person work benefits its junior employees. Slack's cofounder Cal Henderson echoed these sentiments and told Business Insider in an interview that young people may struggle to be successful if they're not learning by watching senior colleagues do the job.

However, Henderson also observed that in his office interns were more likely to come to the office than senior colleagues.

A McKinsey survey of 13,000 workers in six countries in 2023 found that one-third of employees earning over $150,000 strongly preferred working from home with 44% of senior workers saying they'd rather work from home.

This is likely because they have more comfortable remote work setups at home, childcare responsibilities, and established social lives – meaning working from the office isn't so appealing.

As more senior employees and managers choose to work from home, it's the interns and junior employees who are losing out the most in this exchange, BI previously reported. Empty offices can create a more isolating experience for younger workers and pose barriers to career progression.