Say Goodbye to RTO

My colleague made a startling observation yesterday. It was one of those obvious things that, when he pointed it out, made me say to myself, “Of course!”

It is nearly 2023. The world shut down nearly three years ago, when COVID began emerging about this time in 2019. Through all of 2020 and 2021, and now even this year, we’ve learned to coexist with COVID-19 — not gracefully those first two years, I might add. We will look at those first two years as the largest experiment on the globe and study it for years. The ramifications run deep.

And one is in the simple phrase “return to office,” otherwise known as RTO. My colleague pondered why leaders still use this term today. In essence, they’re describing a bygone era or the current era in bygone terms. Rather than lament RTO or how to handle it, why not talk in terms of flexible work or co-location or multi-location places or, or, or… It’s as if we’re talking about modern transportation in horse and buggy terms. Why talk in terms of a phenom that is three-plus years old and fading?

He posited that it might be time to drop the phrase, and when he said it, it was a no-brainer. We are talking about returning to the office in 2023 in terms that represent 2019. We are not going back. We are never going back.

The flexibility genie is out of the bottle, and our workforce is now dominated by two post-boomer generations. They don’t wish for the good old days. They want flexibility and predictability. But few I hear or read about want 40–45 x 5 x 52 times a year — two weeks of summer and PTO notwithstanding. It’s an antiquated concept — one we gave up in 1987.

This week, 100 employers in the UK signed on for the four-day workweek with no loss in productivity noted. That might not work for all types of work, but we know not all types of work need to be done by returning to an office. It’s our new world and it’s different.

Let’s talk about the ideas that work and the new benefits we offer. Let’s talk about flexibility and helping our teams work to live rather than live to work. Whatever we do, let’s change the lexicon. RTO is so yesterday. Just ask the people flying out the door in droves over where the bluebird lives. It’s not pretty.