To start with what we know: Flexible working arrangements—wherein bosses trust their people to get work done in whatever configuration, wherever it makes sense for them—is almost always the best plan for everyone. Companies that fail to take workers’ desire for flexibility into account have paid the cost dearly. The past four-plus years have moved flexible work from a nice-to-have to a requirement for many job seekers, none more so than caregivers, lower-income workers, and women, who are more likely than men to fall into both of the first two categories.
Then there’s what we’re learning: No single company can escape the impacts of eschewing distributed work and expect to maintain their entire staff. Upwork, a freelancing platform connecting companies with freelancers, recently released a string of reports finding the outsize effect return-to-office mandates have had on women in the workforce. The TL;DR version: It’s been awful for them.
