The Lease-Driven Return-to-Office: Companies Say the Quiet Part Out Loud

It turns out the return-to-office movement isn’t just about productivity, collaboration, or company culture. For a significant number of companies, it’s about leases—those binding, long-term commitments to office spaces that are now sitting underused while hybrid work proves its staying power. A recent Resume.org survey of 900 business leaders peels back the polished justifications for RTO and reveals the financial tether that’s quietly shaping policy: the office lease.

Real Estate, Not Culture, Is Behind Many RTO Decisions 

The corporate narrative surrounding return-to-office has largely centered on soft justifications—enhanced communication, team cohesion, and managerial convenience. Yet 40% of business leaders in the Resume.org survey admitted that making better use of paid-for office space is a core reason they’re mandating in-person attendance. That number climbs when lease agreements are considered directly. Among companies that lease office space, more than half acknowledged that those agreements are affecting their RTO policy decisions, with 16% citing them as a major influence.

These are not minor edge cases. Two-thirds of surveyed companies still lease office space, and nearly half of these leases won’t expire until 2028 or later. Many of these contracts were signed well before the seismic shift brought on by the pandemic. A full 43% of leases were inked before 2020, locking companies into traditional space commitments that no longer match operational realities.

By 2025, nearly three-quarters of these companies will require employees to be in the office at least three days a week, and almost one in three will mandate a full five-day schedule. Only 2% will permit once-a-week or less. In other words, many companies are keeping offices full not because they must, but because they’re already paying for them.

Similarly, the corporate real estate management giant JLL observes that after years of trimming space, 57% of corporate real-estate leaders now feel confident enough in hybrid patterns to start “rightsizing” portfolios. In the short term, however, many are locked into pre-pandemic leases that compel continued in-office attendance while they redesign or sublet surplus areas. JLL expects average mandated presence to settle near four days weekly until those contracts unwind, after which flexible layouts and shorter terms will dominate.

Quiet Calculations, Loud Mandates 

Publicly, leaders tout culture, collaboration, and innovation as RTO drivers. Privately, they’re looking at balance sheets. The acknowledgment that real estate contracts are shaping policy represents a critical moment in the evolution of work. The lease has become a tail wagging the dog of corporate flexibility.

Companies are balancing optics against reality. Only 32% of leaders expressed real concern about employees quitting over RTO mandates, while nearly half aren’t worried at all. This confidence suggests a strategic calculus: endure short-term pushback while maximizing existing investments, then pivot when those investments expire.

That pivot is already on the horizon. One in ten companies surveyed said they will lessen or completely eliminate RTO requirements once their current leases expire. And 23% plan to downsize their office footprint altogether. Among these companies, 32% will reduce the number of required in-office days, and 8% will drop RTO mandates entirely. The end of a lease, it seems, is a convenient time to align policy with employee preference—and operational efficiency.

A Temporary RTO Masking a Permanent Shift 

The writing is on the wall. As leases lapse, companies are finally preparing to walk the talk on workplace flexibility. Matt Morgan, a seasoned California real estate professional quoted in the Resume.org survey, has observed this firsthand. He describes clients transitioning to shorter lease terms or flexible space options, with some reducing office space by 30% and reallocating funds toward tech infrastructure to support hybrid and remote models.

This evolution isn’t just anecdotal. It’s becoming embedded in strategic planning. According to another source quoted in the survey, Kwame Darko, a real estate investor focused on commercial properties, companies are reconsidering the purpose of office space itself. He sees three key forces at play: cost optimization, employee preferences, and evolving operational models. Together, they’re redefining what the office is—and what it’s not.

According to Jeff Dewing, CEO of Cloudfm, mandating an office return primarily serves to gratify executive egos and rationalize sunk costs in underutilized corporate real estate. He critiques the move as a validation of prior expenditures rather than a forward-looking strategy. Dewing practiced what he preached by divesting his own company of six out of eight offices post-lockdown, transforming the remaining two into “collaboration hubs” designed for occasional use by a predominantly remote and hybrid workforce.

Organizations are adopting new approaches like hot-desking, rotating team schedules, and purpose-built teamwork hubs. These are not gestures of generosity toward remote work; they are responses to unavoidable economic logic. Long leases are expensive artifacts of a different era. When those contracts end, so too will many companies’ commitments to keeping butts in seats just to fill square footage.

The Inevitable Reckoning with Office Reality 

There’s a certain irony in how the return-to-office debate is unfolding. While companies publicly emphasize the intangible benefits of shared physical space, privately, their decisions are being shaped by the cold, tangible reality of commercial real estate. This duality is starting to crack, exposing a deeper truth: RTO, in many cases, is a short-term necessity born from long-term commitments that no longer make sense.

And once those leases are up? A transformation is coming—not just in policy, but in how companies define the workplace altogether. Offices won’t disappear, but their function and footprint will look markedly different. The remote and hybrid era isn’t just a blip. It’s a business decision that makes strategic sense, especially when weighed against the cost of empty square footage.

For organizational leaders, this is a call to action. The end of the lease is more than a contractual milestone—it’s a strategic inflection point. Forward-looking companies will use it to right-size their real estate, recalibrate their workplace expectations, and align their operations with the realities of modern work. For everyone else, the quiet part will keep getting louder until the cost of pretending it’s not about the lease is too high to ignore.