Why "back to the office" is the wrong question.
At the beginning of 2025, SAP introduced a new mandatory attendance policy: at least three days a week in the office, with a maximum of two days of remote work starting in June. The works council reacted sharply; in an internal letter to management, as quoted by WirtschaftsWoche, they stated:
"The SAP we knew is gone.
— SAP Works Council, internal letter to management, as quoted by WirtschaftsWoche, 2025
The situation escalated into an open conflict, with the works council taking the matter to the Mannheim Labour Court, where both sides reached a settlement in early 2026. SAP is not an isolated case: according to a Handelsblatt survey, 29 of the 51 largest German corporations have now introduced fixed office days, including Deutsche Bank, Otto, and VW. In the US, Amazon made similar headlines with its five-day mandatory office policy starting in 2025.
This debate is not new, however; it has simply grown louder again. Back in 2013, seven years before the pandemic, an almost identical memo from Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer caused a stir, using the same argument: that speed and quality would suffer in a remote work environment. "Back to the office" is therefore not a post-COVID hangover, but a question that companies have apparently been asking incorrectly for over a decade—not "Why do we need the office?" but "How do we get everyone back?"
It is precisely this confusion that we still encounter today in almost every company reflecting on its office policy.
Two attitudes, one open question.
The SAP conflict illustrates one side: enforcing attendance. Other companies are striking a different tone. Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins summed up the opposing position in 2023:
"The office needs to be a magnet, not a mandate."
— Chuck Robbins, CEO Cisco, Cisco Newsroom, October 2023
Forcing attendance versus earning attendance—these are the two poles of the debate, whether at SAP, Amazon, or Yahoo. And that is the real problem: neither of these poles answers the question that should be addressed first.
Attendance is not a goal, it is a metric.
"How many days should our people be in the office?" is a convenient question because it is easy to translate into a number: three days, four days, 60 percent capacity. That is exactly what makes it so tempting and just as treacherous. Attendance is not a target; it is a metric intended to measure something else—namely, whether things are happening in the office that aren't happening elsewhere. When a company sets an attendance quota without first clarifying what that attendance is actually for, it optimizes for the metric instead of the goal. Many HR departments know the result: full statistics, but desks where people sit with headphones on doing the same thing they would at home, just with a longer commute.
The better question: Which tasks belong in the office?
Instead of "How many days?", the more productive question is: "Which activities actually belong in this office?" Focused individual work can often be done from anywhere. Coordination, informal exchange, onboarding new colleagues, or creative teamwork, on the other hand, demonstrably benefit from physical proximity. As soon as a company makes this distinction, the attendance debate almost disappears on its own, because the answer emerges from the activity, not from a blanket mandate.
The office as an answer,
not a mandate!
An office that no one would miss if it were gone cannot be saved by a mandatory attendance policy; it can only be fixed. People voluntarily go where something happens that they cannot get elsewhere:
genuine focus, genuine connection, and a genuine sense of belonging to a place and a culture. This is exactly what Robbins meant by "magnet, not mandate": An office that answers these questions doesn't need a quota. An office that doesn't answer them will be used reluctantly even with a quota, with all the well-known consequences for morale and turnover.
From theory to practice
At wow tomorrow, we consistently ask companies a different question than the one about return-to-office quotas:
"What does your company actually still need an office for?"
With our wpi (workspace performance insights) survey, we make this question measurable: Instead of setting an attendance quota in advance, we use data to determine which activities the office currently supports, which it hinders, and which are completely missing.
Frequently asked questions about returning to the office
Is the "return to office" debate just a consequence of COVID-19?
No. Back in 2013, seven years before the pandemic, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer sent out a memo with almost identical reasoning to today's mandatory office policies at companies like SAP or Amazon. COVID-19 made the debate more visible and urgent, but it did not trigger it.
Why do many "return to office" initiatives fail?
Because they mandate an attendance quota without first clarifying the purpose of that attendance. Without a clear purpose, employees perceive the requirement as control rather than a meaningful measure, which fuels resistance and quiet quitting.
What question should companies be asking instead?
Instead of "How many days should our people be in the office?", the more productive question is: "Which activities require physical proximity, and does our office provide the right conditions for them?" The appropriate attendance strategy will emerge naturally from the answer.
How do you find out what your office is actually needed for?
Through a data-driven assessment like our WPI survey. It shows which spaces are used and which are avoided, providing the foundation for an attendance strategy based on facts rather than assumptions.
Are you ready to ask the right question?
Not "How do we get everyone back?", but "What do we actually still need the office for?" Schedule an initial conversation with us and let’s answer that question together before you decide on quotas.