Navigating Legal & Practical Risks of RTO Mandates

Several large employers, including EY, Fidelity, Home Depot, Instagram, Kroger, Microsoft, NBCUniversal, Novo Nordisk, PNC Financial and Sherwin-Williams, have announced return-to-office (RTO) mandates for 2026, according to workplace management and coworking software platform Archie’s RTO tracker.

Whether due to corporate restructuring, a need to justify the cost of long-term commercial leases, a doubling down on company culture and collaboration or some other reason, organizations generally have the right — absent a non-revocable agreement to the contrary — to call employees back for in-person work.

“Some businesses function better when employees are in the office, and an in-office work mandate is appropriate for some employers,” Catherine Cano, a principal in the Omaha, Neb., office of Jackson Lewis, told CCI. 

But that doesn’t necessarily mean organizations are in the clear, Cano warned: “For employers who require in-person attendance, they will still have to properly handle requests for accommodation in the form of work-from-home requests.” 

Other pitfalls may stand in the way of a clean return to in-person work after the Covid-related remote work revolution.

The anatomy of federal claims

Failure to properly handle work-from-home accommodation requests in response to RTO mandates could ignite compliance landmines under federal antidiscrimination laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) — and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 for federal employees — the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (PDA) and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act of 2023 (PWFA), as well as under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII).

Under the ADA, physical and mental impairments substantially limiting one or more major life activities entitle employees to protection if they can perform their essential job functions with or without reasonable accommodation. If a reasonable accommodation is required for them to perform their duties, the employer must grant an accommodation request unless doing so would pose an undue hardship for the employer, which is generally accepted to mean great expense or significant difficulty.

That’s not to say that an employer must grant an employee’s requested accommodation. The interactive process allows employers and their employees to discuss specific job requirements and limitations that may require a reasonable accommodation, such as telework.

The PDA guards against disparate treatment of pregnant workers. Namely, if two employees perform the same or similar work, the employer can’t grant the non-pregnant employee an accommodation and deny the same request from the pregnant employee. The PFWA adds a layer of protection for known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions even if they wouldn’t be classified as disabilities under the ADA. 

Cano noted that often, the first step is to get information from the employee to understand the underlying restrictions or limitations for pregnancy-related conditions. 

“The goal is to understand what it is about the employee’s home environment that enables them to perform their essential job functions. Employees may not know the extent of accommodations that may be available in the office, and there may be equally effective alternative accommodations that allow the employee to stay in the office,” she said.

From there, it’s about determining whether medical documentation should be requested. Under the PWFA, the scope of requestable medical documentation is narrower than under the ADA, Cano said, and applicable state laws may impose additional constraints. Since obtaining documentation can take several days, employers should consider offering temporary accommodations in the meantime — especially for pregnancy-related conditions. Once all necessary information is gathered, the employer should generally engage the employee in a conversation to land on an appropriate accommodation.

“These situations are fluid, and it can be helpful to periodically check in with the employee and their leaders to assess the accommodation. When dealing with a pregnancy-related accommodation, it is important to remember that the obligations are broader than under the ADA,” Cano added.

RTO policy decisions could also trigger potential liability under Title VII and the ADEA if one or more protected class members are denied telework but employees in comparable roles who are outside of those protected classes are allowed to work remotely. Employers’ burden is demonstrating the neutral application of the policy, its job relatedness and its consistency with business necessity.

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EEOC’s telework guidance

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released telework guidance in February 2026 for federal employers. Using established case law and ADA standards to illustrate acceptable and questionable RTO practices, this guidance discussing the Rehabilitation Act also may be helpful for private employers.

While an employer may not have an obligation to continue granting recurring or full-time telework accommodations, it should not ignore the crucial step of conducting an individualized assessment to determine if telework is a reasonable accommodation that should be granted. Where an employer fails to do so “it risks liability in those cases where an individualized assessment would have shown that telework was either the only possible effective accommodation or that an in-office alternative was necessary to maintain an effective accommodation in lieu of telework,” the guidance says.

Thus, if telework was authorized as a reasonable accommodation, the employer already has notice of an employee’s need for accommodation. It would not then “be reasonable or effective . . . to revoke a previously granted telework accommodation and simply tell the employee to submit a new accommodation request,” the guidance says.

The EEOC also recognizes that for larger organizations, the sheer number of individualized assessments to be conducted could be daunting. Its recommendation is to focus on ways to minimize disruptions by evaluating telework accommodations based on organizational units or geographic locations so employees in the same work units or locations receive notice of RTO decisions in a timely and consistent manner.

Taking a flexible approach to the decision-making process concerning requests for reasonable accommodation is also recommended. For example, when a request is “low impact” and straightforward, a front-line supervisor may be the right person to make the call. But with something like telework, which could potentially have significant implications, organizations may want to consider having a centralized sign-off system in place for categories of accommodations, including for “recurring or full-time telework or for accommodations with an anticipated cost above a certain threshold,” the EEOC says

This comes with a word of caution, though, because while the review-and-approval process may be centralized, the need for an individualized assessment of each accommodation request is imperative for ensuring that the employer has engaged in the interactive process in good faith by evaluating available options for addressing an employee’s request for accommodation, any job-related limitations and the essential functions of their role.

Consider, too, that the equal enforcement of an RTO policy is required. For instance, if the employer allows hybrid or remote work to continue for some employees but not others, disparate treatment-based discrimination claims could arise.

Beyond legal considerations

Often driven by corporate narratives championing collaboration and culture and/or financial and operational considerations, RTO mandates could have financial accounting implications.

For example, if a company has a triple-net lease where, as a commercial tenant, it is responsible for the property’s taxes, insurance and maintenance and the building sits vacant, the business may have a strong case for returning employees to the premises. Otherwise, its vacant commercial space could have balance-sheet implications.

Under ASC 360 (US GAAP) and IAS 36 (IFRS), the value of a lease tied to a property where a shift to permanent remote work had been made can trigger a non-cash impairment charge, resulting in a decrease to the reported net income, which can also scare investors. Requiring in-person work could make good financial sense as employees’ physical presence could help avoid an impairment trigger on the asset. 

But that could come at the potential cost of human capital. A study by the University of Pittsburgh found that companies had anticipated better bottom-line results with RTO policy mandates, but actually saw employee satisfaction drop, something that can drive decreased engagement, burnout and absences and ultimately leading to turnover. 

While voluntary resignations can help companies avoid severance payouts, such exits come with additional recruitment, hiring and onboarding costs of up to 200% of each departed employee’s salary, Gallup research shows. 

Alternatives to RTO

Some alternatives to consider include “hot desking,” explained Gleb Tsipursky, CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts, a boutique consulting and training firm. This flexible workspace model does away with permanently assigned desks, allowing employees to reserve workstations for the specific days when they’re in the office, Tsipursky said. 

“By decoupling headcount from desk count, organizations can dramatically reduce their real estate footprint and shed cumbersome, expensive leases, allowing them to redirect those savings toward the bottom line or strategic investments,” he said.

Consider, too, how rotating team schedules and purpose-built teamwork hubs operate. “To visualize this shift, consider a company that implements rotating team schedules: the marketing team anchors in the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays, while the product team comes in on Mondays and Wednesdays. When they arrive, they aren’t returning to rows of isolated cubicles for heads-down solo work, which is often done better at home. Instead, they arrive at a purpose-built teamwork hub,” Tsipursky said. 

By fundamentally redesigning spaces with open collaboration zones, modular brainstorming areas, soft seating and high-tech conference rooms, organizations move from daily mandates into spaces designed expressly for collaborative tasks, mentoring and team cohesion.

Other alternatives may make sense, too, such as a gradual return to in-office work (i.e., ramping up the number of mandatory in-office days per week over the course of weeks or months) and hybrid schedules, Cano said: “Some employers hold periodic in-person meetings or conferences while generally allowing remote work. There may also be different models depending on the department or work location.”