Woolworths implements RTO mandate for 10k workers

Woolworths is the latest to jump on the back-to-office bandwagon, with the supermarket giant recalling 10,000 of its office workers back into the workplace.

As of 2 June 2025, all Woolworths team members will be working at least one day in the office. By 6 October 2025, all team members will be spending at least three working days in the office – as recently announced by Woolworths Group chief executive Amanda Bardwell.

Bardwell claimed that despite the success of hybrid working arrangements, priorities have shifted towards increasing in-person connections to better serve customers.

“Over the last few years, we have seen many of our support team members successfully embrace hybrid ways of working, whilst delivering our group purpose of creating better experiences together for a better tomorrow,” said Bardwell in a statement to staff.

“A key priority for us in 2025 is to create more opportunities for in-person connection to increase our responsiveness and better serve our customers. To support this, we are evolving our hybrid ways of working to ensure we better balance the needs of our customers and business, with the needs of our team.

“This means we will be introducing clearer guidelines to optimise our hybrid ways of working, with an expectation that our support office team members connect with their team in the office a minimum of three days per week, with the flexibility to work remotely for the remaining two days.”

Similarly, Amazon recently implemented a full return-to-office mandate, as Andy Jassy, current chief executive at Amazon, claimed that it was to “strengthen our culture”.

“When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant,” Jassy said.

“We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and teams tend to be better connected to one another.”

As RTO mandates grow in number, a number of workers are growing disgruntled with the shift away from flexibility – a benefit that has been lauded by workers since the COVID-19 pandemic.

This frustration with these mandates is leading to workers voicing their disagreement with their feet. According to IWG, research has already indicated that 73 per cent of employees at large companies such as Amazon considered resigning due to mandated RTO.

Just last year, Woolworths’ big-time rival, Coles, announced a similar policy change, calling upon its workforce to also return for at least three days a week, with the goal being to foster collaboration between colleagues.

Damien Andreasen, vice president of HiBob APJ, expressed some thoughts on these decisions by organisations and some of the ramifications they may have.

“There’s no question that the prospect of being forced into a full-time return to the office is incredibly unpopular among employees, especially after the success of flexible work over the past few years. In a stronger economy, companies pushing this agenda would see a mass exodus of top talent unwilling to sacrifice flexibility,” Andreasen said.

“It feels like it was yesterday when companies were celebrating the success of their four-day workweek trials and how it drove improved engagement and productivity, so call me cynical, but moving back to full-time office work doesn’t seem to be about innovation or collaboration.

“For some companies, it’s a way to encourage resignations to reduce headcount while avoiding redundancy payouts … Or, maybe the C-suite is being asked to justify the cost of their new CBD commercial tower – only time will tell.”