If Your Employer Demands a Return to the Office, What Options Do You Have?

Five years ago this month, millions of Americans began working from home as companies adapted to the sudden realities of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the coronavirus spread nationwide, individual states — including California — ordered residents to stay in their homes to minimize infections. And while some exceptions were made for workers considered “essential,” by April 2020, a Gallup poll found that 62% of employed Americans had begun working from home.

• Tell us: How has a return-to-office mandate affected you?

However, even as remote work swiftly became a new normal for many employees, the shift to widespread “working from home” was not permanent. As soon as the strictest public health restrictions were lifted, some companies around the country began calling their employees back to the office, while others instituted hybrid schedules where staff could mix in-office work with remote work.

And now, in recent months, several major employers are changing or abandoning those hybrid schedules completely — with companies like Meta, Amazon, Salesforce and JPMorgan ordering their staff to increase their in-office attendance. On March 3, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order (PDF) ordering most state employees to work in-person at least four days a week starting July 1, stating that “When we work together, collaboration improves, innovation thrives, and accountability increases.”

However, going into the office more often can be a major adjustment for many reasons. These include the length — and expense — of commuting and losing flexibility that remote work can afford people with personal responsibilities like raising a child, taking care of a loved one or dealing with their own health issues. This flexibility, advocates say, has allowed working mothers to be more involved in their careers while they balance child-raising and granted more job opportunities to folks living with disabilities and chronic health conditions.

So if your employer suddenly demands that you increase your in-office hours, what can you do — and what rights do employees even have when it comes to return-to-office mandates? We spoke to several legal experts who focus on employment law to understand what options remote or hybrid employees have in 2025 if they are asked to come to the office more — and how to best advocate for your particular needs.

When it comes to return-to-office mandates, your employer has the upper hand

“The employer always has the right to set the terms and conditions of employment,” said Christine Long, partner at Berliner Cohen, a San José-based law firm that provides employers with legal representation — “as long as the employee is given notice in advance of those things.” Adequate notice, Long said, “is usually considered a pay period in advance.”

Even if you moved to another region — or even another state — during the pandemic, your employer can still require that you come into the office any number of days during the week. And if you were hired during the pandemic while you were living in another state, it’s likely your employer can also ask for you to move to California. The employer usually has the right to change the terms of employment, Long told KQED.

Ella Zheng, managing partner at the San Francisco and Palo Alto offices of Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight — a firm that offers legal services to workers — agrees that businesses have the upper hand here. Ultimately, “the employer has the discretion to set how many days they require their employees to go back to work,” she said.

Zheng acknowledges that going to the office more could absolutely make it harder for employees to maintain a work-life balance — particularly caregivers. “If they’re raising a child, especially a young child,” she said, “If the employee is caring for an elder at home potentially with medical conditions, they would have concerns about returning to work.”

However, at the state level, there is still no law in place that requires employers to set up hybrid work schedules for parents or caregivers. During the pandemic, Long said, “there was no order that said ‘you must work from home.’ The order was that you are not to be out unless you’re performing essential services.”

There is one state law that does allow employees to request accommodations, including working from home in very specific circumstances. In 1959, California passed the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), which states that employers cannot discriminate against employees based on several factors, including a medical condition or a physical or mental disability.

Being a parent or a caregiver, however, is not one of these factors — and “just getting your kid to and from school or needing child care in the afternoon, those are not accommodations,” Long said. (In San Francisco, however, employees who are parents or caregivers are afforded some additional protections thanks to the city’s Family Friendly Workplace Ordinance [FFWO] — more on that in the next section.)

If you do plan to request certain accommodations from your employer due to your health or disability, keep in mind that while your employer is not allowed to ask for a diagnosis, they can ask you for a medical note from your healthcare provider confirming that you have a disability and listing the ways in which it limits you. You can contact California’s Department of Rehabilitation to better understand which disabilities and health conditions are included under FEHA.

If you are granted accommodations under FEHA, Zheng said that your employer needs to make sure you will not be adversely impacted in the workplace as a result. Employees, she said, “should not get excluded from important projects or assignments and not be retaliated against because they have this reasonable accommodation.”

If you work in San Francisco, you may have more ability to push back against return-to-work mandates

In 2022, San Francisco expanded its Family Friendly Workplace Ordinance (FFWO), which sets up rules for SF-based employers with 20 or more employees. “The ordinance allows people to make requests of their employer to help them with parenting, family caregiving or caring for an older adult in their family,” said Katherine Wutchiett, senior staff attorney at Legal Aid at Work, a San Francisco-based legal aid office that offers services across California.

“People can request things like adjusting their schedule to make it possible to do daycare pickup, or requesting to be on projects that have more predictable hours,” she said. “There’s not a set list of what people can ask for, but it’s just changes that would allow them to be able to take care of their family.”

To qualify for accommodations under FFWO, you must:

• work in San Francisco, or be assigned to your employer’s San Francisco office (you don’t need to live in San Francisco);
• work for a company that has at least 20 or more employees;
• work with this employer at least eight hours per week on a regular basis, for at least six months;
• be responsible for the care of either a child (your own or a child you’re a guardian of), a family member with a serious health condition, or a family member 65 or older.

You must submit the FFWO request for accommodations to your employer in writing. If you’re unsure how to get started, San Francisco city officials have created a sample FFWO form (PDF) that you can complete yourself and submit to your employer.

“Using the [sample] form can be a great way to make the request because there are some employers that don’t know that this law exists,” Wutchiett said. “It educates the employer that this is actually a San Francisco city ordinance.”

An employer can deny your request, but according to city notices (PDF), your employer can only deny your request once they have met with you to discuss alternatives — and they must also show that accommodating your request would cause them “undue hardship.” Your employer must provide you an explanation in writing and you have the right to file a complaint with the city’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement (OLSE).

If you believe that your employer has ignored your request — or is not following the terms of the FFWO — you can contact OLSE directly.

You can still try to advocate for yourself in the face of an employer’s return-to-office announcement

If you don’t work in San Francisco and aren’t therefore covered by the city’s Family Friendly Workplace Ordinance, you frankly have fewer options available to push back against an employer who’s demanding that you come into the office more.

And even though it’s possible to still talk to your employer to propose alternatives, the legal experts KQED spoke to recommend that you exercise a degree of caution when trying this — to make sure you don’t accidentally jeopardize your job.

“People can certainly talk to their employer about standards and ask questions,” said Wutchiett from Legal Aid at Work. But, “they should be careful knowing that if they say to their employer, ‘I absolutely cannot come to work more than two days a week in person,’ and their employer wants to set a four day in-person requirement, that might make it difficult for them to continue in their job,” she warned.

You also want to be proactive in initiating any conversation like this with your employer, recommended Zheng from Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight. “As soon as [employees] learn about the change in the in-office workday policy, they should start thinking about raising the accommodation request with the employer, and they need to do that as soon as possible,” she said. “They can’t be sitting on the policy for a long time and not say anything until the last minute.”

Make sure you know the right person to talk about your company’s policies, Zheng adds — whether that’s your direct supervisor or the human resources department — and then communicate with that person in writing, whether that’s email or text. If you end up having an in-person conversation, make sure to send an email or another type of written message to who you met — confirming what you discussed and potentially agreed to.

“That way it’s very clear as to who said what, and it’s really the best way for employees to protect themselves,” Zheng said.

When talking to your employer, Wutchiett also suggests highlighting how remote working or a hybrid schedule has helped you become a more productive worker — ideally with concrete examples.

“One thing we learned from the pandemic is that a lot of people are able to work really successfully from home,” she said. “Think through the ways that you’ve been successful over the last couple of years, how you’ve been able to accomplish your employer’s needs while still working from your home and being able to point out that in the ways it benefits both the employer and yourself.”

“That can be a way to have a friendlier conversation about what that transition to go back might look like,” she added.

And if you’re planning to request for an accommodation under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), remember that there is a process both you and your employer must follow.

“Once you make that [FEHA] request, your employer has an obligation to engage in a good faith interactive process with you, to determine how they can accommodate you,” Wutchiett said. Employers are required to provide reasonable accommodations that would allow you to fulfill your essential functions at work, she explained, unless they can show that it would cause them “an undue hardship.”

If you’re part of a union, check in with them about your employer’s return-to-office mandate ASAP

According to 2023 data from UC Berkeley’s Labor Center, 16.2% of working Californians form part of a labor union (PDF). If you’re one of them, your union could well be an additional resource when talking with your employer about returning to the office.

“It is always important to seek out your shop steward, your union leadership, and try to get the help that they can provide for you,” said Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Labor Federation. She adds that union leadership can walk you through the finer details of the collective bargaining agreement that exists between workers, the union and the employer.

“If you have a collective bargaining agreement with your employer, it’s really important to know the conditions of it,” she said. “Some things were bargained for during and after COVID that have to be taken into consideration.”

Unions and employers re-negotiate their collective bargaining agreements every few years and if negotiations are coming up at your workplace, remote working options could be something you tell your union that you’re interested in being considered for negotiations.

Returning to the office “absolutely something that could be collectively bargained,” Gonzalez said. “It’s usually up to the union and the membership of the union what the priorities are at the bargaining table.”

And even if contract negotiations are not scheduled for the near future, she stressed the support that a union can offer its members in these kinds of labor matters. She points to the organizing and legal efforts led by SEIU Local 1000, which represents tens of thousands of state employees, as they push back against Gov. Newsom’s return-to-office mandate.

“When we work collectively with the union, we’re able to have a much stronger voice,” Gonzalez said — “and we’re able to force employers to deal with issues that otherwise they would like to just mandate.”

Tell us: How has a return-to-office mandate affected you?

Do you work for an employer that “went remote” during the height of the pandemic but has since requested that employees return to in-person work?

If you’ve experienced a return-to-office mandate, we’d like to hear from you. How did having to work in the office more days a week affect your daily life, your family or your commute — and how do you feel about it all? What positive effects, if any, has returning to the office had for you, personally or professionally? 

Also, if you feel like you’ve finally made in-person work for you again, we’d like to hear your advice. How would you recommend others adapt to the shift away from remote work and back to the office? And if you worked out an understanding with your employer concerning a return-to-office mandate, what strategies worked for you?

You can use the form below to share your thoughts with us, and what you tell us could be shared in a future KQED story. You don’t have to name your employer if you don’t want to, but it will be helpful to hear about when your employer began mandating more days in the office, where your office is based and where you live.

We may use any contact information you provide to get in touch with you to ask a few follow-up questions, but we’ll never share your information outside of KQED without your permission. We won’t be able to reply to everyone who submits a question, but what you tell us will make our reporting stronger on KQED.org, KQED Public Radio and our social media channels.