Asking engineers who do great work from home to return to the office can feel unfair.
That frustration is valid because flexibility and autonomy were probably key reasons they accepted your remote work offer in the first place.
Ignore this, and you can lose your best engineers while making your technical roles harder to fill.
Luckily for you, I wrote this guide to break down what technical talent wants from RTO policies in 2026 and how you can build one that supports your business goals without sending your best engineers packing.
Let’s get into it.👇
Engineering Teams Need a Different RTO Conversation
For engineers, RTO isn’t a simple “on-site vs. remote” debate.
It’s about what returning to the office brings to the table.
Engineers don’t always do the same work.
Some engineers handle independent tasks where being in the office adds little value.
For example, engineers can code, write documentation, and handle some cybersecurity work remotely with little team support.
Other tasks require active collaboration, so being on-site can make more sense.
For example, when engineers need to brainstorm, untangle a nasty bug, or resolve an app outage, having the right people in the same room can help.
(Image Provided by Ioana)
Engineers Collaborating in a Modern Office
Pro-Tip: Design your RTO policy around which work needs to happen on-site, not where you want your engineers to work.
What Technical Talent Actually Wants from RTO Policies
For starters, technical talent appreciates an RTO policy that gives them:
- A clear purpose: There’s a reason they need to come to the office. (E.g., for mentorship, team planning, or tackling a tricky problem together.)
- Autonomy: Even back in the office, engineers want trust to do their work without someone constantly looking over their shoulders.
- Flexibility: The policy allows them to work remotely when a task doesn’t require office presence.
Those priorities can also look different from one engineer to another.
Consider how your engineers’ working styles and personal preferences affect where they do their best work.
or example, some introverted engineers may love the quiet and privacy they get while working from home. Meanwhile, more social engineers may enjoy coming into the office to chat with teammates, bounce ideas around, and build rapport that’s harder to recreate over Slack.
Different engineers do their best work in different environments. Your RTO policies should account for these differences too.
When RTO Creates Value for Engineering Teams
So, when is it actually worth dragging everyone into the office?
Here are a few cases where it makes sense:
Faster onboarding and adaptation
Starting a new engineering role can be a lot. New people, new systems, new lingo … and about 47 questions you don’t know who to ask.
Having junior engineers in the same room as seasoned teammates can help them adapt more quickly. They also get to see how senior engineers think through technical decisions in real time.
Stronger knowledge sharing
The value of in-person knowledge sharing doesn’t end after onboarding.
Sometimes, you just pick things up by being around people who know what they’re doing. Seeing how someone solves a problem first-hand can teach you more than reading a 500-page doc.
In-person work creates more chances for informal mentorship and “osmotic learning” — basically, learning by watching and listening.
For example, a junior engineer can learn how to troubleshoot a problem by watching a senior engineer solve it. No need for a special masterclass.
Incident response and complex debugging
People often bring up security engineering when they make a case for RTO.
But not every security task needs an office desk.
Leaders may argue that security teams need to be on-site because their work is hands-on and difficult to manage over chat. Fair enough.
But technology has changed how teams handle some security tasks.
For instance, breach and attack simulation platforms can run attack scenarios against production systems. They can also use threat feeds and test different parts of the attack chain.
These platforms can then highlight security gaps and suggest changes to detection rules and controls. Engineers can review and address these issues remotely.Some teams take this further by building a Copilot Studio agent on top of these outputs, routing flagged issues to the right engineer automatically and summarizing what changed, so a remote reviewer isn’t starting from a raw alert feed every time. Teams building this kind of agent should look intoCopilot Studio licensing early, since usage-based pricing scales with how much the agent actually runs, not just how it’s configured.
So, you don’t necessarily need everyone in the office just to run routine security tests.
Breach and Attack Simulation Platform
Some security work still benefits from having your team on-site.
For instance, a serious security incident can get messy fast. Engineers may need to investigate unclear problems, pull in people from different teams, and make quick decisions, the kind of real-time coordination asecurity operations center is built around.
In those moments, having the right people physically together can help teams resolve the problem faster.
In those moments, having the right people physically together can help teams resolve the problem faster.
So the better argument for bringing security engineers into the office is incident response drills and messy cross-team debugging—not routine testing that can run just fine while everyone is working remotely.
But what happens when your RTO policy asks people to come in more than the work requires? 👇
When RTO Starts Costing You Talent
Now imagine telling everyone, “Cool, see you in the office, five days a week.” 😬
For engineers who work well from home, this means less flexibility and a potentially stressful commute to do the same work they can do from their couch.
What’s worse? Some engineers might decide, “Yup! My time here is done,” and move to a company offering better flexibility for similar pay.
When this happens, you’re losing more than an employee.
You’re also losing the experience and institutional knowledge they’ve built over time.
And replacing a top engineer isn’t as easy as fixing a broken office chair.
A 2024 study from the University of Chicago Becker Friedman Institute examined the aftermath of RTO mandates at Microsoft, SpaceX, and Apple.
The researchers found that employees with longer tenures were more likely to leave after the companies introduced RTO mandates.
And here’s the painful part: the researchers also found that many of these employees moved to direct competitors.
This means RTO policies can push your experienced talent to your rivals, along with the institutional knowledge they’ve built while working with you.
(Image Provided by Ioana)
RTO Mandates and Employee Departures by Tenure
Pro-Tip: Since losing experienced engineers is expensive, always use effective retention strategies for your engineering teams as you change how they work.
But losing people is only half the headache.
RTO requirements can also make it harder to replace departing engineers.
An in-office role automatically shrinks your hiring pool to people who can reasonably commute to your location.
Hiring can get even trickier for specialized roles likesoftware engineering, cybersecurity, AI, and data, where qualified talent is already hard to find. So why make your pool even smaller?
5 Questions to Answer Before Setting Your RTO Policy
Before you decide on the number of days you want your engineers in the office, ask yourself these five questions:
1. What work actually needs physical proximity?
Look at which roles genuinely benefit from being together and which engineers can get their work done just fine from home.
Before you decide, consider the type of work, how much collaboration it needs, and any operational requirements.
2. When does physical proximity actually add value?
Figure out which tasks get easier when people are physically together, such as complex problem-solving, quick decision-making, or coordinating across teams.
3. What do you actually want your RTO policy to improve?
Don’t make “more people in the office” the goal.
What are you hoping to change?
Maybe you want faster decisions, better collaboration, or smoother project delivery. Whatever it is, define it before you start mandating office days.
4. What should actually happen in the office?
Give those office days something worth showing up for, whether that’s team planning, architecture discussions, mentorship, or cross-functional work.
Otherwise, you’re basically recreating Zoom calls in real life.
5. What will this policy cost you in talent?
Before you make the policy, think about what happens if people don’t like it.
Increased attrition? Smaller hiring pool? What about longer commutes, replacement costs, and project delays?
Answer these questions before you end up with an RTO policy that solves one problem while creating three more.
After you’ve answered these questions and set your policy, monitor it to see whether it’s working. 👇
How to Know When Your RTO Policy Is Working (or Not)
So, how do you know if your RTO policy is actually doing what you hoped it would?
Here are some metrics to track:
- Collaboration strength: Are teams solving problems more effectively together?
- Regrettable attrition rate: Are senior or difficult-to-replace engineers leaving?
- Ramp time: Are new engineers becoming productive as quickly as expected?
- Offer acceptance rate: Are qualified candidates still accepting your offers?
- Employee feedback: What are engineers actually saying about the policy?
- Retention rate: Are engineers staying at the same or higher rates?
- Incident resolution time: Are engineers resolving incidents faster?
- Employee engagement: Has engagement improved or declined?
- Project delivery: Are teams hitting milestones on schedule?
- Time-to-fill: Are engineering roles taking longer to fill?
- Engineering output: Has productivity improved?
Think of your RTO policy as a hypothesis. Try it, measure what happens, and adjust when the evidence tells you something isn’t working.
Because engineers don’t always send you a memo saying, “Hey, this RTO policy is making my life miserable.”
Sometimes they just update their LinkedIn profiles in secret.
By the time those departures show up in your data, you’ve already lost the people you wanted to keep. 💔
Employee experience software can help you spot some of these signals earlier. It brings onboarding, performance, and culture data in one place.
These insights can give engineering leaders a clearer picture of how technical talent is responding to their RTO policies and a chance to act before workplace concerns turn into attrition.
Employee Experience Software
Wrap Up
Build your RTO policy around real work, not random office attendance.
That’s how you improve collaboration, protect productivity, and attract and retain the technical talent your team needs.
Remember to:
- Identify which engineering work actually benefits from being done in person.
- Give every in-office day a clear purpose.
- Allow remote work when it makes sense.
- Think about how your RTO policy affects your talent pool.
- Measure retention, hiring, productivity, and project outcomes.
- Listen to your technical talent and adjust the policy when the evidence tells you to.
Psst … Worried your RTO policy could make engineering roles harder to fill? Use Apollo Technical to find the right engineering talent for your team. Get started now.
FAQs About RTO Policies for Engineering Teams
1. What is the best RTO policy for engineering teams?
No one-size-fits-all RTO policy works for every team. Build yours around the work that benefits from being done in person and what your technical talent needs to do their best work.
2. How many days should engineering teams be in the office?
There’s no magic number. Give each in-office day a clear purpose and focus on work where being on-site actually makes a difference.
3. Does remote work hurt engineering productivity?
Not necessarily. Instead of assuming office attendance makes people more productive, look at engineering output and business results.
4. Can RTO policies affect engineering hiring?
Absolutely. In-office requirements can shrink your talent pool, especially for specialized technical roles that are already difficult to fill.
5. How can engineering leaders tell if an RTO policy is working?
Track retention, attrition, hiring, productivity, project delivery, and employee feedback. If office attendance goes up but the outcomes you care about don’t improve, it may be time to rethink the policy.
Author Bio:
Jeremy is co-founder & CEO atuSERP, a digital PR and SEO agency working with brands like Monday, ActiveCampaign, Hotjar, and more. He also buys and builds SaaS companies likeWordable.io and writes for publications like Entrepreneur and Search Engine Journal.
