Honda Orders Employees To Return To Office Four Days A Week

Another day, another massive corporation ordering employees back to the office: Honda is joining the ranks with a return-to-office mandate of its own.

The pandemic is in the rear view mirror, and remote work has been one of the many causalities of getting back to normal. Companies like Amazon and Dell have been stubborn about ditching the employee perk, fighting substantial backlash and even protests.

Now, Honda has decided to jump on the bandwagon, with an internal memo that parrots the common RTO mantra of collaboration and culture.

Honda Internal Memo Establishes New Policy

An internal memo at Honda, obtained by Business Insider, has established a new remote work policy, requiring employees to be in the office “at least 80% of the workweek,” or four days per week.

“As Honda faces a rapidly changing business environment and increasingly competitive market conditions, we believe it is essential for associates to return to working primarily at on-site offices.” – internal memo from Honda

The memo, which was signed by Kazuhiro Takizawa, president and CEO of American Honda Motors Co., and Kensuke Oe, the president of Honda Development & Manufacturing of America, noted that employees have some time to comply, with the deadline for the change not until October 6th, 2025.

Why Is Honda Pushing Employees Back to the Office?

In 2025, more and more companies are making the push to get employees back in the office, with RTO mandates that range from a few days a week to full-on 40 hours in the office or you’re fired.

The reasoning is typically laden with platitudes and promises of improving the company culture and inspiring teamwork to complete projects and woo clients. As you can imagine, the internal memo from Honda did not stray from that party line.

“This decision is driven by the rapidly changing business environment, which requires increased collaboration and innovation that we believe can best be achieved through in-person teamwork.” – Honda spokesperson to Business Insider

This kind of rhetoric has become so common that it must be having some pretty positive results for businesses that issue these mandates, right? Well, not exactly.

Are Return-to-Office Mandates Good for Business?

It’s a fair question to ask. Huge corporations with millions of employees have been issuing RTO mandates like they’re lives depend on it, but the reality is that most work from home statistics show that businesses aren’t getting ahead by forcing employees back in the office.

For starters, research shows that companies that issue return-to-office mandates have seen no significant impact on either stock returns or profitability. On top of that, companies have offer remote work have been shown to have 16% higher revenue growth than those that don’t.

If you valuable employee retention, return-to-office mandates aren’t the best strategy either, with over 33% of remote workers saying that they would leave their job if forced back to their commutes.

Suffice to say, if you’re a business that wants to get ahead, return-to-office mandates are probably not the way to go.