Employees & Managers At Odds Over Returning To Office

For a few months during the pandemic Selene Da Silva worked from home, but her employer eventually brought her back to the office. She returned to her daily hour-long commute, until one day she had enough. Da Silva told her employer she wanted to work from home full time, when her boss said no, she quit.

"I wanted to be independent. They couldn't offer me that," Da Silva said.

She's part of a growing number of workers who would rather resign than return to the office.

In new survey by Fiverr, an online marketplace for freelancers, 42% of workers said they'd consider quitting if forced to be in the office full time. That's at odds with what the survey shows companies want: nearly 70% of large company executives and managers want their employees in the office five days a week.

"What was surprising was, was the level of control that managers were seeking. About a third of the managers want employees to return in order to monitor them, and about a quarter of those managers want the employee to return to ensure that they take shorter breaks," says Fiverr CEO, Micha Kaufman.

The survey also found that one in five workers said there's absolutely no incentive that would make them want to return to the office

Da Silva now does freelance jobs from home and is making more money than she did at her last job. She also likes the perks of making her own hours and not having to commute. But she ends up putting in more hours because, she says, it's hard to stop working when her home office is just a few steps away.