Why RTO-Driven Companies Can Win the Talent Game Using Mobility

The tide has officially turned. According to HR Dive’s 2025 Identity of HR survey, fewer than half (48%) of HR professionals said that remote or hybrid work arrangements were part of their talent acquisition strategies last year. That's down from 56% in 2023. This echoes broader industry sentiment: return-to-office (RTO) mandates are no longer the exception, but fast becoming the norm.

A 2024 McKinsey study revealed that 58% of U.S. workers were fully on-site, up from 53% the year before. Experts attribute this shift to a combination of leadership preference, fears over productivity and culture, and the recalibration of power in a post-pandemic talent market. With hiring slowdowns, layoffs, and a perceived decline in candidate leverage, many organizations see an opportunity to reassert traditional workplace structures.

But here’s the paradox. While leadership pushes for in-office presence, talent expectations haven’t pivoted nearly as fast. Demand for flexibility remains strong especially among tech and high-demand talent segments, and companies that neglect this tension may soon find themselves on the wrong side of a talent crunch.

A Crucial Blind Spot

What’s striking in this RTO narrative is that it's missing a robust conversation about global mobility.

No matter if your RTO push is driven by productivity, culture, or collaboration, you’ll need talent in the right locations. That’s not always going to be convenient, nor is it likely that your most ideal candidates live a commutable distance from your office hubs.

So the question becomes: how do you reconcile the desire for on-site work with the realities of a geographically dispersed talent pool?

And that's where a strategic, innovative, competitive, choice-driven, flexible, and well-funded mobility program becomes essential.

Moving the Right People

Rather than viewing RTO as an isolated HR policy shift, companies should treat it as a broader workforce design challenge. Knowing this, here's how mobility can put you in the lead as you compete for the best talent. 

Attract key talent by offering relocation assistance that removes barriers to entry for top candidates unwilling to compromise on location. In competitive sectors, offering a seamless path to relocation could be the difference between landing a game-changing hire and losing them to a more flexible competitor.

Retain existing high-performers who may be impacted by new location requirements but could be motivated to stay with the right support. Mobility offerings signal to employees that they are valued, and turns what might have been an exit conversation into a long-term retention opportunity.

Deploy talent strategically across offices or markets where critical roles are needed, without limiting yourself to hyper-local hiring. This widens the talent aperture and enables leadership to build high-impact teams based on skill alignment, not just geography.

Support culture and integration goals by relocating new hires and key contributors into core collaboration zones. Physically co-locating high-potential employees fosters faster onboarding, stronger relationships, and cultural alignment from day one.

Moreover, global mobility allows employers to maintain control over the in-person environment they are prioritizing, while still offering a form of choice, support, and value to employees.

This goes beyond simply increasing budgets. To truly support a return-to-office strategy, companies should rethink their mobility policies and processes to be more flexible and employee-centric. That means offering greater choice in how benefits are applied, allowing relocating employees to tailor support to their unique needs, preferences, and family situations. A policy that lets people personalize their relocation experience creates a stronger sense of agency, reduces friction, and makes the transition feel like a step forward rather than a sacrifice.

Holistic RTO

As Gartner’s Jamie Kohn noted in the article, flexible work is still a “critical factor from the candidate side.” If companies are going to reject flexibility as a drawcard, they must replace it with something equally compelling. A strong, transparent RTO policy supported by flexible relocation becomes a potent differentiator.

RTO doesn’t have to be rigid or shortsighted. It can be a forward-thinking, human-centered strategy. But this only works if it’s paired with investment in moving the right people to the right place, for the right reasons.

As organizations pick their lane in the flexibility debate, those doubling down on in-office work should take a long, hard look at their mobility strategies. If done right, global mobility can transform RTO from a compliance battle into a growth and engagement advantage. In today’s talent market, it’s not just about where work happens, but it’s about how you empower people to get there.