Despite CEOs like Elon Musk pushing in-person office work, a major study of 7,000 workers says remote employees are just as… — Fortune

RESOLVING THE LEDGER

Despite CEOs like Elon Musk pushing in-person office work, a major study of 7,000 workers says remote employees are just as… — Fortune | AIPROPX

Business leaders, from JPMorgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon to Tesla’s Elon Musk , have argued that workers need to get back to the office in the name of productivity and collaboration. But a new study suggests the opposite may be better for employee well-being—and even company bottom lines.

Researchers tracked 7,704 employees at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center across three work arrangements: roughly one-fourth worked fully remotely, one-fourth worked hybrid, and about half worked entirely onsite.

The results? Employees who worked fully remotely reported the highest levels of workplace well-being—defined broadly to include physical, mental, emotional, social, and financial health—while those who worked entirely onsite reported the lowest. The study , which was published in the journal Frontiers of Psychology last month, also found little evidence that remote workers felt less connected to colleagues or workplace culture.

“Our findings challenge the idea that simply bringing people back into a building will automatically make them more engaged, connected, or likely to stay,” co-authors Stefanie Johnson , a professor at the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business, and Courtney Holladay , chief learning officer at MD Anderson Cancer Center, told Fortune in a joint statement.

“The mistake is treating physical presence as the outcome rather than asking what organizations are trying to accomplish through it. If the goal is collaboration, mentoring, innovation, relationship-building, or organizational culture, then employers should design experiences that actually produce those outcomes.”

Remote work could help companies save money—by keeping their best talent around

The benefits of remote work didn’t stop at how employees said they felt. One year after the initial survey was completed, researchers examined employee turnover and found that workers with higher levels of well-being were less likely to leave the organization, meaning those working remotely were associated with higher retention.

For companies, keeping talent around can be a major financial incentive. After all, even before the pandemic ushered in an era of remote work, U.S. businesses were losing $1 trillion annually due to voluntary turnover, according to a 2019 Gallup analysis . However, critics of return-to-office mandates have argued that requiring employees to return to the office can serve as a backdoor way to reduce headcount without formally laying off workers. A survey last year suggested that concern isn’t entirely unfounded: one in five HR professionals admitted their company’s in-office policy was intended to encourage employees to quit .

“Clearly we have to question the motive,” Johnson said, pointing to separate research that found that leaders who display stronger narcissistic qualities are more likely to dislike remote work .

But the answer may not be as simple as remote versus in-office. Hybrid work can sound like the best of both worlds—giving employees flexibility while preserving opportunities for face-to-face connection. Yet it can also create its own headaches, from coordinating schedules to commuting on some days and figuring out which colleagues will actually be around.

“We’ve heard from individuals who will go into the office and their day in the office is spent on Zoom or Teams calls, and then that’s really frustrating because it’s like, ‘Well, I could have done that at home,’” Holladay said, adding that remote work can also save money in terms of having to rent less office space.

While the researchers did not track productivity in their study, they argue overall that flexibility may matter more than any particular work arrangement. Johnson said that may be particularly important for younger workers who are still trying to build out meaningful relationships early in their careers.

“Not that you should have to bribe employees to go into the office,” Johnson said. But if workers are going to come in, she added, companies should give them a reason to feel that the time is valuable.

Public and private leaders are adamant that return to office is a good thing

The findings come as some of the most powerful voices in corporate America continue to make the case for getting workers back in the office.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon , for example, has long been one of Wall Street’s most outspoken proponents of in-person work—calling his over 300,000 workforce back into the office five days a week .

“If you go to a meeting with me, you got my full friggin attention the whole time,” he said at the Hill and Valley Forum earlier this year, adding that remote work only works well for certain jobs like call centers, but for everyone else, including young people and managers alike, in-person working is best. Young people, especially, he said, need to work in-person because they are still learning.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken a similar hard line. In 2022, he told employees that anyone who wanted to work remotely had to spend at least 40 hours a week in the office or leave the company.

“Tesla has and will create and actually manufacture the most exciting and meaningful products of any company on Earth. This will not happen by phoning it in,” Musk said .

The federal government has also been pushing its hundreds of thousands of employees back into the office, with Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Scott Kupor being the key driver of President Donald Trump’s return-to-office agenda.

“Even for jobs that can be done largely in isolation, that productivity can be impacted by distractions that pervade at the home,” Kupor wrote in a January 2026 blog post entitled “Why Showing Up Counts.” “Supervising a massive, largely remote federal workforce is not something the federal government is well equipped to do.”

However, in a leaked audio message obtained by Fortune , Kupor admitted in a hot mic moment that he intentionally filmed a video in front of a blank wall wh...