For Some People, the Office Is Better … at Times
Is working from home better for your mental health? Or would you rather go to the office?
Well, the answer is obviously yes.
No, I’m not dodging the question. I’m injecting optionality into the equation.
I’ve led companies for more than five decades. During that time, I’ve found that some employees bask in the social connection and energy they find in the office. They also find a welcome separation between work and home. For others, that same office means a 90-minute commute, constant interruptions and hours away from family.
And six months from now, workers who feel one way might feel exactly the opposite.
CEOs cannot devise a policy to accommodate every circumstance. That alone tells me one blanket policy is the wrong objective.
Optionality can help. Because as I like to say, one size fits one.
The Research on Working From Home vs. the Office
Research supports the notion that one size does not fit all.
A 2026 study in Science discovered that remote work can increase isolation and mental distress, particularly if you live alone. But a study the previous year associated flexible, hybrid work with less mental distress.
That research included two caveats. First, working from home helped people who chose it. Those without that choice saw no improvement. Second, additional work-life demands diminished the positive effects.
That makes sense. Autonomy is a major benefit of working from home. As the 2025 study put it:
“Job autonomy influences motivation, and autonomy is considered a basic human psychological need. … having the flexibility to determine when, where and how to organize one’s work tasks is a job resource that can promote mental well-being.”
Additional responsibilities – childcare and aging parents, for example – curtail that autonomy.
CEOs can increase autonomy simply by trusting employees.
Recently, my wife, Shari, and I had relatives at our North Carolina beach house. They work in D.C. He gets up at 4 a.m. every day, works out and beats the traffic. By 3:30 p.m., he’s totally worn out. He told me he couldn’t even remember his name by 3:30 p.m. But policy makes him stay until 5. So he hangs around and gets stuck in traffic.
If he could leave at 3:30, he could save 45 minutes to an hour of commuting each day. And he’d be happy working from home another hour if he didn’t waste all that time in traffic.
What did his boss gain by making him sit there until 5? Here, as in many cases, less policy is more. Talk to your people, find out what makes them more productive and then adjust.
Productivity doesn’t have to happen in one uninterrupted block between 8 and 5.
Employee Preferences Aren’t Permanent. Policy Shouldn’t Be, Either
Let’s go back to the people who want to go to the office 100% of the time. Perhaps they live alone, and much of their social interaction comes with their colleagues. They find friends, make plans to hang out after work, maybe even meet their future spouse.
That can certainly change things. They get married and have kids, perhaps even move farther away to the suburbs.
Life has changed that short commute they didn’t mind into a stressful, white-knuckled, 45-minute drive through eight lanes of traffic. Before they even get to the office, going to work has become a chore.
These people haven’t gone goofy on you. Their lives have changed, and working from home more would suit them better.
CEOs need to understand that no matter what policy we establish, one-third are going to say go to heck. One-third are going to love it. And one-third won’t like it but will do it because it’s part of the job.
Changes in life and new job responsibilities will have your employees jumping between those groups all the time.
Maybe you start managing your company’s supply chain planning for Europe. You can’t work 8 to 5 in the United States anymore. You have to work 8 to 5 Europe time. And if your office commute in the States is long, you might as well be working from home.
Again, look at each person individually and figure out how to maximize that employee’s contributions to the company.
If a person is in the office two days a month and that’s best, then that’s fine.
Mary Barra’s 2-Word Dress Code
At Tompkins Ventures and Tompkins Logistics, I don’t even know when my employees and co-owners wake up. And I don’t care. I care about what they contribute.
I trust them, and I can see their outputs.
Years ago, Mary Barra, now CEO of General Motors, faced that question of trust head on. GM identified her as an unbelievable engineer who would move up the corporate chain. But the stereotype is that we engineers can’t deal with people. Well, what’s the best way to figure out if a potential executive can manage people? Put them in charge of human resources.
When she took over, she found more than 10 pages of details explaining the company’s dress code. After all, people are different. Somebody might show up with the wrong slogan on their T-shirt. Or wear jeans in meetings with corporate clients.
Barra was adamant about replacing that list with two words: Dress appropriately.
After all, everyone knows you’re not going to the front office in cutoffs and a T-shirt. You don’t wear high heels on the shop floor. And if problems pop up, you talk to your people and figure them out together.
We’re not dealing with 7-year-olds.
If you trust your people with major budgets, teams and decisions, you can trust them to pick out their attire – and when to wake up.
Apply Optionality to Working From Home
We spent five years arguing about where people should work. Mental health gives us another reason to stop making it a binary choice.
Don’t start with, “People have to go to the office X days a week.” Start with, “What does this job require, what does this person need to perform at their best and how do we reconcile the two?”
That means thinking about shift choice, scheduling, breaks, workspace design, job requirements and what is happening in an employee’s life. Technology can help. AI scheduling tools can help managers balance staffing requirements, employee preferences and availability.
Sometimes the right answer will be five days on site. A plant manager can’t manage a factory from a beach chair. Sometimes the answer will be fully remote. Sometimes seven days a month in the office will be exactly right. And sometimes the answer will change.
A CEO’s job is to maximize each employee’s contribution while creating a work environment where good people can stay healthy, productive and committed.
It’s about the outcomes, not where you sit.
That’s why I don’t believe in one work-from-home policy, one return-to-office policy or one schedule for everybody. Do you?
Less policy can mean more trust, more flexibility and better results.
One size fits one.
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Jim Tompkins, Chairman and founder of Tompkins Ventures and Tompkins Logistics, is an international authority on designing and implementing end-to-end supply chains. Over five decades, he has designed countless industrial facilities and supply chain solutions, enhancing the growth of numerous companies. Jim earned his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University.