From Speculation to Implementation: A Systematic Review of Return-to-Office Research and Its Impact on Organizations

The COVID-19 pandemic determined a massive shift to remote work, challenging traditional workplace norms. However, as restrictions eased, many organizations began mandating a "Return-to-Office" (RTO), requiring employees to resume working from physical workplaces. This reversal frequently prompted employee resistance and talent attrition, highlighting a significant tension between managerial objectives and shifting employee expectations. Despite its widespread organizational impact, research on RTO is limited and fragmented, as the phenomenon is still emerging. This systematic review addresses this critical gap by comprehensively analyzing the emerging RTO organizational trend. We identify three distinct phases—Anticipation & Adaptation (2020-2021), Transition & Contestation (2022-2023), and Evaluation & Inequality (2024-2025)—demonstrating a shift from speculative discussions to critical evaluations of RTO's varied and often unequal impacts. Our findings extend distributed work literature by establishing RTO as an emerging ramification of remote work studies and offer crucial, evidence-based guidance for practitioners to develop equitable and effective RTO strategies, emphasizing the need for nuanced, context-specific approaches.