Return-to-office mandates may prove to be a fleeting phenomenon, according to Mark Dixon, CEO of IWG, the world's largest workspace provider. Dixon predicts that daily commuting could become a relic of the past within the next 15 years—rendered obsolete by the same technological shifts that have already moved most white-collar work into the cloud. His forecast comes amid a wave of return-to-office policies from major employers—including Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs—yet also against the backdrop of stubbornly elevated office vacancy rates in cities such as San Francisco and New York, where vacancy levels have hovered near two-decade highs.

In an interview with Fortune, Dixon said future generations will view the daily commute much as people today regard travelling by horse or writing by candlelight. "In the future, you're going to explain to your kids that you used to commute," he said, adding that they will consider it "mad stuff" that employers once required staff to "travel 100 miles to sit down and use a computer."

"They'll say, why did you do that? Because they won't understand that people traveled long distances to use a piece of equipment somewhere else," Dixon continued. "It's going to change a lot—the workplace of the future is everywhere. And it'll be very productive."

He envisions a future in which workers simply use their phones to find the nearest available workspace and go there. Since most professional work already resides online, he argues, the notion that a workspace must be a fixed physical location is outdated. IWG, which operates thousands of locations across brands including Regus and Spaces, has been expanding its footprint in suburban and smaller-city markets, betting that demand will centre on workspaces closer to where people live rather than in traditional central business districts.

Gen Alpha Expects Flexible Work as the Default

Research conducted by IWG and global engineering consultancy Arup suggests that long daily commutes could be extinct by 2040. Currently, the average New Yorker spends approximately 53 minutes commuting by train to reach the office, with Londoners facing a comparable journey. Looking ahead, only a quarter of Gen Alpha respondents indicated they would be willing to spend more than 30 minutes travelling to work. The majority consider even that duration excessive and expect the flexibility to work closer to home—or at home entirely.

A striking 80% of Gen Alpha, the oldest of whom are currently 16 years old, believe flexible working will be the standard by 2040.

Younger Leaders Signal a Shift Toward Remote Work

Dixon is not alone in anticipating a resurgence of remote work. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research examined 8,000 U.S. workers and found that Gen Z and millennial bosses are significantly more likely to permit remote work than their older counterparts. The data revealed a clear trend: as chief executives get younger, the number of mandatory office days decreases. Employees working under CEOs in their twenties reported the highest rates of working from home.

The researchers concluded that as boomer and Generation X leaders retire, the practice of commuting five days a week is likely to disappear alongside them.

Resistance to Remote Work May Signal Broader Technological Lag

The National Bureau of Economic Research also found that leaders who embrace remote work tend to be more proactive in adopting new technologies and software-driven management approaches.

Dixon made a similar argument, warning that companies prioritizing physical office presence over flexible, technology-enabled work risk falling behind. "Forget about where people are working. Most companies will go by the wayside if they don't embrace AI," he told Fortune. "If you look at winners and losers, the winners are the ones that embrace technology—the whole of the technology, which is flexible work, flexible location, and using technology to get more out of your people."

Brian O'Kelley, the technology entrepreneur who sold AppNexus to AT&T for $1.6 billion in 2018 before founding Scope3, echoed Dixon's assessment. He argued that leaders who cling to traditional office-based models are not genuinely committed to adopting AI and modern work practices.

Remote-first companies, O'Kelley noted, enjoy access to top global talent and can operate around the clock. "The best companies are going to actually dump their offices to learn to work with non-bodied employees," he told Fortune. "Anybody who has a back-to-office culture is actually hurting themselves."

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.