Business leaders from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon to Tesla CEO Elon Musk have argued that employees need to return 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 showed that employees who worked fully remotely reported the highest levels of workplace well-being, broadly defined to include physical, mental, emotional, social, and financial health. Workers who worked entirely onsite reported the lowest levels of well-being. The study, published last month in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, also found little evidence that remote workers felt less connected to colleagues or workplace culture. Because the data come from a single institution—an academic cancer center—questions remain about how the pattern applies across other industries and job types.

“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 talent

The study’s benefits were not limited to how employees said they felt. One year after the initial survey, researchers reviewed employee turnover and found that workers with higher levels of well-being were less likely to leave the organization, meaning remote workers were associated with higher retention. Because the study was observational—tracking employees in their existing work arrangements rather than randomly assigning them—it can show associations, not prove that remote work itself causes better well-being or retention.

For companies, retaining employees can carry a significant financial benefit. Even before the pandemic accelerated remote work, U.S. businesses were losing $1 trillion annually because of voluntary turnover, according to a 2019 Gallup analysis, which estimated that replacing a single employee costs one-half to two times that employee’s annual salary. Other research points in a similar direction: a randomized trial of roughly 1,600 employees at the travel company Trip.com, published in the journal Nature in 2024, found that a hybrid schedule of two days at home reduced quit rates by about a third, with no measurable effect on performance reviews or promotions.

Still, critics of return-to-office mandates have argued that requiring employees back into the office can function as a backdoor way to reduce headcount without formal layoffs. A survey last year suggested that concern was not unfounded: one in five HR professionals said 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 showing that leaders with stronger narcissistic traits are more likely to dislike remote work.

The answer, however, may not be as simple as remote versus in-office. Hybrid work is often presented as the best of both worlds, offering flexibility while preserving opportunities for face-to-face interaction. But it can also bring its own problems, including schedule coordination, commuting on selected days, and uncertainty about who will actually be in the office.

“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 reduce costs by allowing companies to rent less office space.

Although the researchers did not measure productivity, they argued that flexibility may matter more than any single work arrangement. Johnson said that could be especially important for younger workers who are still building 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 the time is valuable.

Public and private leaders remain firm on return-to-office

The findings arrive more than five years after the COVID-19 pandemic upended office norms, and as some of the most powerful voices in corporate America continue to make the case for office work.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has long been one of Wall Street’s most outspoken advocates of in-person work, calling his workforce of more than 300,000 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. For everyone else, including young people and managers alike, he said in-person work is best. Young people, he added, need to work in person because they are still learning.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken a similarly 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.

Other major employers have moved in the same direction: Amazon began requiring corporate employees back in the office five days a week in January 2025.

The federal government has also pushed its hundreds of thousands of employees back into the office, with Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor serving as a 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 titled “Why Showing Up Counts.” “Supervising a massive, largely remote federal workforce is not something the federal government is well equipped to do.”

But in a leaked audio message obtained by Fortune, Kupor later admitted in a hot mic moment that he had intentionally filmed a video in front of a blank wall while working from home so he would not face blowback over working remotely.

A spokesperson said Kupor was taking a day off and therefore was not considered to be teleworking. Still, the episode underscores the tension at the center of the return-to-office debate: Even as companies and governments argue that workers are better off in the office, the appeal of working from home can be difficult for anyone—including the people making those rules—to ignore.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com