Collage featuring a business man leaving a home office, with a computer screen displaying an alert, and a cat pawing for attention

Employers and employees have spent the past few years engaged in an arm-wrestling match of sorts over the return to offices. For a while, the odds were in workers’ favor. A white-hot labor market gave workers a lot of leverage, including the ability to dictate their own work-from-home schedule. The tides, however, are shifting. Employers are clawing back power, and some companies are using that power to compel workers back to their desks — or face some consequences.