7 Signs a Massachusetts Employer Is Going to Cut Your Remote Days, Based on Companies That’ve Already Done It

A ResumeBuilder.com survey of 978 business leaders in October 2025 found that 13% of companies planned to add required office days in 2026.

Only 5% planned to cut back.

These are the signs a Massachusetts employer is going to cut your remote days, based on companies that’ve already done it.

1. Paper Trail from Badge Swipes

Amazon required corporate employees back three days a week starting May 1, 2023.

That 2023 policy applied to corporate employees, not Amazon’s warehouse workforce.

By August that year, GeekWire reported the company was using badge-swipe data to send individual employees warning emails about missing that three-day minimum.

The trigger had a clear threshold: Anyone who badged in fewer than three days a week, for five of the past eight weeks, got a message.

A year later, Amazon raised the requirement to five days a week for roughly 350,000 corporate employees, effective January 2025, according to CoStar’s roundup of 2025 mandates.

That’s roughly 350,000 people whose weekly schedule reset at once.

Amazon warned before it mandated.

2. Leadership-First Timing

JPMorgan Chase’s operating committee sent senior leaders back to the office five days a week starting in April 2023, according to Fortune’s report on the internal memo.

The memo covered senior leaders across the bank, plus trading and sales staff.

Everyone else still only needed three days a week in the building.

That’s the same operating committee that runs the bank day to day.

Nearly two years later, in January 2025, JPMorgan told everyone else to do the same, effective that March.

Leaders go first.

3. Color Grade for Attendance

In May 2024, Dell rolled out a color-coded rating system for hybrid employees.

The four grades were blue, green, yellow, and red, based on badge swipes and virtual private network (VPN) logs, according to the workplace publication HR Brew’s reporting.

Employees needed 39 in-office days a quarter to avoid a lower grade.

Lower grades meant fewer promotions and a worse spot in layoff decisions.

Dell told fully remote employees they’d have fewer advancement opportunities than colleagues meeting the office quota.

About half of Dell’s U.S. workforce was remote at the time.

Dell graded you by color.

Dell retired that system less than a year later.

Starting March 3, 2025, Dell required every hybrid or remote employee near a Dell office to work there five days a week.

The Register reported the shift from CEO Michael Dell’s internal memo announcing the change.

4. Rising Office Occupancy

Kastle Systems tracks how many employees badge into offices across ten major U.S. cities every week through its Back to Work Barometer, and the readings have been rising.

One week in December, the national average hit 56.3%, the highest reading since Kastle started tracking in 2020.

A+ Class buildings, the newest, highest-amenity properties, led the rise at 78.8%, edging back toward pre-Thanksgiving levels.

That same trend shows up at street level too.

A parking lot fills earlier.

A badge line forms at the elevator.

Desks that sat empty on Fridays fill back up.

Not a coincidence.

Occupancy like that builds for months, long before any single company announces a mandate.

You’ll feel the crowd before you read the memo.

5. Buildup Before the Jump

Southwest Airlines moved corporate staff from about three office days a week to four or five, effective January 6, 2025, according to CoStar’s roundup of 2025 mandates.

The airline announced that jump as one policy, not a series of smaller ones.

One jump, not several.

Amazon’s jump from three days to five, covered above, landed the same way: A single new number, not a staircase.

The starting number was never the final one.

6. Accountability Memo

Starbucks first asked corporate employees to spend more days in the office in 2022.

It set a three-day-a-week minimum on January 12, 2023, according to buildremote.co’s tracking of the company’s internal memos.

Neither of those early steps carried a consequence for skipping a day.

That changed on October 28, 2024, when Starbucks told corporate staff an accountability review would start that January.

Outcomes under that review could include what the memo itself called “separation” from the company.

Starbucks finally named the consequence.

Roughly 3,500 corporate employees were covered by the policy.

Starbucks tightened the rule again in February 2025, requiring VP-level leaders in North America to work from the Seattle or Toronto offices at least three days a week.

By July 2025, every corporate employee owed four office days a week, starting that September.

Remote people managers had twelve months to relocate to Seattle or Toronto or resign, according to buildremote.co.

The three-day rule didn’t last either.

7. Relocate-or-Leave Ultimatum

IBM shows what happens once an employer moves from trimming remote days to eliminating remote work.

In January 2024, IBM told managers living beyond a set distance from a company office to relocate near one.

Otherwise, they had to leave the company, according to the news network CNN and Computerworld’s reporting on the internal memo.

That’s a step past adding office days.

No gray area.