Return to office presents challenges for IT teams managing transition

How much does it cost to return to the office?

In a world where some tech companies are making RTO a condition of continued employment, taking stock of the financial and security costs is important while planning the policy.

It’s often not a simple fix, Mimecast CISO Leslie Nielsen told IT Brew. While he personally feels that it’s best for staff to work from wherever they have the most success, he understands organizations pushing workers to come back in. But there are problems that arise from that approach, including how to manage security when a hybrid or remote workforce returns to the office.

“As we start migrating users who were used to working in home locations back to central pools, it is going to change things,” Nielsen told IT Brew.

Smooth operators. Having people in office needs to be a “seamless,” zero-trust security experience, Nielsen said. Investing in office security infrastructure is a key part of that effort. Paradoxically, in some cases, the controls developed for out-of-office may be stronger than in-office, where staff aren’t isolated from one another, so there’s more chance of crossover into a centralized system.

“That’s my biggest fear—companies that haven’t upgraded the infrastructure within the office and the individual endpoints for the users, and have systems that aren’t as managed as well as they could or should be,” Nielsen said.

Getting it right. Modernization is one of the things that Joe Vaccaro, VP and GM at Cisco ThousandEyes, sees as essential for maintaining a digital experience that aligns with office goals in a way that doesn’t contradict remote work security.

But it comes with potential costs—in IT investment, lost productivity, and a rise in support tickets—that IT teams will have to explain to the higher-ups. An easier way around the time and money outlay is to invest in better secure networking infrastructure.

“When we think about this end to end, all the way from the device to the application, and really anchor on, ‘How do we reduce the number of tickets created?’ or ‘How do we address those issues even before they impact the employee?’ you can see a sizable return on investment for what’s going to be necessary to modernize that workplace infrastructure,” Vaccaro said.

Fixing the situation. IT teams need to focus their efforts on ensuring they balance RTO needs with the reality of a workforce that has been out-of-office for years in some cases, Vaccaro said. That means finding a way to differentiate between business requirements, employee needs, and leveraging capabilities.

“Businesses that modernize their infrastructure, modernize their operations, will be the ones that ultimately can maintain and maintain the top employees and create a magnet for the office experience versus the work-from-home experience,” Vaccaro said.

Correction 3/12/2026: A reference to "security infrastructure" has been updated to "secure networking infrastructure."