The Rise of Empowered Non-Compliers: Why Top Talent Is Defying Return-to-Office Mandates

The remote work wars may be largely over by 2025, but a new workplace archetype is emerging: the empowered non-complier. According to a September 2025 report by commercial real-estate giant JLL, these are high-value, highly skilled employees who simply ignore office attendance rules when it doesn't suit them—and they have the leverage to get away with it.

Who Are the Non-Compliers?

The JLL Workforce Preference Barometer 2025, which surveyed 8,700 office workers globally, paints a vivid demographic profile. Unlike "compliers," who tend to be older and value stability, the empowered non-complier is typically younger—often between 30 and 34 years old. They are frequently found in the tech sector, particularly in North America, and often hold managerial roles.

Strikingly, they tend to work at companies offering more perks, such as high-quality offices, childcare, concierge services, free meals, and wellbeing programs. For these workers, non-compliance is often driven by personal constraints rather than a dislike of the office itself. Many are caregivers who feel their time constraints are "poorly understood and supported at work," and commuting is a major factor, too.

High performers, with a skill set to navigate job changes, are a higher flight risk because they know they're valuable on the open market. "Their non-compliance is less a rejection than a calculated decision based on their sense of empowerment," JLL concludes. The report notes that while compliance with mandates is as high as 90% in France and Italy, it drops to 74% in the U.S., where this "empowered" demographic is concentrated.

The Broken Psychological Contract

The rise of the non-complier signals a broader fracture in the psychological contract between employer and employee. The report highlights that burnout has become a serious threat to operations, with nearly 40% of global office workers feeling overwhelmed.

When this implicit contract of being valued is broken, the relationship becomes transactional. Employees stop seeking engagement and start seeking compensation, demanding increased commuting stipends or strictly flexible hours. If the office experience feels "commute-worthy"—offering better technology and amenities than home—acceptance of policies rises. However, almost 40% of global respondents believe their office experience needs improvement, citing issues ranging from noise to a lack of nutritious food.

Two management professors, Peter Cappelli and Ranya Nehmeh, told Fortune in October that they had found a similarly broken contract while researching their recent book on remote work, In Praise of the Office. Nehmeh said they found Gen Z's behavior in the workplace showed signs of a broken contract between worker and management, as it's a "very transactional" attitude, which she described as "I show up, I do my job, I get out. I don't want to be part of anything else."

Both Cappelli and Nehmeh recommended ending remote work, ironically, because of Gen Z, who are lacking a specific type of mentorship at a crucial point in their careers. Cappelli described the dynamic as "fine for me … but bad for everyone else." His findings aligned with JLL's finding that the empowered non-complier, precisely the sort of high-performing colleague who would be an excellent mentor, that young workers could learn from, are probably not in the office that much themselves.

Ultimately, the empowered non-complier is signaling a shift in what flexibility means. It is no longer just about where work happens, but when. Work-life balance has overtaken salary as the top priority for employees globally, cited by 65% of office workers.

The report suggests that successful organizations will stop relying on blanket mandates and instead "personalize the approach." For the empowered non-complier, retention hinges on autonomy, and JLL recommends that employers move beyond counting days in the office and focus on "management of time over place," recognizing that for this valuable cohort, flexibility is the new currency of loyalty.

But as Cappelli told Fortune in October, this won't be an easy thing, because the problems with remote work are really reflective of wider failures on the part of managers. "Management's just gotten worse," he said. Commenting on his finding that remote work has resulted in so many meetings that managers are holding post-meeting meetings to make sure the message got through, he added: "It's a mess. Those things could be fixed, right? But they're not being fixed."