How one L.A. company ditched rigid office mandates and got workers back

Los Angeles video gaming company Riot Games abandoned its return-to-office requirements in January, and surprisingly, more of its employees have been showing up at work. Two years of dictating that everyone commute into work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays was hurting the morale as well as the productivity of many. Riot decided on a radical revamp of its policies to allow more flexibility, said Riot President Hoby Darling.“The company-wide cadence was too rigid and didn’t reflect the different ways teams work and didn’t bring people together for the moments that could have the most impact,” he said. “Our goal was never to create rules for their own sake. It was to create the environment where Riot is the best place to make games.”The company pivoted from a three-days-per-week requirement to a roughly three-days-per-month expectation, with each team leader deciding when more attendance is mandatory depending on when people need to be in person with their team. More than seven months into the new policy, the results have been impressive, the company said. Attendance and productivity have risen. The Los Angeles metropolitan area and other big California population centers are be...