RTO mandates to AI agents: How work is changing in 2026 and beyond

There are so many songs about work that even Google can’t give you an exact number.There must be thousands of tunes about the daily grind, such as Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” the Bangles’ “Manic Monday,” Loverboy’s “Working for the Weekend,” and Johnny Paycheck’s “Take this Job and Shove It.” About the only ones who seemed to enjoy singing about their careers were the Seven Dwarfs who heigh-hoed off to work in Snow White—and they were cartoon characters.The workplace has changed dramatically over the years, especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic that shut down offices as people worked from home and telecommuted using Zoom and other digital conferencing tools.Looking ahead, analysts see even more changes coming to the workplace, where the average person spends roughly one-third of their life. Return-to-office calls got noticeably louder in 2025, Robert Half said, with many large employers rolling out firmer in-office expectations and enforcement—Amazon (AMZN), Dell (DELL), Walmart (WMT), and Starbucks (SBUX) were among the major employers to issue RTO mandates.At the same time, the staffing firm said, data indicated that for remote-capable roles, “hybrid work arrangements remained the dominant model—and employee preferences barely budged toward fully on-site work.”“In general, companies that treated work flexibility as a strategic tool for employee engagement saw better outcomes than those focused on badge counts,” Robert Half said. Related: What is coffee badging? The hybrid work buzzword explained“Expect to see fewer performative mandates and more structured models for flexible work guided by what the data shows about employee productivity, satisfaction and retention.”The firm noted that one of the most significant 2025 workplace trends was businesses of all sizes leaning more heavily on contract and interim talent to keep projects moving and access hard-to-find skills. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy implemented a strict, five-day-a-week return-to-office mandate for most corporate employees.Getty Images Analysts see rise of AI agentsIn 2026, the move toward scalable staffing will become a long-term strategy for how work gets done in many companies, Robert Half said, as “economic uncertainty, evolving regulations, AI and tech upgrades, and ongoing project backlogs make it harder to rely on permanent headcount alone.”Artificial intelligence will play a bigger role in the workplace, but McKinsey analysts believe that 2026 will be the year of agentic AI, which operates with autonomy with minimal human oversight—unlike traditional AI, which requires step-by-step guidance.More on jobs:Goldman Sachs makes unemployment predictionHow Work Conditions Impact Mental HealthNovember BLS jobs data show the good, bad, and ugly, analysts sayCooling jobs report resets Fed interest-rate cut bet“As we move into 2026, companies have the opportunity to advance beyond incremental gains from copilots, chatbots, and other reactive, gen AI–based tools,” the firm said in a recent report. “The best are acting now to transform workflows, functions, and, ultimately, their entire organizations by onboarding AI agents to work side by side with their people.”AI will not make most human skills obsolete, but it will change how they are used, McKinsey said, “with AI handling more common tasks, people will apply their skills in new contexts.” Analysts at PwC believe that AI could soon end a shift that has marked most of the industrial era—the ever-increasing specialization of work. “Agents can increasingly do the specialized tasks that fill the workdays of experienced, mid-tier employees,” the accounting and auditing firm said. “In IT, for example, you may no longer need coders specialized in specific languages. Instead, you may want engineers who understand both tech architecture and how to manage and oversee the agents that do know these languages.”In finance, PwC said that as agents do tasks like invoice processing, purchase order matching, reconciliation, and anomaly detection, “people with general finance skills can focus on growing revenue and expanding margins, engaging with vendors on payment terms, working with sales on dynamic pricing models, and conducting more scenario planning.” “In knowledge work, many of these roles can be filled by entry-level employees who tend to be AI savvy,” the firm said.Survey: Employees value workplace cultureThere will be challenges, however, with Deloitte noting that “most enterprises today simply aren’t set up to take advantage of the opportunities for automation that agents present.”“However, we’re starting to see signs at leading organizations that these challenges can be surmounted through strategic process redesign, architectural modernization, and new governance frameworks,” the firm said.Related: Quantum computing making big leap, analysts sayHow do employees feel about work?Well, 60% of those responding to the 2025 EY US Generation Survey said culture is a major factor in their decision to stay in their jobs.“US workers may be feeling the strain of a slow job market, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and economic uncertainty, but when it comes to their priorities, workplace culture is at the top of the list,” the firm said. The most important aspect of workplace culture is the way people interact, according to the survey of 5,000 US white-collar workers at organizations with 5,000 employees or more.Nearly 30%—the single biggest response—reported that the most valuable aspect of company culture is “how people treat each other,” beating out leadership and management style, work environment, seeing the company’s values in action, or feeling the company prioritizes their career growth.“The US workplace continues to evolve,” Leslie Patterson, EY Americas and US Inclusiveness Leader, said in a statement. “Gen Z and millennials, in particular, are driving change, but all generations are looking beyond compensation and prioritizing relationships, connections and values.”“Many organizations are focused on AI and other emerging technologies that are critical to a competitive advantage,” Patterson added. “But they should also keep their people front and center and look for ways to address the needs of all generations.”Related: Movies struggle for place in changing entertainment market