Company Moved to 5-Day Work From Office? How to Decide: Adjust, Negotiate or Switch

If your company has moved you to five days a week in the office, you have three realistic options: adjust and make the commute workable, negotiate a specific exception or arrangement, or start a planned search for a role that suits you better. Before you choose, know that the market has shifted hard towards office work this year. Xpheno's October 2026 tracker found that about 81% of active tech job openings in India were full-time work-from-office, while remote openings were down 23% and hybrid openings down 19% from a year earlier. So quitting on principle and expecting to walk into a remote job is riskier than it was two years ago. A calm, numbers-first decision usually works better.

This guide is for people already in a job who have just received the "back to office" email. If you are a fresher choosing between offers with different work models, our earlier guide on remote, hybrid or office for early-career engineers fits your situation better.

What large employers are actually doing

Return-to-office policies in Indian IT have tightened steadily. As reported in January 2026, TCS requires five days in the office and links variable pay to attendance: employees with 85% or higher compliance are eligible for full variable pay, 75–85% for three-quarters, 60–75% for half, and below 60% for none. Infosys requires at least 10 office days a month for many employees, caps additional work-from-home exceptions at five days a quarter and allows medical exemptions. Wipro asks for three office days a week, with at least six hours on each of those days.

Your company's policy may be different, and these are internal policies reported in the press, not law. But they show the direction: attendance is increasingly being tracked and tied to pay or appraisal.

First, read what you actually agreed to

Pull out your appointment letter and the HR policy document. Look for the stated place of work, whether the letter mentions remote or hybrid work at all, and whether there is a clause allowing the company to change your work location or arrangement. Under the new labour codes, appointment letters are mandatory and are expected to state basic terms of employment, so newer letters tend to be more specific.

In most cases, hybrid or remote work in India was granted as a policy, not as a contract term, which means the employer can usually change it. If your letter explicitly says your role is remote, that is a different conversation, and it may be worth taking advice before you agree to anything new.

Run the numbers on "adjust"

People often decide this on emotion, then regret it either way. Spend twenty minutes putting real figures down:

• Time: door-to-door commute, both ways, multiplied by office days in a month. Ninety minutes a day across 22 days is 33 hours a month.
• Money: fuel or cab or metro, parking, food you would otherwise cook, and any extra childcare.
• Pay at risk: if your variable pay or appraisal is linked to attendance, what you lose by not complying.
• What you gain: visibility with your manager, easier learning if you are junior, and separation between work and home. These are real, especially in the first few years of a career.

Sometimes the numbers say the commute is tolerable with a change, such as moving closer to the office when your lease ends or shifting your hours to avoid peak traffic. Sometimes they make it obvious that it is not.

How to negotiate without burning goodwill

"I don't want to come in" rarely works. A specific, limited request with a reason usually goes further. Some approaches that tend to get a fair hearing:

• Documented health or caregiving needs. Many policies already have medical or caregiving exemptions. Use the formal route with documents rather than an informal chat.
• Shifted hours. Coming in 8 to 4 or 11 to 7 can cut a commute drastically. This is often easier to approve than fewer office days.
• A transfer to a closer office. Large companies have several campuses or cities. An internal transfer request is a normal process.
• A time-bound trial. "Can I do four days for the next quarter while I sort out my move?" is easier to say yes to than an open-ended exception.

Put any agreed arrangement in an email, even if it is informal. Managers change, and memories fade.

If the RTO change coincides with your appraisal cycle, keep the two conversations separate where you can. Our guide on asking your manager for a hike explains how to make the pay case on its own merits.

If you decide to look elsewhere

Start the search before you resign, unless your health or family situation makes that impossible. Remote roles are scarcer this year and get far more applicants each, so a search can take longer than you expect. A few practical points:

Widen to hybrid and to a nearer office. A two-or-three-day hybrid role 20 minutes away may give you more of your life back than a fully remote role you cannot find. On CareerCola you can filter jobs by work style (on-site, hybrid or remote) and browse remote jobs separately.

Consider employers with different norms. Policies vary a lot between IT services firms, product companies, startups and global capability centres. If you are curious about GCCs, our guide on getting a job at a GCC covers how their hiring works. Ask about the actual attendance expectation early in every process, because the job post and the team reality do not always match.

Watch out for fake work-from-home offers. When genuine remote roles are scarce, scams fill the gap: "earn daily from home" tasks, fees for training kits, interviews only on Telegram. Our guide on spotting fake job offers lists the warning signs.

Plan the notice period. If your notice is 60 or 90 days, factor that into timing. This guide on handling long notice periods covers buyouts and negotiations with the new employer. And when interviewers ask why you are moving, "the role has moved to five days on-site and the commute isn't sustainable for me" is an honest, unremarkable answer.

A slightly unpopular point

If you are in your first two or three years of work, more office time is not all bad. Learning by overhearing, quick questions at a colleague's desk and being visible to senior people do speed up early careers. That does not make a three-hour daily commute acceptable. It does mean the right answer for a 23-year-old and a 38-year-old with a young child can be different, and both are valid.

Whatever you choose, make it a decision rather than a drift. Work out the real cost, ask for what would make it workable, and if the answer is no, plan your exit properly. You can browse jobs across India on CareerCola, filtered by city, category and work style, whenever you are ready.