Return to Office and Sick Leave

"In a fully remote team, there's no way to have the same knowledge flow as in an office."

"We implemented RTO — the number of sick days increased, and people started disappearing mentally."

"And with us? Finally, you can properly onboard new people."

At the beginning of 2026, OFFDIGITAL spoke with managers of ten technology teams in Poland, operating in companies ranging from 50 to 300 people. All of these organizations implemented return-to-office policies to varying degrees in 2025: from one day a week, through hybrid models, to nearly full RTO. We asked not only about motivations and potential gains, but also about costs: sick leave, team fatigue, turnover, and declining work energy.

Why absence is a hard cost in IT, not a 'soft' HR topic

In Polish tech companies, sick leave is still often treated as a soft, 'HR' topic. In practice, however, it's one of the most underestimated operational costs. If we assume very conservatively that an experienced engineer, product manager, or infrastructure specialist costs the company about thirty thousand PLN per month in total employer cost, then one day of their absence is roughly 1,400–1,500 PLN 'on paper'. But that's just the beginning. In the real IT world, you add the costs of others taking over tasks, sprint delays, higher error risk, extra meetings, nervous roadmap replanning, and the domino effect of overloading the remaining team. In conversations with operations and finance directors, figures of two to three and a half thousand PLN frequently came up as the real cost of one day of specialist absence when you count all the side effects.

The scale of the problem: what it looks like in a mid-sized company

Just multiply it by scale. In a company where one hundred people work in roles directly affecting delivery, with an average absence of ten days per year per person, we're talking about a thousand days of absence. At a very conservative cost of 2,500 PLN per day, that's about 2.5 million PLN per year. This money doesn't appear in a single P&L line but spreads across the budget in the form of delays, overtime, lost sales opportunities, and internal client frustration. In this context, every organizational decision that affects team fatigue and health stops being 'soft'.

What RTO changes in practice

And this is exactly where RTO comes in. In six out of ten teams we spoke with, a noticeable increase in absence appeared in the first two to three months after implementing return-to-office. It wasn't dramatic, but enough for managers to start counting consequences in deadlines and costs. In three teams, sick leave metrics remained at similar levels, but work predictability dropped and the burden on people who 'stayed at their posts' increased. In one case, the statistics looked slightly better than before, with no increase in phenomena like ghosting, quiet absence, or mentally logging out of work. It's worth noting that the company where no increase in absence was observed took employee wellbeing very seriously — listening to their feedback and offering additional benefits. There was also a noticeable correlation: in companies that relied less on employment contracts, the topic of sick leave came up less often, but short absences and deadline delays were more frequent. This shows that the effects of changing work models can't simply be 'bypassed' — only their form changes.

The most interesting cases we've seen

A 150,000 PLN bill

One product company, employing about 120 people, implemented three days in the office from one month to the next. The decision was fast, without a pilot and without exceptions. In the key engineering team of thirty people, absence increased by about 20 percent in the following quarter. Most often, people commuting over an hour one way disappeared. If you calculate this very conservatively as an additional two days of sick leave per person per quarter and multiply by the real cost of a work day, the company paid about 150,000 PLN in three months. And that's without counting delayed milestones, nervous replanning, and extra manager hours. Only after adjusting the policy to two days in the office, introducing exceptions, and clearly explaining why people should come in at all did the situation start to stabilize.

No employment contract? No sick leave!

Most insidious was the story of a startup employing about 70 people. They implemented four days in the office, and after several months, sick leave metrics didn't change significantly. Only deeper analysis showed that this 'stability' was largely an illusion. The company didn't employ anyone on employment contracts — everyone was on B2B — so in practice, people simply didn't take sick leave so as not to lose money. Instead of sick days, other warning signs appeared: random 'offline' days, disappearing from calendars, last-minute meeting cancellations, and deadline shifts without clear communication. Projects started slipping not because of lack of competence, but because in the most unpredictable way, 'someone was always missing'.

What seems to work

From these conversations, one model of office work emerges that doesn't generate resistance in teams and doesn't create the same negative effects as rigid RTO policies. It's hybrid work without top-down 'mandatory' office days, where teams themselves set the moments of intensive on-site work. Most often these are days filled with meetings, workshops, onboarding new people, or project kickoffs — situations where physical presence actually adds value. Such gatherings are usually combined with an integration element, so employees don't perceive them as an unpleasant obligation, but as a break from routine and an opportunity to really meet the team. In this model, the office stops being a symbol of control and becomes a tool used when it actually makes sense.

Summary

All these stories share one conclusion: RTO itself is neither a saving nor a cost. It's a lever that can shift the balance one way or another. If the change is imposed, ignores commuting realities, and isn't accompanied by any investment in recovery, it quickly materializes in the costs of absence, delays, and turnover. If it's implemented as a tool to solve specific organizational problems and goes hand in hand with attention to people's workload, it can reduce losses that were previously scattered across the organization.

At OFFDIGITAL, we look at it even more broadly. RTO affects not only work logistics but primarily people's capacity for cognitive recovery. And without it, even the best office policy becomes a short-term optimization that generates hidden costs over a longer horizon. In a company of one or two hundred people, the difference of a few absence days per person per year amounts to hundreds of thousands, often millions of PLN. That's money very easily burned by one poorly prepared organizational decision.

That's why we say it directly: if tech companies in Poland want to really control the costs of absence, delays, and burnout, they need to start counting these decisions in PLN, not just in declarations about 'work culture'. Because the bill comes anyway — the only question is whether it arrives as a thoughtful investment in team health, or as unplanned millions in losses.