Caterpillar Resource Industries Mandates 5-Day RTO

I received an email from a Caterpillar employee stating this:

“Caterpillar Resource Industries has mandated 5 day/week return to office for all employees beginning Feb 1, 2025. It will be closely tracked and employees that do not comply will receive a ‘does not meet expectations’ rating for the year.”

I went to investigate and can verify a few different ways. Although the discussions haven’t been confirmed by anyone at Caterpillar yet, here’s what I know so far.

Dec 17, 2024: Searches for “Caterpillar return to office” spike

I track the Fortune 500’s return to office policies here. As a result, that page on my website shows up for a lot of “return to office” search terms in Google. 

Starting on December 17, I noticed that Google searches for “Caterpillar return to office” went up significantly. They are usually at 0.

This is always a great indicator that a policy has changed.

December 17, 2025: RTO threads appear on Reddit

Reddit threads like this one started to pop up just after the spike in Google searches.

Here are some notable comments.

My Conclusion

This matches with the pattern for other internal policy changes that don’t get released to the public (like CVS, Ford, and John Deere). 

CRI employees (a division within Caterpillar) must come into the office five days per week starting on Feb 1, 2025. 

Do you have information about Caterpillar’s RTO policy? Contact me with details. I will update the story if you have information about this story.