Insights

You Can Mandate Attendance. You Can’t Mandate Engagement.

Claire Smith, MA · Founder & Principal Consultant · 6 October 2026

~5 minute read

Over recent weeks Barclays have kindly resurfaced the return to office (RTO) mandates debate for us, and we saw Unite make interventions. The mandate is still going ahead with a softened transition period. But this is not just about Barclays, they are simply the latest in a long line of organisations that have issued RTO mandates and it’s important to consider the implications of RTO mandates on employee engagement.

Employee engagement is a psychological state that enables businesses to have improved bottom line performance through a variety of behaviours employees display whilst in an engaged state (Gallup, 2026; Macey et al, 2009; MacLeod & Clarke, 2009). It is reached through meeting multiple psychological drivers and the ones I’ll explore here are trust, empowerment and optimism.

Before we go any further, this is not saying that it is right or wrong to be fully remote, remote first, hybrid (at whatever number of days per week that actually means), or full time in office, this is about how organisations interact with their staff on what for many, would be a major change.

🤝 Trust

There are a few things here, first and foremost, at the height of Covid, employees were pressured to work from home due to government-imposed lockdowns and social distancing. Much of the homeworking put in place was so that organisations could continue operations, otherwise many would have ceased to exist. This was extremely hard on many, with kids home from school, no real office set up ready, sharing with partners, housemates, some having to work from bedrooms. As things settled and restrictions became less intense, many moved to a new way of working and living that they found to benefit them in one way or another – the thing that saved many companies during covid actually was great for a lot of employees. Now organisations are turning it around, the messages are misaligned.

We can also see that whilst some reasons for RTO mandates have been attributed to supporting culture and collaboration, Fortune published a piece in 2025 with the title stating “A quarter of bosses admit their return-to-office mandates were meant to make staff quit”. The article also points towards this action being taken to avoid redundancies and severance packages. Again, the messaging is misaligned, with a double edged sword for employees – resign and get no severance, stay and possibly get made redundant, all whilst having an RTO mandate causing upheaval in day to day life.

💪 Empowerment

When organisations unilaterally impose things, especially things that affect people as strongly as RTO mandates, it takes away empowerment. Employees are no longer able to make the decision as to whether their time is best spent sitting in the rush hour traffic jam to have that important collab session or customer meeting that’s better in person, or just to sit in the traffic because the powers that be “say so”. Ultimately, people can no longer decide what location is the most productive for them to do their best work and fulfil needs outside of work that week.

✨ Optimism

One of the most prevalent feelings related to RTO mandates – the expectation that you’ll experience good outcomes at work. For many, RTO mandates are not good outcomes. They impact how well individuals can care for families and themselves. From a DEI perspective, RTO mandates have been found to disadvantage those with disabilities and mental health conditions (Florisson et al, 2025). Alongside this, Ding et al (2024) found that following RTO mandates, turnover increased generally by 14%. This is significant because when the data was broken down by men and women, they further found that the increase in departures was 3 times more for women – attributed to caring needs (note the study was focused on S&P500 tech and financial firms).

How can we better channel RTO and avoid damaging employee engagement along the way?

There are organisations that have taken a more consultative approach to RTO practices. Undertaking focus groups, sharing proposed policies and enabling teams to write their own commitments and review them regularly (CIPD, 2022). A key takeaway from this CIPD piece is focusing on what is being delivered by way of performance management as opposed to office face time. The report also points towards an office being re-laid out to better fit the needs of its employees when they go to an office location.

What I have seen is that in dispersed locations (both nationally and internationally), people are less likely to forget that one person who isn’t in their regular location when most don’t work at a set place – this reduces feelings of being left out and also drives speaking to the best person rather than the person 2 desks away. I’ve experienced going to a location to sit on video calls most of the day, to see someone specifically only to find that they couldn’t make it or got pulled into something else. I’ve been at an office needing to do highly sensitive work but not able to focus or get private space in open plan. Not to mention the times the Wi-Fi went down! This is not just since 2020 – it happened throughout my career, but I noticed the negative impact more since having worked remotely.

I have also seen and been part of the joy and collaboration from being together with colleagues both in direct and cross functional teams – the ideas flowing and solutions forming – simply spending time together and fuelling relationships.

Finally, I have also seen employees make poor decisions about not going to a location that needed their presence. At other times I’ve seen remote working used as a reason not to deliver, due to lack of equipment or broadband. In reality, hybrid / remote working isn’t a fix it all. Whilst it comes with its own unique challenges, RTO when mandated is hardly delivering a positive, engaging work environment. Like many other operational things organisations have had to navigate in the past, these challenges need to be considered and accounted for. To wrap up, I firmly believe that RTO can be done well and drive engagement, or it can be done poorly to the detriment of engagement.

“the reality is that the office never equaled culture” Gallup, 2022

How is your organisation showing good practice with RTO?

What could your organisation be doing better to enable a productive transition?

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