Nobody said anything because, well, he’s the manager. After the meeting I was venting to a coworker I’m pretty close with and she casually mentioned that Brian had relocated to Colorado about 8 months ago.
I thought she was joking. She was not. Dude has been managing us “from headquarters” while actually sitting in Denver, which is a 2 hour flight from our actual office.
While many managers state that unpopular return to office policies that they are doing so because remote workers lack engagement, as the manager in this story, studies have not supported this. In 2025, Gallup reported in a study that remote workers actually had higher engagement than staff in all other types of work. In fact, they were likely engaged to their own detriment. With less reporting that they were “thriving” than every other work group, except those stuck on-site with no flexible working arrangements or any other ability to work from outside of their work site. They also experienced more negative emotions than any other group.
If productivity is the question and the mode of evaluation of a remote worker’s commitment, well, companies win there too. Many studies have found over the last 6 years, since certain global events forced the work-from-home boom, that working-from-home professionals were more productive than their counterparts.
Which really gets to my question from the intro… Just what are managers aiming for when they push strict Return to Office policies?
It is clear that proximity is important when it comes to work, when leadership has determined that it is a value to them. They think it’s important because it feels better to them. The distinction lies in their perception and not in the work being done or the remote employees’ “commitment” to their work. But there is some merit to this “feeling” since, if we go back to the same study and look at the negative emotions experienced, there lonliness and stress increase, likely due to the physical distance and lack of face-to-face human interaction. So, when your boss says that they value in-person engagements, maybe they have a point, just not for the reasons they’re giving.
The employee concluded their story, as below, with the following.
Author: Kayitsi.com
