Return to office policies: welcome back to Corporate Detention

Good morning, employees. Welcome back to the office.

We hope you've enjoyed your little experiment with working from home, but it's time to put the slippers away, dust off your commuter pass and rediscover the unique pleasure of spending £8 on a sandwich in a cardboard box and a bag of crisps.

Your organisation is delighted to announce its exciting new Return-to-Office Policy.

Apparently, we've all been missing out on the magic of face-to-face collaboration. The spontaneous conversations. The shared ideas. The creativity. The culture. The opportunity to stand awkwardly in a kitchen while somebody explains, in considerable detail, what they're having done to their conservatory.

It's going to be wonderful.

And to make sure everyone enjoys this exciting return to workplace togetherness, attendance will be monitored.

Welcome to Corporate Detention. Please take your seats. No talking unless it's collaborative. And if you need to work from home on a Wednesday, we'll require a note from your mum.

Of course, return-to-office policies aren't inherently ridiculous. There are perfectly legitimate reasons for organisations to bring people together. Collaboration, learning, mentoring, team relationships and workplace culture all matter.

But the way some organisations communicate and implement these policies? Well, that's where things start to resemble a badly run secondary school.

And for HR, Change and Internal Communications teams, there's a serious challenge hiding underneath all the compulsory fun. Because getting employees through the office doors is one thing. Getting them to understand and support it, and benefit from being there is quite another.

The register: attendance isn't engagement

“Russell?” “Present.”

“Thompson?” “Present.”

“Patel?” “Present.”

“Erm. Where's Jennifer?” “Working from home.”

“DETENTION.”

One of the more entertaining features of the return-to-office debate is the growing obsession with attendance.

• How many days?
• Which days?
• What percentage?
• Did they badge in?
• How long were they there?
• Did they leave at lunchtime?
• Are they really in the office, or did they just pop in, swipe their pass and disappear like a particularly well-dressed shoplifter?

Welcome to the wonderful world of coffee badging.

The problem is that organisations can become so obsessed with measuring attendance that they forget to measure whether anything useful actually happens once people arrive.

And this isn't some imaginary workplace argument. The CIPD's Flexible and Hybrid Working Practices in 2025 report found that 65% of organisations required employees to attend the workplace for a minimum number of days per week or month.

Meanwhile, 53% of UK employees said they felt pressure to spend more time in the workplace, according to their July 2025 research announcement.

That's quite a lot of people being encouraged to rediscover the office carpet.

But here's the important distinction. Attendance is not engagement. An employee can sit at a desk for eight hours and contribute absolutely nothing beyond warming a chair and consuming two packets of biscuits.

Equally, someone working remotely might be collaborating brilliantly, delivering excellent results and helping colleagues across three time zones.

Presence is easy to count. Productivity, collaboration and engagement require a little more thought. And that's where HR and Change teams need to challenge the conversation.

If the objective is better collaboration, measure collaboration. If it's stronger culture, explore whether employees feel more connected. If it's improved learning, look at learning outcomes. If it's productivity, measure the work.

Otherwise, congratulations! You've successfully introduced an extremely expensive school register.

The group project: collaboration doesn't happen by itself

Remember group projects at school? Four people in a group. One does all the work. One disappears. One produces a title page. And one confidently announces that they've been responsible for the strategic direction.

Welcome back.

One of the most common justifications for return-to-office policies is improved collaboration. And that's a perfectly reasonable ambition. There's genuine value in bringing people together, particularly for complex problem-solving, mentoring, relationship-building and creative work.

But collaboration doesn't magically happen because several people are sitting within 30 metres of each other.

Consider the modern office experience.

• You've commuted for 75 minutes.
• Found a desk.
• Located a working monitor.
• Discovered that your usual team is sitting on a different floor.
• And joined a Teams meeting with six colleagues.
• Four are working remotely.
• One is in another office.
• And the sixth is sitting approximately eight feet away from you, wearing noise-cancelling headphones.

Oh, yes, the collaboration is off the scale.

This is where organisations need to distinguish between being together and doing something valuable together.

Research from JLL, published in July 2026, found that 70% of employees globally were working in offices three to five days a week. But its central argument was that greater attendance doesn't automatically translate into greater productivity or engagement.

In other words, getting people back is only half the job. The other half is making it worthwhile. For HR and Change teams, that means thinking beyond attendance policies and towards the actual employee experience.

• Could teams coordinate office days around activities that benefit from face-to-face interaction?
• Could managers organise workshops, mentoring sessions or collaborative planning?
• Could the office provide better spaces for teamwork rather than endless rows of desks designed for solitary computer work?
• And could employees have some say in how their teams use their time together?

Because if your organisation's grand plan for rebuilding workplace culture involves making everybody commute to attend virtual meetings, there may be a small flaw in the strategy.

Just a tiny one. You know, about the size of the M25.

The headteacher: explain the why behind the policy

Every school has a headteacher. Some are inspirational. Some are terrifying. And some appear only during assemblies to deliver important messages about standards, discipline and the unacceptable state of the toilets.

Return-to-office announcements can sometimes feel remarkably similar.

A senior leader appears. There's a statement about culture. Something about collaboration. Possibly a reference to bringing our best selves to work.

Then comes the announcement.

“From November, everyone will be expected in the office four days a week.”

Questions? No? Wonderful.

Assembly dismissed.

The problem isn't necessarily the decision itself. Organisations have legitimate business needs, and different working arrangements will suit different roles and circumstances.

The problem comes when employees don't understand the reasoning. Why four days rather than three? What wasn't working before? What evidence supports the change? What will improve? What flexibility remains? How will individual circumstances be handled? And what happens if the new policy doesn't achieve the results everyone is promising?

These aren't unreasonable questions. They're exactly the questions a good change communications approach should anticipate. (We looked at a real example in our take on Barclays' return to office plans.)

The CIPD's 2025 research found that 80% of employees felt flexible working had improved their quality of life. So, when organisations reduce that flexibility, they're potentially taking away something employees genuinely value.

That doesn't automatically mean the decision is wrong. But it does mean the communication needs to be thoughtful, honest and backed by a credible explanation.

And please, whatever you do, don't try to disguise a compulsory policy as an exciting employee benefit.

“We're delighted to announce an enhanced opportunity for increased workplace presence!”

You're making people commute more often, Susan. Just say that.

Employees are perfectly capable of understanding difficult decisions when organisations explain them respectfully. What tends to damage trust is the feeling that they're being sold something rather than told something.

Good change communication doesn't require everyone to agree. It does require people to understand what's happening, why it's happening and how their concerns will be treated.

Otherwise, the headteacher may have delivered a magnificent assembly. But the playground is absolutely furious.

The class prefects: support your line managers

And now we come to the line managers. Or, as they're known in Corporate Detention, the class prefects. These are the unfortunate individuals who have been handed a shiny new policy and told to make sure everyone follows it.

They didn't necessarily write the policy. They may not agree with every part of it. Chances are they weren't consulted particularly extensively.

But they're now responsible for explaining it, enforcing it, handling exceptions, managing resistance and somehow maintaining team morale.

Lovely.

Nothing says empowered leadership quite like being asked to defend a decision you first heard about in an all-staff email.

And managers will get the questions.

• “My childcare arrangements don't work with these new days.”
• “Why does Finance get two days at home and we only get one?”
• “Can I change my office day because of a medical appointment?”
• “Why are we doing this when our team's performance has improved?”
• “Does the policy apply to senior leadership?”

That last one is always a crowd-pleaser. (Insert grimacing emoji.)

This is where return-to-office policies can become a serious test of manager communication. Because managers aren't simply there to take the register. They're the people employees turn to when a corporate policy collides with their actual lives.

They need to understand the business rationale, the boundaries of the policy and the flexibility available to them. They need practical guidance on individual circumstances, consistent processes for handling requests and somewhere to escalate difficult questions.

They also need permission to listen.

Not every employee concern is an attempt to overthrow the corporate establishment. Sometimes people are genuinely trying to work out how to manage their responsibilities. The CIPD's 2025 report identified difficulties with managing teams effectively as one of the negative impacts employers associated with hybrid working. That's an important consideration. Managing distributed teams requires skills, confidence and clear expectations.

But changing where people work doesn't automatically solve management problems. A manager who struggles to communicate expectations remotely may still struggle when everyone is sitting in the same room. They'll just be able to disappoint people in person.

Support managers before the policy launches. Involve them in planning (our free internal communications plan template can help). Give them clear guidance, realistic scenarios and opportunities to challenge anything that doesn't make sense.

And don't simply email them a 42-page PDF entitled Manager Guidance FINAL v8. That's not preparation. That's homework.

The complaints box: listen, then show what changed

Every good school has a complaints procedure. Usually involving a suggestion box that hasn't been opened since 2019. Corporate Detention is no different.

Employees are encouraged to share their thoughts about the new return-to-office policy. Their feedback is extremely important. Their voices will be heard. The organisation is committed to listening.

And then... Nothing. The policy launches exactly as originally planned. Nobody explains what happened to the feedback.

A few employees quietly update their LinkedIn profiles.

And the next employee survey reveals that trust in leadership has taken a bit of a tumble. How very mysterious.

Here's the thing. Employee listening isn't about giving everyone a vote on every organisational decision. Sometimes leaders have to make decisions that won't be universally popular.

But listening should still influence how those decisions are implemented. Employees may identify practical problems that senior leaders haven't considered.

Perhaps the office doesn't have enough desks. Perhaps certain teams need different working patterns. Perhaps commuting costs create genuine difficulties for some. Perhaps accessibility arrangements need attention. Perhaps everyone is being asked to attend on Tuesdays, which is fantastic news for the sandwich shop but rather less fantastic for the building's capacity.

And perhaps the organisation's assumptions about how people collaborate simply don't reflect how work actually happens.

These are useful insights. Not inconvenient noises to be managed.

The CIPD's guidance for people professionals, updated in June 2026, highlights the importance of considering different working arrangements and employee circumstances when designing flexible working approaches.

That's particularly relevant because not everyone has the same opportunities to work flexibly. Plenty of frontline and operational employees cannot work remotely at all. A fair approach to flexibility needs to consider them too, rather than treating homeworking as the only benefit that matters.

So, create meaningful opportunities for employees to contribute.

That might include manager conversations, focus groups, pulse surveys or anonymous Q&A sessions.

• Ask what would make office time more useful.
• Ask what obstacles people anticipate.
• Ask which activities genuinely benefit from being together.
• Then explain what you've learned.
• And, crucially, what you're doing about it.
• If something cannot change, explain why.
• If feedback has led to an adjustment, tell people.
• If the policy is being reviewed after three months, explain what success will look like.

Because there's an enormous difference between:

“We've listened to your feedback.”

And:

“You told us the proposed team days created childcare difficulties, so we've changed the scheduling approach.”

One is a sentence. The other is evidence that listening actually means something.

Graduation day: measure what matters

Congratulations! You've completed Corporate Detention.

Attendance has improved. The office is full. The coffee machine is broken. Somebody has stolen a monitor cable. And the Chief Executive is delighted to announce that workplace culture has officially been restored.

HOORAY!

But has it?

• Are employees collaborating more effectively?
• Do people feel better connected?
• Are managers having more useful conversations?
• Has productivity improved?
• Is employee engagement stronger?
• Are new starters getting better support?
• Or have we simply succeeded in moving a large number of laptops from people's kitchen tables to slightly less comfortable desks?

This is the question organisations need to ask once the initial return-to-office campaign is over.

Because return to office is not a communications announcement. It's an organisational change programme. And like any change programme, it needs a clear purpose, a credible strategy, meaningful engagement and a way of understanding whether it's working.

That means HR, Change and Internal Communications working together.

HR needs to consider the policy, employee experience, fairness, flexibility and management implications.

Change teams need to understand the impact on different groups, identify risks and help people adapt.

Internal Comms needs to translate the rationale into something employees can understand, equip managers, create opportunities for dialogue and keep communication going beyond launch day.

This is where a proper change communications approach can make a substantial difference.

And rather than relying on a single announcement followed by increasingly stern reminders, organisations can use internal communications campaigns to build understanding, support managers, share useful examples and keep the conversation alive. A good campaign doesn't just tell people what to do. It helps them understand why it matters. It makes the change easier to navigate. And it creates opportunities to learn and improve along the way.

Because there's one final point worth making.

Not every return-to-office policy is a bad idea. Some organisations genuinely benefit from more face-to-face working. Some teams struggle with remote collaboration. Some employees actively prefer the structure, social connection and separation that office working provides.

Others value the flexibility and concentration that working from home offers.

The answer isn't necessarily five days in the office. Nor is it necessarily five days at home. The answer is understanding what works for the organisation, its people and the work they actually do.

And communicating that with honesty, clarity and a reasonable degree of common sense. Even the CIPD's research argues for a balanced approach that supports both business and employee needs.

Which seems a considerably more sensible starting point than assuming everyone will become 37% more collaborative simply by working near the same photocopier.

The final bell: our return to office advice

So, if your organisation is planning a return-to-office policy, here's our advice.

• Don't start with the attendance register. Start with the purpose.
• Understand what you're trying to improve.
• Involve the people affected.
• Give managers the support they need.
• Explain the reasoning honestly.
• Listen to the awkward questions.
• Make office time genuinely worthwhile.
• And measure whether the change is achieving anything beyond increased sales of meal deals at the local Tesco Express.

Because if your return-to-office strategy is built entirely around compulsory attendance, surveillance and increasingly threatening emails from HR, you might succeed in filling the building. But don't be surprised if you empty some of the goodwill in the process.

The best return-to-office policy shouldn't make employees feel like they're being sent back to school. It should make them feel that coming together has a purpose.

And if you absolutely must take the register, at least let everyone have a non-uniform day.

Class dismissed.

Planning a return to office? Let's talk

If you think you need some help with that, we would love to swot up on your behalf. We’ll even let you copy our homework.

Sources

• CIPD's Flexible and Hybrid Working Practices in 2025 report
• CIPD’s July 2025 research announcement
• JLL: Companies got people back to the office. Now they must make it matter.
• CIPD's guidance for people professionals