A Plain Memo
When your boss calls it collaboration and means something else
Your company's return-to-office mandate probably cites collaboration, culture, and belonging. When I looked at what the research actually shows — and what managers and executives admit when no one's listening — the picture is more complicated than that.
I found two separate studies showing return-to-office mandates don't improve productivity or financial performance. I also found what executives admit when asked what the policy is actually for — and one real reason proximity helps some workers, being used as cover for something much broader.
ℹ️ AI voice disclosure: This episode uses an AI-generated voice (ElevenLabs). The host is a pseudonymous byline persona (Reid Conlin).
In this memo
Sources
- Ding & Ma, "Return-to-Office Mandates," University of Pittsburgh:
- Bloom et al., "Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance," Nature:
- BambooHR, "The New Surveillance Era: Visibility Beats Productivity for RTO & Remote":
- Emanuel, Harrington & Pallais, "Remote Work Leaves Younger Workers Sidelined," Federal Reserve Bank of New York:
- Bernstein & Turban, "The impact of the 'open' workspace on human collaboration," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:
- Dell return-to-office color-coding system: