Ordering everyone back to the office won’t fix your culture. Here’s what will.

You brought everyone back to the office to rebuild the team. Instead, the atmosphere feels flat. People arrive, put their headphones on and leave on the dot. Some of your best people have started looking elsewhere, and the ones who stay seem quietly resentful.

If that sounds familiar, your return to office strategy may have solved the wrong problem. Being in the same building doesn’t create a culture. Trust, purpose and connection do, and those can’t be ordered into existence. The good news is that they can be rebuilt, with the right approach and an honest look at what’s really going on.

What changed while we were at home

Since the pandemic, many people have reorganised their lives around a different way of working. Some found they could focus better at home. Some arranged childcare, caring responsibilities or health needs around it. Many simply got used to more control over their day.

At the same time, some things quietly weakened. New starters missed out on learning by watching. Relationships between teams thinned. Informal conversations, the ones that used to smooth over small disagreements, stopped happening.

So when people come back, they’re not returning to the same workplace they left. Expectations have shifted, habits have changed and the unwritten rules of the team need rewriting. Rebuilding team culture after remote working means recognising that, rather than trying to turn the clock back.

Why mandates backfire

A mandate tells people where to be. It doesn’t tell them why it matters. When the reason isn’t clear, people fill the gap with their own explanations: “They don’t trust us”, “This is about control”, “Nobody asked us”.

That’s why you can see employees resisting return to office plans even when the plan seems reasonable from the boardroom. Common reasons it backfires include:

• Commuting to sit on video calls. If people travel in only to spend the day on screen with colleagues elsewhere, the office feels pointless.
• Loss of trust. Teams who performed well at home can hear a mandate as a judgement on their work.
• No shared purpose for office days. Without a clear reason to be together, office time becomes an endurance test rather than a benefit.
• Decisions without consultation. People accept change far better when they’ve been heard, even if the outcome doesn’t change.

The same applies to an office relocation. Staff engagement drops when a move is announced rather than discussed, especially if it changes commutes, routines or team seating.

The people who feel it most

Return-to-office changes don’t land evenly. You might notice the strain most in:

• Parents and carers, whose arrangements were built around flexibility
• People with health conditions or disabilities, for whom home working may have made work more manageable
• Quieter team members, who may have found it easier to contribute in written or remote formats
• Younger employees who started their careers at home, who may feel unsure of the unwritten office rules. I’ve written more about the young employees who started their careers at home.

If you plan around the average employee, you’ll miss the people most likely to be hurt, and most likely to leave.

Listen before you move: what staff will only tell an outsider

Here’s the uncomfortable truth for many leadership teams: people often won’t tell you what they really think. Not because they’re difficult, but because there’s risk in being honest with the people who decide their pay, their promotion and their future.

So leaders hear a polished version. Concerns about a manager, frustration with how decisions are made, or worries about how a move will affect their lives tend to stay in the kitchen and the group chat.

People are often far more open with someone independent, who sits outside the reporting line and has nothing to gain from what they say. That’s why listening properly, before you finalise any plan, matters so much. When you know what people really feel, you can design a plan they’ll actually support.

A practical return to office strategy for leaders

If you’re reviewing your approach, here’s a practical place to start.

1. Explain the purpose. Be honest about why you want people together. Collaboration, mentoring, creativity and belonging are real reasons. Make them specific to your organisation.
2. Listen first, honestly. Ask what people value about home working and what they miss about being together. Make it safe to answer truthfully.
3. Design office time around connection. Bring teams in on the same days, and use that time for things that work better in person: planning, problem-solving, mentoring and celebrating.
4. Involve people in the detail. Let teams shape how they’ll use shared time. Ownership builds commitment.
5. Pay attention to the people who feel it most. Talk individually with those whose lives are most affected.
6. Rebuild relationships deliberately. Team cohesion in hybrid teams doesn’t happen by accident. It needs time, shared experiences and leaders who model openness.
7. Review and adjust. Say clearly that you’ll check how it’s working and change course if needed, then do it.

Hybrid working culture also has a habit of deepening silos between teams who are rarely in on the same days. If that’s happening to you, my guide on how to break down silos at work may help.

How an external facilitator helps

This is work I offer as an independent outside facilitator. It has three parts.

I listen to your staff, independently. I talk with people honestly and confidentially about how they’re feeling, what’s working and what isn’t. Where it helps, staff surveys and psychometric tools can add structure. I’m a qualified psychometrician, so I can choose and use these well.

I report back to the senior leadership team. I bring you the themes clearly and honestly, without naming individuals, so you can see what’s really going on and make decisions with your eyes open.

I help you rebuild the team. Listening is only the start. I then design and facilitate workshops and team-building sessions to rebuild trust, reconnect teams and agree how you’ll work together from here.

How I can help

I’m a coach, trainer and facilitator with experience creating collaborative communities in siloed teams. I’ve delivered courses including Change Management, Culture Transformation, Collaboration Across Distance, Silos & Cultures, and Exploring Values, Vision & Mission. My approach combines positive psychology, storytelling, evidence-based coaching models and practical exercises.

If you’re planning a return to the office, an office move or a reset of your culture, I’d be glad to talk it through. Find out more about my culture workshops and leadership training.