Hot Take: RTO mandates are not cultural strategies; they are leadership coping mechanisms.

Here’s what’s really driving the movement, why it exposes poor leadership skills and an inability to pivot, and how to create an intentional culture within a remote-first workplace.

Hint: it doesn’t get created by accident; small tweaks such as setting up strong knowledge-sharing systems are key components to the increased innovation associated with remote work.

Quick Summary (for the skimmers):

Most return-to-office mandates have very little to do with collaboration, culture, or productivity. (This, of course, excludes industries that require in-person presence, such as retail, restaurants, manufacturing, etc.)

They’re happening because many leaders built their identity on proximity, presence, and control. When remote work removed those tools, their influence evaporated, and instead of evolving, they blamed “culture decline.” Remote work didn’t break culture; it revealed who was leading with outdated methods. Organizations that backpedal back to the office are leaving all the proven benefits of remote work systems on the table, and their competitors are picking them up.

A new 67-point leadership evaluation scale, called the Leadership Competencies for Telework (LCT) Scale, can help you evaluate your remote leaders and identify effective behaviors or a need for leadership competency training.

Why Return-to-Office Mandates Are Surging Again.

Return-to-office policies are a strange anomaly in an environment that normally prides itself on data and measurable outcomes. Instead, the movement away from remote roles has been driven primarily by an opinion-based narrative, specifically, the belief that remote work has damaged collaboration, destroyed culture, and made leadership harder. But when you peel back the layers, a different story emerges, one rooted in leadership discomfort and outdated identity structures.

Any genuine productivity dips revealed in remote environments rarely come from the model itself. They almost always stem from an inability to pivot leadership behaviors to match the new landscape. Remote work didn’t destabilize culture; it destabilized leaders who relied on outdated systems to maintain control. And that distinction is everything.

Below is the deeper psychological, organizational, and leadership-based reasoning behind the push and why, ultimately, culture is not built on proximity. Culture is built on values, systems, and emotionally intelligent leadership.

As a note, if you are implementing a return-to-work mandate as a disguised way to reduce the workforce, then you are placing the burden of poor strategic decisions on employees rather than owning mistakes, reskilling workers, or realigning your company’s direction. This is a major red flag to job seekers. In plain language: at worst, your company is a sinking ship, and this is you throwing things overboard, hoping the weight reduction saves you, and at best, you’re using return-to-work strategies to avoid holding leadership accountable for team productivity.

Traditional leadership depends on proximity while bypassing human connection.

For decades, leadership was taught through a presence-based model:

• “Be visible.”

• “Walk the floor.”

• “Command the room.”

• “Dress to Impress”

• “People trust the leader they physically see.”
  

Presence became a shortcut for influence, whether or not the leader had actually earned trust or competence. When the pandemic sent everyone home, this model cracked open. Without proximity, leaders had to rely on real skills, clarity, trust, communication, emotional intelligence, and consistency. The best leaders leaned into this challenge and thrived. Everyone else faltered.

Many who were unprepared for the shift re-centered the conversation around “needing people back” when what they really meant was, “I don’t know how to lead if I can’t manage by presence alone.”

Weak relational leadership collapses without face-to-face reinforcement.

Leader–Member Exchange (LMX) theory tells us that leadership influence comes from the quality of the relationship, not the position. Remote work exposed leaders who had never built trust, never developed rapport, never maintained consistent communication rhythms, and who relied heavily on hallway chats to smooth over unclear direction.

It was also disastrous for leaders who operated through fear or manipulation, because remote environments create written records. Exclusion, gaslighting, in-group politics, and silent-treatment leadership tactics simply don’t survive documentation. These individuals could not get employees back into the office fast enough.

Leaders who had been leading relationally, through transparency, psychological safety, predictable communication patterns, and genuine connection, did not struggle. They adapted. Everyone else panicked and clung to the office as a life raft. This is why RTO mandates often feel based on correlation but not causation. The real cause is a lack of leadership skills required for a new environment.

Takeaway: If a leader needs physical distance closed to maintain influence, the relational foundation was weak to begin with.

Remote work threatens the old power hierarchy.

The truth is, remote work flattened the power structure. French & Raven’s Power and Influence framework explains why. Traditional leaders rely heavily on:

• Legitimate power (their title)

• Coercive power (oversight, pressure, visibility)

• Reward power (in-person praise or perks)

• Information power (gatekeeping access)

Remote work eroded all of these. In a digital environment, no one sees the corner office. Gatekeeping becomes more difficult. Information flows more openly. Influence shifts from presence to competence. Leaders who were used to positional authority suddenly had to provide real value, and that identity shift destabilized them.

Takeaway: Leaders who rely on hierarchy and visibility feel threatened in remote environments because those systems no longer validate their authority.

In their panic, companies forgot what true culture actually is.

Edgar Schein’s foundational model shows that culture exists at three levels: artifacts (the visible expression of deeper values), espoused values (what the company claims to value), and underlying assumptions (what leadership actually reinforces). Artifacts do not have to be tied to a building. They can be anything visible, hearable, feelable, or patterned.

Remote workplaces can intentionally design artifacts through recurring ritualized meetings, purposeful communication, shared language, digital systems, consistent processes, leadership behaviors, decision-making patterns, and storytelling. Tools like project management platforms, CRM systems, or e-learning content can carry cultural norms just as effectively as physical office spaces.

When leaders fail to intentionally shape artifacts, they misdiagnose cultural breakdowns and assume returning to the office is the only solution. In reality, it is simply an inability to grow, evolve, and design culture for a modern workforce. And when artifacts, values, and assumptions don’t align, such as claiming to care about diversity while forcing caregivers and women back to the office, trust erodes rapidly.

Remote work demands new leadership competencies, and many aren’t trained.

Remote workplaces require new leadership competencies, especially in legacy or deeply hierarchical organizations. Many leaders weren’t resistant to remote work because it was ineffective, but because it required new communication styles, new emotional labor, new accountability systems, and new decision-making patterns.

A 2024 study on RTO mandates showed that forcing employees back into the office increases turnover significantly, especially among women, senior employees, and highly skilled workers. It also showed a correlation between RTO mandates and leadership groups dominated by authoritarian-leaning executives who felt they were losing control. Companies enforcing strict in-office requirements also shrink their hiring pool dramatically, resulting in longer vacancies and lower-quality applicant pipelines.

Takeaway: Returning to the office is often a leadership avoidance strategy, not a cultural strategy, and it can cost companies hundreds of thousands of dollars in turnover.

Research shows RTO mandates disproportionately harm women, creating disparate impact conditions that undercut DEI commitments.

One of the most overlooked elements of the return-to-office conversation is how consistently the research shows that these mandates disproportionately affect women, especially working mothers and caregivers. Remote work has been one of the most powerful mechanisms for keeping women in the workforce, supporting retention, and leveling the playing field in environments where they often face unequal burdens both inside and outside of work. When companies enforce rigid return-to-office mandates, they aren’t just making a logistical change; they are creating conditions that force many women out of roles they were otherwise thriving in.

This pattern matters because the law doesn’t require discriminatory intent for discrimination to occur. Disparate impact happens when a neutral policy disproportionately harms a protected group. And the mounting research surrounding RTO mandates shows exactly that: women experience higher turnover, decreased advancement opportunities, and increased burnout when forced back into office environments that fail to account for caregiving, safety, health, or transportation inequities. Companies that claim to care about DEI while simultaneously implementing policies that disproportionately push women out of the workforce undermine their own stated values and weaken trust across the organization.

Remote work didn’t cause these disparities; it exposed how fragile the support systems for women in traditional office environments have always been. RTO mandates simply resurface the inequities that remote flexibility temporarily relieved.

Takeaway: Return-to-office policies don’t just reflect outdated leadership; they recreate gender-based disparities that contradict every DEI statement printed in an employee handbook.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article is two-fold. First, to help leaders understand the real root causes of perceived productivity dips so they don’t sabotage their organizations with outdated solutions. Second, to help employees recognize the deeper motivations behind RTO mandates so they can choose workplaces that genuinely align with their values.

Remote work threatens leadership models built on proximity, presence, and power, which is why some leaders cling to the office to regain a sense of identity. But because culture is created through values, clarity, emotional intelligence, trust, and leadership that can evolve, smaller organizations actually have an advantage. They can pivot faster, build intentional culture from the ground up, and benefit from a remote-first workforce while legacy organizations hold themselves back through rigidity. The key is establishing a strong remote culture, training leaders to operate effectively in a global, distributed environment, and setting clear employee expectations that keep teams accountable without resorting to micromanagement.

Culture is never driven by proximity. It is driven by the behavior of leaders who consistently model the values they claim to believe in. Organizations that push against remote culture are delaying the leadership transformation our global economy now requires. Top talent wants remote work. Without it, companies handicap themselves and push innovation further out of reach.

So What’s the Solution?

A new 67-point leadership evaluation scale, called the Leadership Competencies for Telework (LCT) Scale, has been developed based on a research study published in September 2025 in the Journal of Management and Organization. It measures the effectiveness of remote leadership on five distinct factors: Digital Communication, Digital Trust Building, Remote Goal Management, Remote Relationships Development, and Telework Life Balance Support. The study is the strongest model we currently have for evaluating the ability of leaders to lead effectively in remote settings and should be deployed for all remote leaders to make sure that a company is getting value and productivity from their remote workers and reducing attrition.

Leaders who fall short on this assessment should be given ample training to get them the skills that they need to lead in our new dynamic remote-first work environment.

Finally, a strong cultural framework needs to be intentionally implemented to support remote work and support business needs. Establishing expectations that hold both employees and leaders accountable for work ethic standards and productivity while maintaining psychological safety.

Organizations that follow these guidelines are set up to reap the benefits of remote work, such as attracting top talent, increasing overall productivity, reducing attrition, and increasing innovation.

Ready to upgrade your organization into the next era of leadership?

Do you need a new culture-sustaining playbook built for thriving remote workplaces, or need an effective evaluation method for your remote leaders?

Contact us at IntentionalEmpowerment.com to transform your leadership team into the kind of modern, emotionally intelligent leaders who make remote culture successful. All of these skills can be taught. Let’s build the workplace of the future together.

References

Bravo-Duarte, F., Rodríguez, I., & Tordera, N. (2025). Leading from afar: Development and validation of the leadership competencies for telework scale. Journal of Management and Organization, 31(5), 2449-2468. https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2025.10011

Ding, Yuye and Ma, Mark (Shuai), Return-to-Office Mandates (December 25, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4675401 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4675401

Jones, S. (2024, April 2). Study on return-to-office mandates gets international attention. University Times. https://www.utimes.pitt.edu/news/study-return-office

Kalmanovich-Cohen, H. (2025). Return-to-office mandates and workplace inequality: Implications for industrial-organizational psychology. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 18(3), 287–293. doi:10.1017/iop.2025.10019

Ma, M., & Ding, Y. (2025, June 3). Return to office mandates don’t improve employee or company performance. Pitt Business. https://www.business.pitt.edu/return-to-office-mandates-dont-improve-employee-or-company-performance/

Nwankpa, J. K., & Roumani, Y. F. (2024). Remote work, employee productivity and innovation: the moderating roles of knowledge sharing and digital business intensity. Journal of Knowledge Management, 28(6), 1793-1818. https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-12-2022-0967

Shorb, M. (2025, November 12). Essential return-to-office statistics and trends (2025). Founder Reports. https://founderreports.com/return-to-office-statistics/

Stroud, J., & Rohde, D. (2025). Remote Worker's Psychological Safety: Why Leaders' Emotional Intelligence Matters. North American Journal of Psychology, 27(3), 574-588. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/remote-workers-psychological-safety-why-leaders/docview/3249300079/se-2