Return-to-Office, everyone’s back. What’s better?

^{“Understanding ourselves, navigating the world around us, making sense of others, and recognising the impact we have on them. Because who are we, really, if not shaped by one another?“}

^{Happy Wednesday, everyone. I’m Shaida Darian, a Business and Organisational Psychologist. I’m fascinated by three questions: Why does this happen? What can we do about it? And when should we act? Join me down the rabbit hole. With any luck, we’ll find Wonderland.}

Subscribe | Past essays | Advertise with us | Insane Media | Writer Opportunity

🤝 This edition is kindly brought to you by Leapsome

4 in 5 companies already expect AI skills in their People teams.

That’s one finding from Leapsome’s 2027 Workforce Trends Report, out now.

Leapsome analyzed 5,000+ data points across 100 of the world's fastest-growing tech companies, from Anthropic to Spotify to Databricks, and found exactly how their HR teams operate: how big they are, what they pay, and who runs them.

Every finding comes with a concrete next step you can act on this quarter. If you want a real benchmark for how your team measures up, start here.

Read the Leapsome 2027 Workforce Trends Report today

_{We partner with a select group of brands that we use or admire, allowing this newsletter to remain free and independent. Reach out for your campaign here.}

I remember those early online meetings: the struggle to join a Teams call, the inevitable “Can you hear me?” My own dilemma was whether to look at the people on the screen or into the tiny camera above them. One felt natural; the other apparently counted as eye contact.

I’m Shaida Darian, a business and organisational psychologist, and I’m interested in what our working arrangements reveal about the relationship between people and the organisations they work within.

The pandemic gave us a shared reason to make it work. Unreliable connections, improvised workspaces and competing demands became problems to work around. There was a common purpose, even when the connection was poor.

By the time restrictions eased, temporary adjustments had become established habits. Commuting and buying lunch had once been routine expenses; avoiding them had become a tangible saving. Returning to the office meant restoring costs and routines we had learned to live without. The employee’s question was understandable: if I have demonstrated that I can do my job from home, what does the journey add?

Yet individual effectiveness tells only part of the story. Completing my work does not necessarily reveal how easily a new colleague is learning, whether another team can access my expertise, or how we develop the next idea together. Equally, sharing an office does not guarantee that any of these things will happen.

The disagreement may concern what each side counts as success. An employee may see completed tasks and time saved. A leader may be concerned about coordination, learning and future business. Those concerns can coexist. The difficulty arises when either side treats its experience as sufficient evidence for how everyone should work.

A team can complete its tasks while struggling to develop its next generation of expertise. It can also fill an office while decisions remain stalled. Understanding either situation requires examining the relationship between the work, the people and the systems supporting them.

The work sets the requirements. A single role may involve concentrated analysis, negotiation and collaborative problem-solving. Each places different demands on attention and interaction. In a six-month randomised trial involving 1,612 Trip.com employees, a schedule combining two days at home with three in the office reduced resignations by one-third without damaging performance-review outcomes over the following two years. This supports the effectiveness of that arrangement in that setting; it does not establish a universal attendance formula.

The people introduce another distinction: individual output and collective contribution. Further research found that proximity increased feedback and improved code quality among software engineers, while experienced colleagues produced less code as they supported others. Their contribution becomes difficult to assess if the organisation values learning but measures only individual production. What appears to be lost productivity may partly represent an investment in someone else’s capability.

The supporting systems determine how that investment is organised and recognised. Mentoring requires access to expertise and time to share it. Decisions require adequate information and clear authority. Physical proximity can support both, but bringing colleagues together does not automatically establish these conditions. Equally, remote flexibility cannot compensate for their absence.

This is where surrogation offers a useful psychological lens. Research describes how a measure can displace the objective it was intended to represent. Applied to workplace policy, the risk is that visible attendance becomes evidence of collaboration before anyone establishes whether useful collaboration has occurred.

The resulting danger is misdiagnosis. A coordination problem may require more direct interaction, clearer responsibilities, or both. Treating location as the explanation too early can leave leaders changing the most visible feature of work while overlooking the conditions shaping its performance.

For leaders, the practical task is to establish which combination of location, support and working practices addresses the problem. Three actions make that decision more defensible.

The recommendation should specify the arrangement, the support it requires and the evidence that would justify keeping or changing it. This creates an accountable decision that can evolve with the work.

The WFH–RTO tug of war can produce a winning policy without producing better work. Location matters, but its value depends on the tasks, the people and the systems supporting them. If those remain misaligned, a change of workplace may leave the same difficulties waiting at a different desk.

If something here speaks to you, I’d love to hear it.

Until next week,
Shaida

P.S. Where do your pre-hire criteria stop matching what your team surely values and rewards? Reply to this email and let me know.

If you’re new here, I’m over the moon you’ve joined us! To help me craft content that’s actually useful (and not just noise in your inbox), I’d love it if you took 1 minute to answer this quick survey below. Your insights help shape everything I write.

💡 Dive into our other newsletters - where psychology meets the founders, creator economy, e-commerce marketing, and AI founders.