{"id":565056,"date":"2026-07-02T11:37:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T11:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/565056\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T11:37:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T11:37:12","slug":"whats-the-real-reason-your-boss-wants-you-back-in-the-office-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/565056\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s the real reason your boss wants you back in the office? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The real reason many bosses want everyone back in the office<\/a> five days a week? Their ego.<\/p>\n

No joke. New academic research<\/a> has found what many of us long suspected. Over the last six years, organisational psychologist Adam Grant at the Wharton School in the University of Pennsylvania, and PhD candidates Marissa Shandell and Courtney Elliott, have studied why some leaders embrace remote work<\/a> while others resist it. They surveyed thousands of executives, middle managers and supervisors on a range of personality traits and asked them about their attitudes to remote work.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome leaders say they insist on full-time in-person work because it boosts productivity, despite clear evidence that it does not. Others claim it\u2019s about collaboration, creativity or culture. Our new research reveals that the objection to work from home is more likely to be driven by something else entirely: ego.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ordering people back to the office full-time is a power-and-status move they claim. When people aren\u2019t in the office, command and control is harder. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a signature strategy of leaders who exhibit narcissistic qualities. They see any kind of remote work as a threat to their authority and admiration. They want to be worshipped at the office altar.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Brave new world of remote working in rural areas yet to materialiseOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Harsh words. The authors acknowledge that hybrid<\/a> and remote work does not work for every business or every role. \u201cNone of this is to say that individual leaders who reject remote work are necessarily egomaniacs, as many factors influence workplace policies around flexibility. But our data does show that, overall, self-centred leaders tend to struggle with the idea of employees making independent choices about where to work.\u201d <\/p>\n

The full study is worth reading, as leaders need to stop fighting hybrid work and embrace it as a normal part of the modern workplace.<\/p>\n

Hybrid revolution<\/p>\n

Workers are making their preferences known, with office-based positions receiving fewer applications than hybrid roles. Companies need to adapt rapidly or miss out on high-performing workers, greater productivity and loyalty. <\/p>\n

The biggest obstacle to managing a hybrid team is often the manager. Managers\u2019 roles have changed significantly since 2020 and will continue to evolve rapidly with the adoption of AI, yet training them up in these new hybrid working skills is weirdly not a priority in many companies.<\/p>\n

Barriers may include fear and a lack of experience or expertise in managing hybrid or remote teams. That\u2019s certainly something I encountered when I started my fully virtual company 20 years ago in June 2006 \u2013 a very unusual thing to do at the time.<\/p>\n

Hybrid and remote working had been a little obsession of mine since I wrote a paper for my MA in journalism at DCU on teleworking in 1998. It all seemed so sensible to me (as an introvert who values quiet thinking time) to just let people get on with it. They were adults after all. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018There\u2019s an issue around mindset\u2019: Parents on hybrid working and childcare pressuresOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Also, why should I pay for an office, force the team to suffer a commute and endure a noisy open-plan workplace? <\/p>\n

Instead, I told the team members they could work whenever they wanted, wherever they wanted. There were only two stipulations: the quality of the work must be excellent and it must be delivered on time. <\/p>\n

The 4Ts<\/p>\n

Now, when I\u2019m designing a successful hybrid team, I talk about the four Ts \u2013 togetherness, tools, teamwork and touchpoints. This advice is based on academic and business research on what works, and what my clients and I have found when moving from teams who were full-time in the office to hybrid or fully remote.<\/p>\n

\"ForFor some leaders, having staff in the office rather than working remotely is all about control. Photograph: iStock <\/p>\n

Hybrid working requires managers to focus on communication, motivating employees, readjusting their role \u2013 is it employee supervision or support? \u2013 and putting structures in place that make this happen.<\/p>\n

Togetherness: <\/b>Coming together in person needs to mean something. There\u2019s no point in asking junior staff to go to the office to do video calls. Be strategic in your approach and don\u2019t waste people\u2019s time. To get buy-in on ways of working, organise an in-person team meeting. Use this for an open discussion (using logical criteria and centring the business\u2019 needs) about how often, when, for what reasons and why the team needs to be in the office together. <\/p>\n

When in-office team days happen each week, make sure the team is meeting together with purpose: to problem solve, innovate, share information and build their relationships. If employees feel they could have done the same work from home \u2013 but you\u2019ve put them through a commute, or they\u2019ve had to hire a carer for the day \u2013 your hybrid work policy isn\u2019t working, and they\u2019ll become disillusioned and demotivated.<\/p>\n

\n

Try spending a few minutes at the beginning of every virtual weekly meeting catching up with one another on a personal basis. Question prompts can help: any funny or unusual things happen this week?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Tools:<\/b> Most companies have excellent technology and tools, but they only use about 20 per cent of their capability. Now is the time to prioritise training all team members in how to use tools competently, especially the virtual work tools and communication channels on which they rely every day. <\/p>\n

Spell out and document how each channel should be used (daily communication between peers and managers, urgent communication with senior leadership team, team problem solving, project management, tracking) and share this with everyone. <\/p>\n

How employees \u201cchoose their weapon\/tool\u201d greatly impacts on their effectiveness and the way they are perceived internally. Sending the chief executive an urgent message on WhatsApp after hours \u2013 as one client told me happened when a junior employee was unaware of the ground rules \u2013 is not a good look for anyone.<\/p>\n

Teamwork:<\/b> Human beings connect easily in person, but when we\u2019re communicating virtually, some nuance and lots of humanity and humour can be lost. How can you help team members relate well to one another even though it\u2019s through technology? <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Remote working: \u2018I will overdeliver because I know this is a privilege\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Research shows that when working on a hybrid basis, social ties need to be reimagined, maintained and used to support strategic goals. Try spending a few minutes at the beginning of every virtual weekly meeting catching up with one another on a personal basis. Question prompts can help: any funny or unusual things happen this week? What did you enjoy doing this weekend? Holidays or staycation plans? Or follow up on something that they mentioned last week. <\/p>\n

Active listening and participation is key to these moments. Regular facilitated workshops on various issues (strategy, customer relationships, using AI, communication, high performance) are also helpful for team motivation, energy and physical movement.<\/p>\n

Touchpoints: <\/b>Managers who succeed in this era understand the power of the personal touch. Regular one-to-one calls with each team member are an absolute necessity. These are discovery, support and listening meetings. What does the employee need to get the job done? How much effort is involved? What can make it easier? How can you help them prioritise and balance their workload? What skills do they need to develop? What helps them be more productive? What are they doing to mind themselves and manage burnout?<\/p>\n

Humans need to feel valued at work and, if you give them the tools, structures, respect and humanity they need, they\u2019ll thrive \u2013 and your business will too.<\/p>\n

Margaret E Ward is chief executive of Clear Eye, a leadership consultancy. margaret@cleareye.ie<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The real reason many bosses want everyone back in the office five days a week? Their ego. No…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,2357,19,17,25243,25977,80],"class_list":["post-565056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-eire","tag-hybrid-working","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-remote-working","tag-return-to-the-office","tag-work"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}