Coming into the office for back-to-back video calls, headphones on, while colleagues work elsewhere: it is hard to imagine a better recipe for resentment. Conversely, seeking an urgent decision in a deserted discussion thread is hardly empowering. As work resumes in September 2026, the useful question is therefore not just “how many days?” but “what should we do together, and under what rules?” Returning to the office then becomes an exercise in collective negotiation, rather than a permanent referendum on remote work.
A conflict over days that conceals a conflict of needs
The tightening of office attendance policies did not begin this September. In September 2024, Amazon announced a return to five days a week in the office starting in January 2025. Other companies had already strengthened their requirements. These decisions established a simple narrative: after freedom comes a reassertion of control. But a uniform directive does not automatically solve the problems cited to justify it, whether they involve collaboration, learning or cohesion.
Research also cautions against hasty conclusions. A study published in Nature in June 2024, conducted among Trip.com employees, showed that a hybrid arrangement could reduce staff turnover without compromising measured performance. It did not demonstrate that every form of remote work suits every activity. Rather, it underscored the need to distinguish between arrangements, roles and observed outcomes. The events cited here are established facts; the approaches proposed for this September are analysis, not a quantitative assessment of 2026.
Behind “I want my team back together,” a manager may be expressing three different needs: making decisions faster, supporting newcomers or checking that work is progressing. Behind “I want to stay at home,” an employee may be defending their ability to concentrate, their family balance or the time saved by avoiding an exhausting commute. As long as these needs remain unspoken, each side assumes the worst of the other. The first skill to draw on is restating the underlying need: understanding the problem before discussing its solution.
Coordination: give office attendance a purpose
A team does not need the same environment to launch a project, produce an analysis and resolve a disagreement. Being together in person can be particularly useful when communication is ambiguous, trust is lacking or several disciplines need to build a shared understanding. It adds less value when someone is working alone on a well-defined task. The right starting point is to map out these situations, not immediately choose two, three or four days.
Replace the mandatory day with a useful gathering
Take a fictional product team. Tuesday could bring together design, development and support to review customer feedback, set priorities and resolve dependencies. The rest of the day would retain blocks of working time and informal exchanges. This choice would make sense if the necessary people were present and the groundwork for decisions had been laid. Otherwise, Tuesday would simply become the day everyone carries their laptop around.
Negotiation must therefore also address availability: when can you approach a colleague? What is a reasonable response time? Where should a decision be recorded? Being in an office does not remove the need to write things down. A corridor conversation that changes a project without leaving a record excludes those who are absent and weakens collective memory. Coordination depends as much on the quality of information-sharing as on physical proximity.
Fairness: address differences without creating privileges
The apparent equality of a rule can conceal highly unequal constraints. Someone with a quiet room at home does not experience remote work in the same way as someone sharing a small living space. A short commute does not carry the same cost as a long rail journey involving connections. And some roles require a physical presence. Recognizing these differences does not mean promising everyone an identical arrangement; it means making the criteria understandable.
The classic pitfall is an exception negotiated discreetly with a manager. It may meet a legitimate need, but it can fuel suspicion if nobody understands the framework. It is better to distinguish between collective rules, role-specific adjustments and confidential individual accommodations. Transparency concerns the principles, not the disclosure of medical or family circumstances. A team discussion is obviously no substitute for the employer’s obligations or, depending on the context, dialogue with employee representatives.
Fairness also matters in career progression. Who gets the high-profile assignments? Who meets the decision-makers? Who receives informal feedback after a presentation? If office attendance becomes an unspoken indicator of commitment, the official rules lose their value. Managers must assess contributions against explicit expectations and check that learning opportunities do not depend solely on encounters by the coffee machine.
Focus: recognize work that is not visible
The debate often overlooks a scarce resource: sustained attention. Reviewing a contract, debugging a program or drafting a recommendation sometimes requires long stretches without interruption. Home can provide them, but not always. So can the office, provided it offers suitable spaces and rules that protect focused work. It would be inconsistent to require attendance to improve performance while multiplying the interruptions that prevent people from working.
A negotiated rule could reserve certain mornings for focused work, limit recurring meetings or allow a clear signal that someone is unavailable. It should also specify what constitutes an emergency. Otherwise, every notification eventually becomes one. This protection requires discipline in how people interact: accepting that a colleague will not respond immediately, preparing requests and grouping questions rather than sending them one by one as they arise.
Negotiate a testable agreement, not a superficial truce
To move beyond entrenched positions, the manager can propose a time-limited trial with a review date. The discussion starts with concrete situations: stalled decisions, difficult onboarding, repeated interruptions. Each rule must address one of these problems. The agreement can fit on one page:
- Shared time, linked to specific activities and identified participants.
- Protected blocks of time, for work without meetings or any expectation of an immediate response.
- Information-sharing rules, to document decisions, responsibilities and deadlines.
- A process for adjustments, with explicit criteria and an opportunity for review.
Evaluation must remain proportionate: time taken to resolve decisions, quality of deliverables, onboarding difficulties, reported fatigue. There is no need to turn every click into proof of activity. Qualitative feedback matters, provided those less comfortable speaking in meetings are also heard. An arrangement that works for longer-serving employees may isolate new recruits; another may make collaboration easier while exhausting those who travel long distances.
What now? The next step could be less dramatic than a sweeping return-to-office mandate: more precise, revisable team agreements that managers genuinely support. Their success would depend on a very human skill: knowing how to discuss constraints without dismissing those faced by others. The number of days would remain one parameter. It would finally stop standing in for a shared plan.
