Commuting to a Teams Call? Why It’s Time to Challenge ‘Performance by Presence’

I have worked remotely, I have worked hybrid, and I have worked in offices. What I want is flexibility and to be trusted to do my job.

I do not have a problem with offices when there is a genuine reason to be there. If I am needed for a training session, a brainstorm, or a conversation that is better face to face, I am happy to go in. What does not make sense, and sometimes makes me want to pull my hair out, is sitting in an open plan space with everyone's heads down, scrambling around for a meeting room so I can take a Teams call in private, commuting in to do exactly what I could have done from my kitchen table, but with added noise and less focus.

The places I have worked best have trusted me to get on with it. My output was measured on what I delivered, not where I was sitting when I delivered it. The difference in how that feels, in terms of motivation, focus, and just basic respect, is significant.

I once had a hybrid role where we were trusted to manage our own office and home days. I set Mondays and Fridays as my home days, with the understanding that I would obviously be flexible if I was needed for anything. These were the quietest days, the days I caught up with colleagues in other locations, so being in an office where I would end up in meeting rooms on my own all day made no sense. The response from my manager was, "You can't just sit at home on Mondays and Fridays." Nothing about whether the work would get done or who it would impact. Just the assumption that I was stretching my weekend by working this way.

That response stuck with me, because it revealed exactly what a lot of return-to-office mandates are really about. It is not about collaboration or culture, as they would like us to believe, but  about visibility, and the discomfort some managers feel when they cannot see you. To be perfectly honest, it also exposes poor leadership, because it is far easier to keep an eye on people than to actually measure what they are producing.

This is happening at a time when a lot of people feel they cannot push back. The job market is insecure, redundancies are happening across sectors, and workers are quietly aware that they are not in a strong position to make demands. Some employers know this, and they are using it with flexible working being one of the first things that gets pulled back when the power shifts, and right now, for many people, it has shifted. Surely, it’s cheaper to pay less in rent somewhere smaller or not have people in the office all the time??

I have also spoken to people whose bonus structure weights office attendance above performance. You could be delivering strong results from home and earning less than someone who commutes in every day and contributes far less. That is not a productivity strategy, but control and insecurity.

During the pandemic, most of us proved that working from home can increase productivity. The concern at the time was the minority who struggled with it. Trust me though when I say the person who is not productive at home is probably checking football scores or reading the news when they are in the office too. The answer to that is a management conversation, not a blanket policy that punishes everyone. Treat people like adults, manage the ones who need managing, and stop using collective punishment to paper over weak leadership.