Roast the Post: Grounds for Discussion
Grounds for Discussion delivers a short, unfiltered analysis on the headlines shaping organizations and the world of work. In each episode, Jen and Paul dissect one key story with sharp, bullsh*t-free insights. No fluff, just the deep dives that workplace professionals need to stay ahead of the curve.
Sources
Beck, James. “Hargreaves Lansdown Orders Staff Back to Office.” The Financial Times, Bloomberg, 9 Aug. 2026, www.ft.com/content/590e468a-1eb7-4d1b-a7a5-80541c3ff35a.
MBFC bias and factuality rating for this source : Least Biased / High Factuality
The Issues
Return to Office Mandates: Is Collaboration the Real Reason?
Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK’s largest DIY investment platform, is ending its no-attendance-requirement policy. Starting next year, roughly 2,400 employees must work from the company’s new Bristol office three days a week. The stated reason: infrequent office attendance has made collaboration harder.
On this episode of Grounds for Discussion, Jen and Paul take that claim apart. The core question: if collaboration is the problem, why is attendance so often the solution, and what would a company actually need to measure to know whether a return-to-office mandate improved collaboration instead of just increasing presence?
Key Takeaways
Collaboration is rarely the real driver of RTO mandates; power, control, and local economic pressure around office real estate usually are.
Measuring collaboration directly is a dead end. Headcounts, meeting attendance, and badge swipes say nothing about outcomes.
Organizations should measure business outcomes (revenue, delivery, mission impact) not performative presence.
If you have to incentivize collaboration, you have a deeper problem: fulfillment and ownership are what drive people to collaborate.
Blanket RTO mandates ignore that different roles and departments need different levels of collaboration.
A co-located, same-timezone team that still can’t collaborate effectively remotely has an organizational problem, not a proximity problem.
RTO is often “butts in seats” surveillance with a PR-friendly label.
Topical Q&A
Why do companies mandate return to office?
Companies mandate return to office citing collaboration, culture, and productivity. Critics argue the real drivers are often managerial control, sunk costs in office real estate, and pressure on local economies around empty office buildings. Attendance is a proxy leaders can see; collaboration outcomes are not.
Does working from the office actually improve collaboration?
There is no reliable evidence that mandated office attendance improves collaboration. Headcounts and meeting attendance measure presence, not collaboration. What drives collaboration is fulfillment, ownership, and caring about the work and your colleagues, none of which require physical proximity.
How should organizations measure whether an RTO mandate worked?
Measure business outcomes, not collaboration: revenue and delivery for commercial organizations, mission outcomes for nonprofits and NGOs. Establish what targets were missed due to poor collaboration before the mandate, then track whether those same outcomes improve after. If the gap was never defined, the mandate is unmeasurable by design.
Support the Show
Roast the Post is a passion project of Jennifer Houle and Paul Austin-Menear. The show helps job-seekers and employers get dud job ads out of their lives. There are several ways that you can help us on our mission to unf*ck the hiring process…
1 —> Share this episode with someone who’d like it.
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