There’s a phrase that often makes its way around when talking about the current state of workplaces around the world: Work isn’t working.
That phrase has been uttered as leaders and employees talk about everything from compensation to career and development opportunities. We’ve had a front-row seat to the constantly shifting power dynamics, as employees leveraged power during the Great Resignation, and employers now feel quite in control as layoffs, AI, and global uncertainty usher in ‘job hugging’. As we collectively navigate this time, we find ourselves at a strange crossroads. Many of our companies are larger and more global than ever—stretching across thousands of employees and thousands of miles—and our tools are more technologically advanced than many of us could have imagined just a few years ago. Yet, despite tremendous and sustained efforts around engagement, retention, training, and similar investments, many workers are experiencing strained relationships with the work we do, the leaders we report to, and even the companies where we work. This strain is evidenced by the constant stream of research and reporting, including this article in Harvard Business Review, that seems to point to an increasingly broken contract between the people doing the work and the organizations that need them.
While being in an office can be necessary for certain roles, many senior leaders, often in a misguided attempt to create the conditions for connection, have reached for the return-to-office (RTO) mandate, perhaps the most visible and comfortable tool in their toolkit. The rationale driving the imperative is frequently that proximity equals connection, and that connection drives innovation, collaboration, and culture. There’s also a belief that being in close spaces creates conditions in which people may simply bump into each other, sparking serendipitous interactions that wouldn’t otherwise happen. In many cases, though, productivity actually drops when people are forced back, and organizations risk losing their most tenured talent by disregarding the autonomy employees have grown to value. According to a study by Akamai and i4cp, 83% of remote-friendly companies self-report high or very high productivity, with 62% citing “high” productivity and 21% reporting it as “very high.”
And so the question follows that if proximity isn’t the answer to connection, what is? Whether a company is going back to the office a few days a week, full-time, or not at all, in order to maintain a healthy, high-performing organization in an increasingly remote and tech-enabled world, we must all move beyond the simple answers to complex questions and instead start being intentional about architecting cultures that connect.
The Four Dimensions of Connection
Connection in the workplace is commonly thought of as a single dimension—the interpersonal relationships we have with co-workers. While social connection is important, my company’s research with the NeuroLeadership Institute (NLI) found that workplace connection is actually made up of four interrelated elements: Colleague, Leader, Employer, and Role (CLEAR).
- Colleague Connection: The trust and mutual support we feel within our immediate teams. Not the same as whether or not we have a best friend at work, or whether we talk with each other about our plans for the weekend.
- Leader Connection: This is a critical lever for engagement. Research consistently shows that 70% of the variance in team engagement can be attributed to the manager. A leader who provides clarity, autonomy, and useful feedback, while helping remove obstacles and provide opportunities, is far more effective at “connecting” their team than a leader who simply shares a physical office floor.
- Employer Connection: This is the alignment of an employee’s values with the organization’s goals. When this is low, going to work feels like dragging oneself in—physically or emotionally— and simply “clocking in.”
- Role Connection: This is understanding our job, our boundaries, and our responsibilities, and having the opportunity to deploy our talents in a role most of the time. When we have Role Connection, we are lifted up by the work itself.
Issuing a mandate might increase random interactions among co-located colleagues, and perhaps even positively impact Colleague Connection, but executives should be cautioned that the same return-to-office often simultaneously negatively impacts Leader and Employer Connection, because employees feel their supervisors don’t understand their motivations or respect their lives outside of work.
Combating the Biases of Distance
One reason leaders struggle with remote connection is that our brains are naturally biased. We are susceptible to proximity bias, the tendency to feel that people who are physically closer to us are more important or favorable than those farther away. For a manager, it is far easier to value the person sitting just a few feet away over the high-performer working three time zones away. The irony, however, is that even the return-to-office mandate doesn’t account for the fact that so many companies operate across countries, borders, and time zones. So the behaviors that are necessary in a remote workplace are the same behaviors that are necessary in a global workplace. Whether in an office or not, identifying top talent by something other than a floor plan is key.
To counter this very natural tendency, we must shift our focus from presence to performance. Instead of rewarding those who are “near,” we must intentionally create systems that reward results and progress, regardless of location. Likewise, companies must move beyond relying on happy accidents for mentoring, innovation, collaboration, and connection, and instead build behaviors that create the conditions for optimal work.
The Video Test: Turning Intentions into Actions
Maintaining connection across digital divides requires a level of specificity that most leaders ignore. We often deal in generalities like “be inclusive” or “prioritize collaboration,” but these are platitudes, not practices.
If you want to change the culture of a remote team, your directives must pass the Video Test. Ask yourself: Could an outside observer record this behavior happening?
- Instead of: “We need to connect more.”
- Try: “When ten minutes are left in the meeting, the leader will open a shared document for three minutes of quiet contribution, where we’ll each add ways that we can support the work being discussed.”
Precision is not the same as micromanagement; it is respect for your co-workers’ time and cognitive resources. And clarity is not the same as coddling. When everyone knows exactly what “good” looks and sounds like, the friction of remote work begins to fade, and the team can spend their time executing and iterating, rather than trying to read between lines or interpret unnecessary ambiguity.
Connection as a Continuous Act
One inconvenient truth of leadership is that culture work is never finished, which means connection work is never finished. As soon as you think you have the “perfect” setup, someone will leave, a new tool will emerge, or the market will shift, or perhaps all three, and more.
Maintaining a connected organization isn’t about hitting a finish line; it’s about a continuous daily act of leadership. It requires moving from compliance (people doing things because the boss is watching) to commitment (people doing things because they see the value).
Connection in 2026 isn’t about where you sit. It’s about the clarity of your mission, the specificity of your actions, and the strength of the trust you build across the screen.
