By an Agile Coach Who Should Be the Last Person Arguing Against the Office

As an Agile coach, I should be the last person arguing against a return to the office. After all, the Agile Manifesto itself is clear:

“The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”

And I believe that. I’ve seen first-hand how powerful those in-the-moment conversations can be. But here’s the thing: the question of how we work is far bigger than that principle alone. And it certainly isn’t solved by slapping a blanket “back to the office” policy on every team, every business, everywhere.

Covid did what decades of business leadership said was impossible: it shifted the default setting from office-bound to remote-enabled. It also loosened the grip of old-school, command-and-control leadership—based on visibility, supervision, and punishment or reward. But let’s not pretend that shift started with Covid. Study after study, book after book had already challenged the assumption that everyone sitting together from 9 to 5 was the only—or even the best—way to work.

So when I hear newspaper headlines quoting senior leaders saying things like “get your bums back into the office,” or that remote work is “not real work,” I don’t hear strategic thinking—I hear an echo of 50-year-old management instincts. Those instincts are based on outdated beliefs about control, not current evidence about effectiveness.

Theme 1: The Arguments for Returning to the Office

Let’s be fair. There are benefits to working together in person—especially when the environment is well-designed and intentional.

1. Spontaneous Collaboration
Those hallway moments and off-the-cuff chats can lead to new ideas. Some call it “serendipity”—I hate the word, but I get the sentiment. Especially for apprentices or new starters, there’s value in passive learning and being close to the action.

2. Cross-Team Interaction
When departments share the same space, the chances of silo walls softening goes up. A quick nudge from legal to product, or marketing to delivery, becomes easier when you’re a few desks apart.

3. Cultural Cohesion
It’s easier to pick up social norms, values, and behaviors when you see them modeled informally each day. For new employees especially, immersion helps.

4. Speed of Iteration
Being able to lean over and ask “Do you think this is ready to go?” cuts out scheduling friction. Sometimes, asynchronous communication just slows things down.

5. Visibility and Energy
Some leaders still equate “being seen” with “being productive.” That’s not always fair, but let’s acknowledge that in-office presence can create a visible sense of urgency and momentum—for better or worse.

Theme 2: The Arguments Against a Mandatory Return

Now for the other side—and let’s be honest, it’s a long list.

1. Deep Work vs Distraction
Open-plan offices are some of the worst environments for concentration. We didn’t evolve to do creative work with dozens of conversations buzzing around us.

2. Introverts vs Extroverts
The office environment privileges extroverts—those who thrive on chat and visibility. But the quieter voices? They often get drowned out, even if they’re doing the deepest thinking.

3. Presence ≠ Productivity
Just because someone’s sat at their desk doesn’t mean they’re delivering value. Yet this visual proxy is still the metric some managers fall back on.

4. Autonomy in Remote Work
Many workers report being more productive from home—especially when they can shape their schedule around their peak focus times. Trust them.

5. Collaboration ≠ Coincidence
Throwing people into a building together doesn’t guarantee innovation. Without structure, those “chance” conversations can be performative or, frankly, a waste of time.

Theme 3: What Are We Actually Optimizing For?

This is the heart of the issue. Before we make decisions about where work happens, we need to ask: what are we optimising for?

Output vs Outcomes
Mandates often chase visible output—hours worked, meetings attended, laptops open—rather than real outcomes like quality, growth, and innovation.

Profit vs People
Is this about squeezing every penny of productivity out of your team? Or are you genuinely trying to build a workplace culture that motivates and sustains people?

Control vs Trust
A blanket RTO policy often reveals a desire for control. But long-term value comes from trust—letting skilled adults self-manage and deliver.

Stated Values vs Designed Systems
If you say your company values innovation, collaboration, or well-being—are you actually designing for that? Or just saying it while reverting to status quo?

Context Matters
Different work needs different conditions. Routine tasks might thrive in structured environments. Complex or creative work? It needs autonomy, thinking time, and flow. One-size-fits-all is lazy thinking.

Theme 4: The Real Reason Behind Mass RTO Mandates

This is where it gets uncomfortable. When a company drags 100,000 people back into offices en masse, it’s not about innovation or collaboration. It’s about fear. About clinging to a mental model forged in the industrial era: rows of workers, visible at all times, managed by supervisors walking the floor.

Traditional Metrics Are Misleading
We still reward attendance, visibility, and “seat time.” But as the saying goes: what we measure is what we get. And if we measure the wrong things, we get performative busyness—not value.

Old Models, New Context
These decisions often reflect leadership that hasn’t updated its toolkit. They’ve led companies through office-based decades and assume those patterns still apply. But the world of work has changed. Our assumptions need to catch up.

Absence of Critical Thinking
Some of the loudest pro-office voices ignore actual evidence. There’s plenty of research now—on productivity, satisfaction, retention, and well-being. But they’re not looking at it. They’re reacting to discomfort, not data.

Final Thought: This Isn’t About Picking a Side

Here’s the punchline: this isn’t about being “for” or “against” the office. It’s about designing work intentionally based on what you want to achieve.

If remote working failed for your organisation, it might not be that remote work doesn’t work. It might just be that you didn’t make it work. That’s a hard truth—but one worth facing.

Returning to the office should be one option among many, not a universal mandate. It should serve a purpose, not scratch a nostalgic itch. You need to ask:

• What are we actually trying to achieve?

• What kind of environment best enables that?

• And what trade-offs are we willing to make?

Because every choice—remote, hybrid, office—comes with trade-offs. And the worst decision you can make is to ignore that complexity and default to the past.