Remote Work Didn't Kill Company Culture. Bad Managers Did.
Remote workers are 23% more engaged than RTO workers. The problem was never location — it was management quality.
The Scapegoat
"Remote work is destroying our culture" has become the default excuse for every organizational dysfunction. Declining engagement? Remote work. Poor collaboration? Remote work. High turnover? Remote work. It's a convenient narrative — and it's mostly wrong.
Gallup's 2026 State of the Workplace report found that employee engagement is 23% higher in fully remote companies than in mandated return-to-office companies. The key variable isn't location — it's management quality. Companies with strong managers maintain culture regardless of where people sit. Companies with weak managers have culture problems regardless of office mandates.
What Actually Broke
Many companies that "went remote" during COVID didn't actually adapt — they just moved their office dysfunction online. Back-to-back Zoom meetings replaced back-to-back conference room meetings. Slack replaced hallway conversations, but with worse signal-to-noise ratios. The work didn't change. The medium did.
The companies that thrived remotely invested in async communication, written culture, clear goals, and manager training. The companies that struggled tried to replicate the office on a screen — which is like trying to replicate a restaurant by eating in your car.
The Hybrid Trap
Mandatory hybrid (3 days in, 2 days out) may be the worst of all worlds. You get the commute cost of office work, the isolation of remote work, and the scheduling chaos of trying to align everyone's in-office days. If you're going to be in the office, make it matter. If you're remote, commit to it. The muddled middle satisfies nobody.