In recent months, a growing number of companies have mandated employees to return to the office three to four days a week. This shift is often positioned as a way to rebuild culture, foster collaboration, or improve performance. But in reality, these mandates risk undermining the very foundations of diversity, equality, and inclusion (DE&I) that organisations claim to prioritise.
For many parents, especially mothers, remote work has been transformative. During and after the pandemic, flexible work arrangements enabled parents and carers to build sustainable careers without sacrificing their family responsibilities. A return to rigid, in-office schedules threatens that progress.
As a mother myself, remote work transformed my life. It significantly decreased my stress levels and gave me access to leadership opportunities I wouldn’t have been able to take on otherwise. My husband is a builder and can’t work from home (if he’s home, he’s not earning), so the responsibility for our children falls largely to me. The ability to work remotely allowed our family to have a stable income, manage school pickups, sick days, and the everyday logistics of parenting in a way that traditional office life simply couldn’t. Removing that flexibility disproportionately impacts families like ours (who want to work!) and risks accelerating the attrition of mothers from the workforce, reigniting what’s long been referred to as the ‘maternal wall’ of bias[1].
Caregivers face a similar challenge. Remote work has been a lifeline for those supporting aging parents or disabled family members. According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), flexible roles have helped carers stay in the workforce while managing vital responsibilities at home. For people with disabilities, the benefits of remote work are even more essential. A report by Hays found that 85% of disabled employees were more productive working from home, and 70% said a forced return to office would negatively impact their health and wellbeing. For these groups, remote work isn’t a perk, it’s an accessibility need. Revoking it undercuts years of hard-won progress in inclusive employment[2].
There’s also a financial impact that cannot be ignored. Employees who live farther from city centres or busy towns and who don’t have personal cars, often lack access to nearby, affordable, and reliable transportation. Remote work helped level the playing field by removing the financial and logistical burden of long commutes. By making office attendance compulsory again, companies are inadvertently reinforcing privilege rather than dismantling it.
There’s also a harsher truth to face – for some leaders, return-to-office mandates have become a convenient cover for poor people management. Instead of addressing underperformance directly, some managers lean on the flawed assumption that ‘being in the office’ equates to productivity. This logic unfairly penalises high-performing remote workers who have consistently delivered results. As Forbes reports, remote workers are often more productive, more loyal, and even willing to accept lower pay in exchange for flexibility. Punishing them because others are underdelivering reveals a failure in management, not in remote work itself[3].
Another overlooked factor is the psychological safety and cultural inclusivity that remote work fosters. For many marginalised employees, Black professionals, LGBTQ+ individuals, and those who are neurodivergent, the office can be a space of exclusion, microaggressions, or pressure to conform. Remote work has offered a reprieve, allowing people to contribute without the emotional toll of code-switching or masking. Taking that away under the guise of ‘rebuilding culture’ misses the point. Inclusion isn’t about physical presence, it’s about psychological safety, trust, and equity[4].
Remote work has also been a game-changer for companies with global or geographically dispersed teams. When employees work from home, they often have greater flexibility to adjust their hours to collaborate across time zones, whether that’s early-morning calls with APAC or late-afternoon check-ins with Americas. This flexibility enables more inclusive participation in meetings and decision-making, especially for those who would otherwise be excluded by rigid office hours. For global organisations, enforcing a fixed in-office schedule risks limiting cross-border collaboration, creating bottlenecks, and undermining the agility that remote work naturally supports.
So what’s the alternative? Companies must begin treating hybrid and remote work not as an employee perk, but as a core element of strategy (business and DE&I), flexibility, and wellbeing. That means empowering managers to lead with outcomes in mind, not optics. It requires investment in the tools, training, and systems that allow flexibility to thrive, especially for those with caregiving, health, or access needs.
Ultimately, the future of work isn’t about getting back to the office, it’s about moving forward. DE&I cannot thrive under one-size-fits-all mandates and outdated notions of visibility. If companies are serious about inclusion, they must embed flexibility into the very DNA of how work gets done.
Mandating presence won’t rebuild culture, it will quietly dismantle inclusion. If companies want to lead inclusively, they must lead differently. A culture that excludes under the banner of togetherness is not inclusive, it’s performative.
[1] The Every Mom (2024) [Online] Available at: https://theeverymom.com/return-to-office-mandates/
[2] Hays (2024) [Online] Available at: https://www.hays.co.uk/market-insights/article/return-to-office-impact-dei
[3] Forbes (2022) [Online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2022/09/07/if-you-care-so-much-about-dei-why-are-you-forcing-employees-back-into-the-office/
[4] Remote.com (2025) [Online] Available at: https://remote.com/resources/insights-center/rto-impacts-dei
