In recent months, we’ve seen a wave of companies (including Amazon, JPMorgan, and Dell) and the federal government announce plans for a full-time return-to-office for workers. Other companies have slowly increased the numbers of the days they require in-office weekly. 

The subsequent pushback from many employees has been intense, with workers signing petitions, opting into “coffee badging” routines (where they swipe their badges, grab a coffee, and head home), or quitting all together. 

As multiple elements of psychological safety are broken by actions such as these, there is often some collateral damage. After accepting countless changes needed to survive and thrive over the past few years, employees thought they had found their grooves. Therefore, when changes that were viewed as working well are amended or even nullified, workers feel justified in being upset.

If up to 70% of team engagement can be attributed to one’s manager, how, then, should managers guide teams who are feeling let down by the organization? When companies remove the remote flexible work arrangements they have come to enjoy and expect, how can you remain an authentic leader when your team—and you—may be feeling let down?

One of the greatest tools leaders can employ to demonstrate their respect toward their employees is how they validate their emotions. Employee engagement has long been measured at an organizational level as an indicator of organizational effectiveness and workforce retention. Whether via large scale annual surveys or team-based conversations, employees will usually respond if asked how they are feeling.

In aggregated findings, flexible work arrangements and ability to work remotely (at least some of the time) have shown positive correlations to employee happiness, augmenting this sentiment by as much as 20%. Combined with other studies that indicate that happier workers are up to 20% more productive, many thought that hybrid and flexible work arrangements were here to stay.

However, for as many different means as executives use to determine levels of employee satisfaction, they seem to be ignoring sentiments that support flex-work and flex-time sentiments. Beyond this, as many companies are

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