As organisations shift back to office-first policies, L&D has a critical role to play. Jennie Marshall explores how learning professionals can turn a logistical pivot into a cultural opportunity, redefining connection, trust and inclusion, and ensuring that presence in the office doesn’t come at the expense of performance or purpose.
It’s back. The phrase that many thought we’d left behind in 2019: “We’re returning to the office.” After years of hybrid experiments, kitchen-table working, and virtual everything, many organisations are quietly, or not so quietly, reinstating office-first policies.
Leaders are talking about collaboration, connection, and culture. CEOs are citing innovation and creativity. HR teams are rethinking flexible working frameworks. And yet, beneath the polished rationale lies a deeper tension, one that sits right at the intersection of performance, wellbeing and learning.
Presence does not equal performance
If we’ve learned anything from the last few years, it’s that presence does not equal performance, and visibility does not equal value. So, as organisations once again prioritise the physical workplace, L&D professionals have an important role to play: not simply adapting training schedules to fit office days, but helping organisations rethink what ‘connection’ and ‘culture’ really mean. Because the truth is, if we treat ‘office first’ as a logistical challenge, we’ll miss the opportunity to make it a learning one.
From flexibility to familiarity and why the pendulum has swung back
The return to the office is, in many ways, a reaction to uncertainty. The pandemic forced flexibility. The years that followed brought economic pressure, digital acceleration, and the rise of AI, all of which left many leaders craving something familiar, something controllable.
And what’s more controllable than a full office? But ‘office first’ isn’t just about control. It’s also about comfort. There’s a belief, often intuitive, sometimes evidence-based, that co-location builds collaboration, culture, and creativity.
Studies do suggest some truth to this. Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2024) found that while individual productivity has held steady in hybrid environments, cross-functional collaboration and innovation have fallen by nearly 20%. Many leaders interpret that as a call to bring people back together.
The problem is, returning to old ways doesn’t automatically rebuild old strengths. Just because we’re in the same space doesn’t mean we’re connected. And that’s the challenge L&D now faces head-on.
Connection needs design, not default
One of the biggest misconceptions about ‘office first’ is that bringing people back together automatically rebuilds collaboration.
It doesn’t. Connection is not an incidental by-product of co-location, it’s a deliberate act. If teams come back to offices filled with back-to-back meetings, transactional conversations and little time for reflection or creativity, we’ll simply replicate digital fatigue in a physical space.
Gallup’s State of the Workplace Report (2024) highlights this exact pattern: employee engagement actually drops when return-to-office mandates are imposed without a clear sense of purpose or flexibility. The lesson is simple but profound: presence without purpose is just proximity.
And that’s where L&D can step in. We can help organisations design moments of intentional connection, learning spaces, storytelling sessions, reflective dialogues, that bring people together in meaningful ways. This is where the physical workplace can shine again: not as a container for attendance, but as a stage for learning, creativity and shared sense-making.
The leadership blind spot: Managing presence vs. managing performance
This shift exposes a familiar fault line in leadership: the difference between managing for visibility and managing for value. During the remote years, many managers were forced to redefine what performance meant. With no physical presence to rely on, they had to trust outcomes, empower decision-making, and build new skills in coaching and communication.
It wasn’t easy – but it was progress. Now, as we return to physical spaces, some of that maturity risks being undone. Already, surveys from the Chartered Management Institute suggest that over a third of managers are reverting to equating productivity with being seen. That regression has implications not just for performance, but for learning. If visibility becomes the new currency of success, those who can’t, or choose not to, be in the office as often risk missing out on development opportunities, mentoring moments, and informal recognition.
L&D has a critical role to play here: to help leaders see that trust isn’t built by presence – it’s built by consistency. We need to coach managers to focus on outcomes, to recognise contribution in all its forms, and to create inclusive pathways for learning – whether people are sitting two desks away or two postcodes away.
Learning in a post-hybrid reality
For L&D teams, the practical implications of an office-first shift are significant. Budgets are tightening again, face-to-face sessions are being prioritised, and hybrid models, once celebrated, are being questioned.
But before we rebook all those training rooms and print the flipcharts, it’s worth asking: what did we learn from hybrid? Hybrid learning worked not because it was digital, but because it was personalised. It met people where they were. It gave learners autonomy and choice. It blurred the line between learning and working.
We can’t lose that now. Instead, we need to blend it. A future-fit model of learning isn’t office-first or online-first, it’s learner-first.
That means designing experiences that use the best of both worlds:
- Digital for flexibility and accessibility
- In-person for depth, connection and collaboration
- Reflective practice and coaching to turn both into performance impact
When we see learning as culture rather than logistics, office-first stops being a step backwards and becomes a platform for reconnection.
The inclusivity dilemma
It’s also impossible to talk about office-first without addressing inclusion. The hybrid era created new forms of accessibility. For carers, neurodiverse employees, or those balancing chronic conditions, flexibility wasn’t a perk – it was empowerment. Pulling that back has consequences.
The CIPD’s Flexible Working Index (2024) found that 68% of employees said flexibility was now a top factor in retention – ahead of pay. Forcing a full return, therefore, doesn’t just shape culture; it shapes who stays, who thrives, and who gets left behind.
For L&D, inclusivity means more than access to training. It’s about ensuring every learner has equitable access to opportunity. Office-first risks narrowing that window if we’re not careful. That’s why designing hybrid learning experiences (accessible content, asynchronous reflection, coaching-on-demand) isn’t just a convenience; it’s an equity issue.
Offices as learning ecosystems
Let’s imagine what a reimagined ‘office first’ world could look like if learning sits at its centre. What if the office became the hub for deep learning? A place people come to not because they must, but because it gives them energy and purpose. We could design spaces for storytelling, cross-team ideation, and mentoring. We could make learning visible through learning walls, shared reflection boards, or end-of-week retrospectives. We could use technology to bridge the office and the world beyond it, ensuring remote colleagues still participate in those moments.
The office could evolve from being the symbol of control to the engine of curiosity. And when learning becomes visible again, when people see it, feel it, talk about it, culture shifts too.
A culture question, not a location question
What’s really being tested in this ‘return to office’ moment isn’t logistics – it’s leadership. When leaders say they want people “back,” what they often mean is that they want people connected, creative, and collaborative again. But those outcomes don’t live in a building, they live in behaviour.
So, the question L&D should be asking isn’t: “How do we support people coming back to the office?” but rather, “What kind of culture do we want them to come back to?” That subtle shift changes everything. It moves the narrative from attendance to alignment. From place to purpose. From return to renewal. If we want to make ‘office first’ meaningful, we have to make it human-first.
What L&D can do next
So how can learning professionals help shape this moment? Here are five provocations to guide your next conversation with leadership:
- Ask what ‘office first’ is solving: If the answer is “culture,” then culture, not location, needs attention. Learning and storytelling are the tools to rebuild it
- Redefine connection as a skill: Don’t assume people remember how to collaborate in person. Run learning sessions on team dynamics, inclusion, and communication
- Coach leaders on presence and trust: Help managers understand that performance happens through outcomes, not occupancy. Build leadership maturity, not monitoring habits
- Use office time for deep learning: Save virtual for content and skills and use in-person time for creativity, dialogue and reflection. Turn office days into learning experiences, not meeting marathons
- Measure what matters: Track learning impact through engagement, innovation and retention, not just attendance or activity. When you can show cultural ROI, L&D earns its strategic seat
The bigger picture: learning as the anchor
Perhaps this is the paradox of our time. In trying to recreate the old world of work, we risk forgetting what we’ve learned in the new one. But L&D can be the anchor that holds the best of both.
We can help organisations rediscover connection without reverting to control. We can help leaders see that culture isn’t built by geography – it’s built by growth. And we can help employees reconnect not just to their desks, but to their purpose.
So yes, maybe ‘office first’ is back. But this time, let’s make it learning first. Because the future of work isn’t about where we gather, it’s about why we do.
Jennie Marshall is the Founder of Wren Learning Consultancy
