Jen and Paul dissect the Financial Times headline: Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK's largest DIY investment platform, is requiring roughly 2,400 employees to work from its new Bristol office three days a week—after years of having no prescribed attendance requirement—citing that infrequent office attendance has made collaboration harder.

In this episode of Grounds for Discussion, we ask the question employers keep dodging: if collaboration is the problem, why is attendance always the solution? We break down what an organization would actually need to measure to know whether a return-to-office mandate improved collaboration rather than just increased presence, and why headcounts, meeting attendance, and badge swipes measure the wrong thing entirely.

The conversation covers why RTO mandates are often less about collaboration and more about power dynamics, control, and the microeconomies struggling around empty office buildings, including what Jen sees firsthand in Victoria, BC, where empty offices have hollowed out the downtown core. We also dig into why not every role requires the same amount of collaboration, why a blanket mandate punishes roles that never needed it, and why a co-located, same-timezone company that still can't collaborate remotely has a deeper problem than proximity can fix.

For organizational design, HR, and people operations professionals, this episode is a commentary on measuring business outcomes instead of performative presence... and asking what gap an RTO mandate is actually trying to fill.

Listen now, then ask yourself: is your employer's RTO policy about collaboration, or about control?