Barclays’ public retreat over its return-to-office policy reveals how even well-intentioned management decisions can backfire when employees are told what to do without understanding why. Marcus Iles says that if leaders want lasting change rather than reluctant compliance, they must build a shared sense of purpose

In the summer, Barclays told its UK staff that from October 5 most staff coming into the office two days a week would need to come in at least three, and that managing directors and above would need four. On September 29, with six days to go, the bank’s executive committee wrote to staff that it was “extending the implementation period for UK colleagues to ensure colleagues have the right support as we move through the transition”, and that it was “also reviewing our flexible working policy”. Employees could defer compliance until 2027 if their line manager agreed by the end of the week. On the same day a spokesperson told the press: “Our updated onsite working arrangements will take effect as planned.” Barclays’ public statement also acknowledged transitional measures for staff whose personal circumstances prevented them from meeting the requirements.

It would be easy to read the episode as one more skirmish in the long war over remote working. I think, however, it’s more useful as a case study of a wider and considerably more expensive issue: what happens to a strategic decision when it’s issued as an instruction rather than built as a shared understanding. 

Over the summer and September, Barclays has run through a sequence familiar to anyone who has watched a change programme stall. First instruction, then revolt, then renewed justification and finally the retreat-presented-as-continuity. Each stage followed from the one before, and all of it was avoidable from the beginning.

The approach I use with leadership teams starts from a simple observation. For people to act together on a strategy, three things have to be held in common. The first is attention: what we are looking at. The second is interpretation: what we think it means. The third is expectation: what we believe will happen next and what is now expected of us. A strategy that settles the first and neglects the other two is a demand that people lack the shared understanding to execute.

Consider the instruction. The policy specified days more clearly than it explained why those days were necessary. Barclays had cited collaboration and working together; banks including JP Morgan and Revolut have argued that remote working harms the training of younger staff. But citing those benefits did not explain why they required this particular number of days. And when an organisation supplies a number without a meaning, its people supply the meaning themselves. On Reddit, one commenter suggested that the bank wanted to justify money spent on refurbished buildings. Although that may be unfair, it’s a clear example of what a gap in shared interpretation produces: the most cynical account available fills any space that leadership leaves empty.

Then came the revolt. Thousands of staff signed an open letter drafted by Unite, which represents around 36,000 of the bank’s employees. It asks for a one-off payment before March 2027, childcare vouchers, subsidised meals, travel allowances and exemptions for anyone commuting more than 40 minutes. The letter described the effects of the policy as “material and foreseeable”. The union also asks for guaranteed weekly time for meaningful in-person work or team-building. The financial demands are the language of a transaction. When people have not accepted the reason for a decision, the conversation turns to what it will cost them and what they should be paid to bear it. The demands put a price on compliance without establishing a shared purpose. The letter recognises the value of face-to-face collaboration but disputes whether that requires a blanket increase in attendance.

The justification repeated during the dispute is the most informative step for us observers. Asked why senior staff should attend four days rather than three, Barclays said the extra day would “support collaboration, decision-making and leadership visibility“. Collaboration and decision-making are purposes, but visibility is not – it’s a condition. To be visible is to be seen, which is not the same as being available, being useful or teaching anyone anything. Anniken Grønstad, an associate professor of organisational psychology at Oslo New University College, drew the distinction precisely in a recent interview with Science Norway: if an experienced employee “sits behind a closed door or spends large parts of the day in meetings,” she said, “the main thing the younger employees have gained is a shorter physical distance to a potential mentor. They don’t necessarily have better access to the mentor’s expertise.” Her conclusion belongs in front of any board weighing a mandate: “the office itself is not the training model”.

‘Leadership visibility’ is what an organisation says when it has confused the observable with the consequential. I suspect it is also what many staff believed the policy was about all along. Gallup research published last month bears on this directly. Among surveyed workers in the United States, 59 per cent believe their employer collects activity data such as hours worked and badge swipes. Only 19 per cent say someone at work has spoken to them about the data or metrics collected about their work. Among employees who regularly work on a computer or another device, only 20 per cent trust their leaders “a great deal” to use that data responsibly. Being counted without being told why is a reliable way to persuade people that the counting is the point.

Which brings us to the retreat. The concession is real, if partial: deferral to 2027 for those whose managers allow it, and a review of flexible working. The public insistence that the arrangements would take effect as planned sits uneasily with the extension offered to colleagues. Barclays is, in effect, telling two audiences two stories and trusting that neither will compare notes. Yet they already have. One self-identified Barclays employee asked why they were still being told to return three days a week from Monday. Others read the delay as postponing the inevitable, or speculated that resignations had forced the bank’s hand.

There is a further, quieter consequence. By routing deferrals through individual line managers, Barclays has turned one leadership decision into thousands of local ones. Each will be made a little differently. Each will be read by the person on the receiving end as a verdict on how far their manager trusts them. A policy meant to bring people together now risks sorting them, team by team, into the accommodated and the refused. It is a lottery, and lotteries do not build cohesion.

None of this means Barclays is wrong to want its people together more often. There are serious arguments for in-person work, especially early in a career, and the bank’s own statements acknowledge “the benefits of balancing flexibility for colleagues with the importance of working together”. But stating the argument did not establish a shared understanding with the people expected to act on it. Grønstad notes that managers’ claims about learning, creativity and knowledge transfer in the office are empirical claims, and should therefore be backed up with evidence. I’d go further. Even well-evidenced claims do nothing until people share an understanding of what they require.

What would that have looked like? Not, I would argue, a better communications plan. The work starts earlier, and it follows a sequence. First, leaders must listen to the stories that will already be circulating in and about the organisation, before a decision is announced. The story about expensive refurbished buildings was presumably not invented in September. Then, leaders must shape a reason that people can understand and act on. That reason should then be shared and opened to challenge, so that “material and foreseeable” costs surface as design problems rather than grievances. The next step is to check whether leaders’ own behaviour fits the account they are giving. This is where ‘leadership visibility’ was always going to fail, because visibility is something done to others, not with them. When leaders’ behaviours are aligned to an authentic, meaningful story they’ve developed with colleagues, a real shift in behaviour follows. Returning to the story as circumstances change then enables leaders to sustain the strategy, rather than defending the original number. 

The cost of skipping this work rarely shows up in the policy itself but, instead, later as compliance that does not deliver the intended outcome. Barclays may well get its people into the building three days a week by 2027. But what it certainly won’t get, without a shared account of why, is whatever it wanted those days for.

It’s an important reminder that while proximity can be mandated, meaning cannot. 

Marcus Iles is a business strategy and organisational behaviour expert specialising in strategy activation, leadership alignment, organisational storytelling and people engagement. With 25 years’ experience spanning advertising, creative strategy, organisational storytelling and consultancy, Marcus – a former Chief Storytelling Officer at The Storytellers and an award-winning advertising creative and strategist – examines why strategies that appear clear at leadership level can fragment when they are interpreted and acted upon across an organisation.

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