How to get honest feedback on a return-to-office policy

To get honest feedback on a return-to-office policy, ask about concrete days and costs instead of asking whether people support the policy, ask before the decision is final, and make sure no answer can be traced to a person or a small team. People hear “what do you think of the office plan?” as a loyalty test and answer accordingly. Ask them to walk you through last Tuesday, and you get the commute, the childcare pick-up and the video calls they took from a meeting room.

Why don’t employees give honest feedback on return to office?

Because the question sounds like it has a right answer. Once leadership has said the office matters, anyone who says they would rather stay at home seems to be saying they care less about the company. People who want promotion keep quiet. People with caring duties worry that saying so marks them out. The ones who answer openly are often the ones who have already decided to leave.

Silence at work is common even without that pressure. The CIPD’s employee voice factsheet reports that a quarter of employees describe high levels of silence. On return to office the stakes feel personal: where you live, who collects the children, whether you can afford the season ticket.

There is also a fairness question underneath. Gallup’s 2025 hybrid work data found that 91% of US employees whose team decides their hybrid schedule see the policy as fair, against 73% when the employer or leadership decides it. A mandate announced from the top starts with a trust gap, and a feedback exercise run after the announcement inherits it.

Should you ask before deciding on a return-to-office policy, or after?

Ask before, if there is anything left to decide. That might be which days, whether teams choose their own anchor days, how exceptions for carers work, or whether the policy starts in January or after the school holidays. People will tell you a lot when they believe the answer can change something. If the policy is fixed, say so plainly and ask about how to make it work. Pretending a decision is open when it isn’t is the fastest way to lose the next round of feedback too.

Then ask again eight to twelve weeks after the policy starts. By then people have stopped performing compliance and settled into what they actually do. That second round shows whether office days are being used for the things you said they were for.

A simple rule: one round before the decision on what could change, one round after on what did. If you can only afford one, take the second. It is the one that tells you whether the policy works.

What should you ask employees about returning to the office?

Skip “Do you support the new policy?” and “How many days would you prefer?” Both invite a position. Ask about recent, specific days instead. These questions work as an interview or as open survey questions, though the follow-ups only happen in an interview.

The commute and its cost

1. Take me through your commute on the last day you came in. When did you leave home and when did you get back?
2. What does an office day cost you, in money or in time you’d otherwise use for something else?

Follow up with: “Has that changed since you joined?” A house move during the pandemic years often sits behind a strong reaction.

Caring and life outside work

1. Which days of the week are hardest for you to be in the office, and why?
2. What would need to be in place for those days to work?

Don’t ask people to name their caring responsibilities. Ask which days are hard. The pattern across a team is what you need.

What office days are actually used for

1. Think of your last office day. What did you do there that you couldn’t have done at home?
2. How many of your meetings that day had people in the room, and how many were on screen?
3. Was your team in on the same day as you?

This is the most useful section. Microsoft’s 2022 Work Trend Index report on hybrid work found that 73% of employees said they needed a better reason to go in than company expectations, and that 73% would go in more often if their direct team members were there. If people describe office days spent on video calls with colleagues at home, the problem is coordination, and you can fix it without changing the number of days.

Team rituals

1. What does your team do together in person that it wouldn’t do online?
2. What used to happen in the office that has stopped, and does anyone miss it?

What would make it work

1. If you could change one thing about how office days work for your team, what would it be?

A worked example: one finance team, two readings

This example is invented. Picture a finance shared-services team of about 140 people asked to come in three fixed days a week. A survey item, “I understand the reasons for the office policy”, comes back mostly positive. Leadership reads that as broadly accepted.

An interview round could tell a different story. Accounts payable might describe month-end close as the one week they want to be together, and three fixed days that ignore the calendar. Payroll, mostly part-time, might say their fixed days clash with their contracted days, so they come in to sit alone. Several people in different teams might describe booking a meeting room to take a video call with colleagues in another office. None of that would show up in the agreement score.

The fix could be small: anchor days set per team around their own calendar, and month-end as an in-person week for accounts payable. The headline number of days would not have to change.

How do you keep return-to-office feedback anonymous in small teams?

Anonymity is a reporting rule as much as a collection rule. A free-text comment about “the 7:40 from Reading and a nursery that closes at six” identifies someone in a team of eight even with no name on it. The CIPD’s Ruth Woodfield, writing on employee voice in a hybrid world, warns that in a small organisation “promised anonymity may be relatively meaningless.” The same applies to a small team inside a large one.

• Set a minimum group size before you collect anything, and stick to it. Five is common. Our post on the five-person anonymity threshold explains why.
• Merge small teams into a larger reporting unit before results are shown, not after someone asks.
• Report themes with quotes that have place names, times and family details removed.
• Don’t let managers see raw comments from their own team.
• Tell people all of this in the invitation, in one or two sentences.

Spradley is built around that rule. It runs one-on-one AI interviews by text or voice, with a follow-up question on each answer, so “it’s fine” turns into what actually happens on a Tuesday. Invitations go by email or Slack and people answer on their own phone or computer, which matters when the question is whether they want to be at a desk. The privacy rules sit in the agent: a leader’s Personal Agent never sees one person’s answer, never shows numbers or ratings for fewer than five people and refuses to identify anyone. When a leader commits to a change, such as moving the team’s anchor day, Spradley sends a reminder at four and eight weeks until it is done. Our employee engagement page shows how this sits next to an existing survey.

How should you report return-to-office feedback back to employees?

Within a month, and in this order:

1. What you heard, as three or four themes with a short quote each.
2. What you will change because of it, with a date.
3. What you will not change, and why. People accept a no much better than silence.
4. When you will ask again.

Woodfield’s advice in the same CIPD piece is to be as transparent as possible about what was heard and how the organisation responded, and to own the decision when it chooses not to act. On return to office, the decision not to act is often the main news. Saying it clearly protects the next round of feedback.

Show results by team or department where the group is big enough, because return to office lands differently in a sales team that is on the road and a support team on rotas. If one department reads very differently from the rest, that is where to hold a follow-up conversation, or a short skip-level meeting with the people affected.

If you are also tracking engagement, expect return to office to move the score in some teams and not others. Our post on why engagement scores dropped covers how to find the reason behind a fall like that.

Frequently asked questions

Key terms

Return-to-office (RTO) policy

A rule on how many days, or which days, employees are expected to work from the office.

Anchor day

A day agreed for a whole team to be in the office together.

Employee silence

When employees hold back views or concerns they could share, often because they expect speaking up to be unwelcome or pointless.

Minimum group size

The smallest number of people a result can be shown for, so no individual can be identified. Five is a common floor.