Office mandates miss the variable tied to satisfaction: the manager relationship
The manager relationship explains job satisfaction better than office location, according to a study co-authored by business scholar Jason Schloetzer and described in The Conversation in October 2026. The study covered nearly 165,000 United States employees surveyed by Payscale between 2020 and 2023. Once appreciation, fair pay, communication, development and the manager relationship were accounted for, fully or mostly remote workers were no longer more satisfied.
The return-to-office debate has been framed as a question of geography, while the variable linked to satisfaction sat elsewhere. A favorable manager relationship tracked with higher satisfaction in every arrangement, most strongly on-site. In Gallup's 2026 report, 41 percent of fully remote employees reported substantial daily stress, against 46 percent of hybrid employees. Gallup researcher Jim Harter puts the fix in a weekly conversation of fifteen to thirty minutes.
Source: The Conversation · October 7, 2026