I really liked how you tried to approach the problem on the emotional side and did away with the mere location of where an employee works.

I was there: Fully engaged and positive on working from the office every day. Then Covid hit and I was still eager to work with and for my team, my peers and to get things done.

Without the table soccer and no coffee-kitchen for socializing. We managed to retain the energy and pull through, despite the world becoming a crazier place everyday.

"After" Covid some went back to the office, some didn't and preferred to stay at home.

And let's face it: For parents going to the office would have been the easy option! No divided attention for a guaranteed duration per day, no alertedness as nobody would call "papa" or "mama". Just the bliss of work.
It would have been a sacrifice as well for all the same reasons.
So staying and working from home with the world expecting everything all at once again was the hardest thing in reality!

Now add employers that as a company were navigating a changing world and that couldn't take all the right decisions due to management errors, false expectations and changed requirements needed to let go people... Let that sink in: As an employee you did everything to the brink of mental breakdown - some colleagues even beyond - and then get shown the door or see how scores of colleagues are let go and you have to compensate with the others who stay behind...

Let's put it this way: A book club or an evening of Dungeons And Dragons won't fix this.

Those are half-hearted measures. If you want to breathe life into the emotional relationship then you need to make sure your employees really believe that you as an employer are invested. If you - as a company - just put on make-up like an actor depending on the occasion, then everyone will see through it for what it actually is: Just make-up.

It's still just Excel with fruit baskets!