My experience has been that systems where people's job is to "finish tickets" actively contributes to this attitude. Even if somebody agrees in principle that i

My experience has been that systems where people's job is to "finish tickets" actively contributes to this attitude. Even if somebody agrees in principle that it's the team and business goals that matter, what's getting measured? What feels like it matters? If somebody isn't finishing their tickets quickly they will feel bad about it because it looks bad and the processes around it reinforce that it looks bad. Even if you tell people that it's actively better to help the team, any individual doing that is still going to feel bad going to some "ceremony" and needing to say "their" tickets are "behind schedule". I remember somebody explaining to me that culture isn't based on what an organization or manager says is rewarded—or even on what's "officially" evaluated—but on what people feel is rewarded and punished. If you're constantly tracking individual tickets, that's what people are going to perceive as important just because the organization's actions place such an emphasis on it. People aren't "using remote as an excuse", they're responding to the system as it's designed! Frankly, seeing the situation as people "making excuses" is fundamentally counterproductive as a manager—it sounds like you're blaming individual team members for the problem. Starting from that perspective, how can you meaningfully work with the team to improve the system and the culture?