Leadership sends the email....three days a week, because of collaboration, culture, being together.

Employees comply. They show up, sit at a desk in an open-plan office, and spend the day on video calls with earbuds in - because the person they actually needed to talk to is on another floor, in another building, in another city.
So they end up doing the exact same work they did at home. Just in a louder place. After a commute.

The mandate didn't fail because people are stubborn. It failed because the office didn't offer a better experience than the kitchen table.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: 26% of people now see themselves as "backpack believers" - carrying everything they need with them, plugging in wherever there's a spare desk, not even needing a locker. Work has stopped being somewhere you go. It's  what you do.

So if the office isn't a requirement anymore, what is it for?
→ Culture. You can't build it on Teams. Culture happens in the moments between the meetings - not in the meetings themselves.
→ Collaboration. Real collaboration, not eight people on a call from eight different desks.
→ Fun. Genuinely. If people don't enjoy being there, no amount of free coffee will fix it.
→ Human connection. Learning, mentoring, the kind of informal knowledge transfer that simply doesn't happen over video.
→ Client experience. A welcoming space where clients don't come in because they have to, but because there's real value in doing so - to collaborate, to build relationships, sometimes just to enjoy being there.

None of this happens by accident. It requires genuine cultural and behavioural change, not just new furniture. It means letting people use space differently - a gym session in the middle of the day, a change of scenery, frictionless movement between modes of work rather than being chained to one desk.

The office isn't dead. But it does need to earn its keep.
If you want people to come back, the building has to be better than what they left behind.

Not mandatory. Better.

If you're looking to improve workplace experience, operational efficiency, or how your organisation delivers services - let's talk.

#workplace