- David George
- 5 min read
Purpose Over Presence
If you look closely at most organisations struggling with attendance right now, you’ll notice something quite consistent. The problem isn’t that people don’t want to come in. It’s that they don’t see the point of coming in. And that’s a very different challenge from the one many senior leaders think they’re dealing with.
There’s been an extraordinary amount of energy spent arguing about the “right number of days” in the office, as if the friction around hybrid working can be solved by adjusting a dial marked “attendance.” Three days. Two days. Anchor days. Mandated days. “At manager discretion.” “Flexible within teams.” Every variation has been tested somewhere, and yet the same underlying issue keeps surfacing: days alone are not a strategy. They never have been.
The real conversation isn’t about presence. It’s about purpose.
People are perfectly willing to commute when they know the day will be valuable. They resist it when the day is badly designed, unstructured, or—most common of all—no different from what they could have done better at home.
And that’s the leadership blind spot hybrid work keeps exposing: people aren’t resisting the office—they’re resisting a day without purpose.
We’ve entered a world where the office is no longer the default location for work. Its value is no longer assumed. It must be earned. And that shift calls for a much more honest conversation about how workplaces function, how teams behave, and what organisations are actually asking people to do when they make the effort to show up.
The Days Fixation: A Very Expensive Distraction
One of the most counterproductive trends of the last two years is the obsession with day-counting. Attendance has become something organisations try to measure like timesheets, rather than something they design like a product. And this is where so many companies go wrong. They tally bodies, rather than interrogate value.
A policy can force presence, but it cannot create engagement, momentum or connection. Numbers might go up temporarily under mandate, but they almost always fall again once the novelty (or the pressure) fades. That’s because people aren’t responding to the policy—they’re responding to the experience.
Whenever attendance dips, leaders often assume the fix is to adjust the rules. In reality, the rules were never the lever. The experience was.
The question companies should be asking is remarkably simple, yet rarely asked with sincerity: “If we’re asking people to come in, what are they coming in for?”
What Actually Brings People In
Across client projects, global surveys and WEX platform analytics, the patterns are consistent. People will enthusiastically come into a workplace when three things are true: they know who they’ll see, they know what they’ll achieve, and they trust that the space will support the work that actually benefits from being done together.
Collaboration is always the first driver—not the vague “we collaborate better in person,” but the specific types of work where being together changes the outcome: problem-solving, sprint planning, decision-making, design refinement, knowledge exchange, early project alignment, cross-functional sessions, mentoring conversations, and the kind of unstructured dialogue that simply cannot be replicated via video calls.
The second driver is relationships. Humans want to feel part of something. Belonging is not fluffy; it is a hard business advantage. People come in when they know their team, their peers, their “work friends,” and their leaders will be in the same space. That sense of rhythm and presence matters more than most organisations realise. When presence becomes a lottery, attendance collapses.
And the third driver is clarity. People need to know what the in-office day is for. They need structure, predictability, and a sense that the effort of commuting translates into value. When the purpose is clear, attendance becomes natural. When it is ambiguous, attendance becomes negotiable.
The Uncomfortable Truth: Most Offices Simply Don’t Work Anymore
If we’re honest, many offices still reflect a world where individual focus work dominated. The work has changed, but the workspace hasn’t. And this mismatch is at the heart of attendance challenges.
Rows of desks. Meeting rooms that are always full or always too big. Poor acoustics. Technology that works beautifully until six people join from home. Hybrid meetings where half the team can’t see the whiteboard. Neighbourhoods that don’t feel like neighbourhoods. Collaboration spaces that are either too few or poorly located. Focus spaces that are noisy. Social spaces that don’t feel social. It’s a familiar story.
Employees are not irrational—if the office makes their work harder, they’ll avoid it. If the office supports their work, they’ll use it.
Design and behaviour are inseparable. A workplace designed for yesterday’s work patterns will never achieve today’s expectations.
Why Activity-Based Working (ABW) Consistently Outperforms Traditional Models
One of the strongest conclusions from the last decade of workplace transformation is that ABW is not a trend; it is the most pragmatic response to the way work actually happens now. It recognises that different activities require different environments and that people perform best when they can choose the right setting for each task.
In organisations where ABW is implemented intentionally, we see measurable gains—higher attendance, stronger collaboration, greater satisfaction and a more efficient footprint. It works because it respects the reality of how modern teams operate: dynamically, socially, and across varied modes of work.
The most successful ABW environments aren’t flashy; they’re thoughtful. They are built around neighbourhoods that anchor teams, collaboration zones that feel truly shared, quiet spaces that protect focus, hybrid meeting rooms that support equity, and design principles that make movement through the space intuitive.
When the workplace feels purposeful, people treat it that way.
The Behavioural Anchor: The Role of Team Agreements
Even the best-designed workplace fails without behavioural alignment. This is the part of hybrid that trips up most organisations—not because people are resistant, but because they’re unsure.
When are we in? What do hybrid meetings look like? How do we protect focus time? What’s our availability rhythm? How do we support new joiners? Where does mentoring happen?What does “being present” actually mean?
Without answers, teams create their own interpretations. And this fragmentation is the silent killer of hybrid performance.
Team Agreements solve this by creating shared norms. They bring clarity to the very areas that hybrid work exposes: communication patterns, collaboration rhythms, in-person rituals, expectations around availability, mentoring commitments and how the space should be used. When teams agree on how they work, the workplace becomes predictable. And predictability creates trust—one of the most powerful drivers of attendance and performance.
A Practical, Honest Roadmap Forward
There is no shortcut here. Organisations that succeed with hybrid and workplace transformation follow a clear pattern—one rooted in evidence, not assumptions.
They begin by understanding the work at a granular level: the activities, the collaboration patterns, the high-value interactions, the barriers, the frustrations and the moments where proximity truly matters. They then design around those insights, not around hierarchy or legacy layouts. They create environments that support performance, not presenteeism. They engage their people early and build behavioural norms that reinforce the space rather than undermine it. And they test, refine and iterate, rather than leaping to a full overhaul without learning.
They treat the workplace as a system, not a building.
The Real Shift Leaders Need To Make
If hybrid has taught us anything, it’s this: attendance cannot be mandated into existence. It must be designed into existence. People are willing to come in—happily, consistently, enthusiastically—when the workplace helps them do better work, build better relationships, and feel more connected to something meaningful.
The organisations that embrace this truth are the ones seeing attendance stabilise, performance rise and culture strengthen. The ones still focused purely on enforcement are fighting a losing battle.
A workplace earns its occupancy. And when it earns it, it doesn’t need to chase it.
There was a time when “office transformation” meant a new layout, updated furniture, or a refreshed color palette. Those days are long gone. Today, transforming an office means transforming the way people experience work altogether. It means rethinking the relationship between space, behavior, leadership, culture and performance. And it means doing so in a world where hybrid work has permanently changed expectations about where and how work happens.
Too many organizations still approach workplace transformation as a design project when, in reality, it is a strategic project. They jump straight into floor plans and furniture options without first understanding how work actually flows through the organization. They focus on aesthetics before function, layout before behavior, and space before purpose. And in doing so, they build offices that look modern but don’t genuinely work for the people using them.
A great workplace is not the product of design talent alone. It is the result of deep understanding.
Why transformation starts with listening
Every successful workplace transformation begins with a very simple question: “How does work truly happen here?” Not how leaders think it should happen, not how it used to happen, but how it actually happens today. This means understanding the rhythms of different teams, the types of activities they perform, the levels of focus they need, the patterns of collaboration they rely on, and the natural points of friction that slow them down.
When an organization begins by listening—to employees, managers and leaders—the real needs of the workplace come into focus. You see where teams struggle to find the right kinds of environments. You see where noise undermines concentration, where hybrid meetings fall apart, where spontaneous conversations are lost and where onboarding feels weaker than before. The gaps start revealing themselves long before any drawings are produced.
And once you understand those gaps, the design brief writes itself.
Why behavior and space have to be solved together
A mistake many organizations make is treating workplace transformation as purely a physical exercise. They redesign the environment but not the expectations or practices that shape how people use it. They introduce shared spaces without establishing norms, they launch new layouts without adjusting team rhythms, and they create open environments without addressing how different workstyles coexist.
The result is predictable: the new space feels unfamiliar, confusing or even stressful, and people revert to old habits. The workplace becomes something people admire but don’t adopt.
Transformation only sticks when behavior evolves alongside the environment. This is why Team Agreements are essential to any modern workplace strategy. They give teams the structure they need to operate coherently within a new space. They clarify when teams gather, how hybrid meetings run, how collaboration is prioritized, how focus time is protected, and how physical space supports the work rather than complicating it.
Design without behavioral alignment quickly becomes unused potential. Behavioral alignment without design becomes constrained. But when the two move together, the workplace becomes a living system rather than a set of rooms.
Designing for people, not headcount
One of the most significant shifts in workplace strategy is the move away from designing to capacity and toward designing to activity. For decades, offices were built around the assumption that every person needed a desk. Hybrid work shattered that logic. People now spend their time across multiple environments, and the workplace should support the activities that matter most when teams come together.
This means creating an ecosystem of worksettings—places for deep focus, structured collaboration, quick problem-solving, social connection, private conversations, creative exploration and hybrid meetings that feel intentional instead of improvised. It means giving teams neighborhoods that provide predictability without restricting mobility. And it means designing spaces that energize people rather than drain them.
When an environment is designed around real activity instead of theoretical occupancy, the workplace becomes dramatically more functional, more efficient and more engaging.
Why change management is the differentiator
Even the best workplace design will fail without a strong change management foundation. People don’t simply adapt to new environments because they look appealing. They adapt when they understand why change is happening, what it means for their work, and how the new environment will help them succeed.
Organizations that invest in change management treat transformation as a cultural shift, not a real estate project. They involve employees early, give leaders the tools to model new behaviors, support teams through the transition, and establish clear communication around how the space is meant to be used. They remove uncertainty and replace it with confidence.
Change doesn’t happen because a workplace opens. It happens because people are guided into new ways of working.
The long-term value of a great workplace
When done well, workplace transformation does far more than create an attractive environment. It strengthens culture, accelerates collaboration, improves productivity, supports well-being, deepens connection, and clarifies expectations. It makes onboarding easier and more meaningful. It restores the kinds of interactions organizations lost in remote work. And it gives people a sense of belonging that cannot be replicated through screens.
Most importantly, it aligns the workplace with the reality of how people work today—not how they worked ten years ago.
Transformation is no longer about aesthetics. It’s about performance, culture and human experience. It’s about creating a workplace that people choose because it genuinely helps them do better work.
- David George
- 4 min read
One of the most common mistakes organizations make is assuming that attendance is something you can enforce. You can certainly mandate presence, and for a short period, people will comply. But compliance isn’t commitment. It doesn’t create energy, connection or performance. It creates quiet resentment and a countdown to the moment people slip back into old patterns.
A workplace built on pressure never sustains momentum. A workplace built on value always does.
The truth is straightforward: people return to offices that help them do better work. They avoid offices that make their work harder. And in a hybrid world where employees now have a genuine alternative, the workplace must justify the commute. It must give people something that cannot be replicated at home.
This is the difference between workplaces that thrive and workplaces that stagnate. One asks, “How do we get people back?” The other asks, “Why would they come in?”
Only the second question leads to progress.
Why mandates don’t change behavior
When leaders lean on mandates, they usually do so out of frustration. Attendance isn’t meeting expectations. Culture feels thin. Collaboration feels remote. And the instinctive solution becomes an instruction rather than an inquiry.
But mandates use the wrong lever. They address the symptom—low attendance—rather than the system that created it. They create short-term spikes and long-term disengagement. And most importantly, they reinforce the idea that the office is a place of obligation rather than a place of value.
People comply with mandates, but they don’t reshape their work around them. They show up physically while mentally remaining elsewhere. They sit in the same meetings they could have joined remotely. They continue to schedule work the same way they do at home. In short, mandates result in presence without purpose.
A workplace without purpose cannot become a magnet.
What magnetic workplaces have in common
Magnetic offices are not flashy, expensive or trendy. They are simply places where the work people need to do is made easier, richer and more enjoyable by being there. They feel intentional rather than incidental.
When people walk into a magnetic workplace, they experience immediacy—conversations happen more naturally, decisions move faster, teams gain alignment, and problems get solved with less effort. Momentum builds through proximity. People leave feeling that the day mattered.
And critically, the workplace removes friction. The basics work. Hybrid meetings aren’t a battle with technology. Quiet spaces are genuinely quiet. Collaboration areas feel like they were designed for collaboration, not improvised. Neighborhoods create predictability. The office feels like a functioning system, not a collection of compromises.
Magnetic workplaces don’t demand enthusiasm. They generate it.
The psychology behind choice
One of the most overlooked elements of hybrid working is the shift in psychology around autonomy. For decades, the workplace was chosen for employees. The decision belonged to the organization. Hybrid flipped that dynamic. Now employees choose where they work based on what feels most productive, supportive and meaningful.
This shift is not about entitlement. It’s about optimization. People want to work well. They want to perform. They want clarity, connection and momentum. They aren’t avoiding the office because they are unwilling to work—they are avoiding offices that don’t help them work effectively.
When the workplace aligns with what people value—connection, collaboration, progress, access to colleagues, visibility, ease—attendance becomes natural. When it doesn’t, people retreat to environments where they have more control.
Choice doesn’t weaken attendance. A poor workplace does.
The importance of predictability
Magnetic workplaces feel predictable. People know when their team will be present. They know where their colleagues sit. They know how hybrid meetings run. They know where to go for focus work and where to go for discussion. They know what kind of day they’ll have before they even arrive.
This kind of predictability doesn’t restrict flexibility; it supports it. People can plan meaningful in-office days because the workplace has a rhythm. When teams establish clear agreements about how they work—how often they meet in person, how they communicate, how they collaborate—attendance becomes structured rather than sporadic. And structured attendance creates connection, which in turn creates engagement.
Predictability doesn’t just improve the workplace. It restores trust in it.
Design as a magnet
The workplace becomes a magnet when it reflects the work people actually do. In hybrid environments, that typically means less emphasis on rows of desks and more emphasis on spaces that naturally draw people into interaction. People need places to gather, discuss, think, create and align. They also need places that protect concentration without isolating them.
Design is more than the aesthetic expression of an office. It is the architecture of behavior. It tells people what the space is for, how it should be used and why being together matters. When the design is right, individuals don’t need to be told to come in—they come because the environment supports their goals better than the alternative.
A well-designed workplace doesn’t convince people. It attracts them.
The turning point for leaders
The organizations that finally crack the attendance challenge are the ones that stop asking, “How do we enforce the policy?” and start asking, “How do we create a workplace people choose?”
A mandate makes people show up. A magnet makes people participate.
The difference is everything.