- 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.
- David George
- 4 min read
If you strip away all the noise around mandates, flexibility debates, real estate costs, and post-pandemic sentiment, you end up with a simple truth: the modern workplace is a balancing act. It must reconcile the very real need for flexibility with the equally real need for connection, culture and performance. And that tension is not going away. It is now the operating condition of every organization.
In a world where employees can work almost anywhere, the office must give them something meaningful—something they can’t get alone, at home, or on a video call.
The modern office doesn’t replace flexibility. It completes it.
Why this balance matters more than ever
In the early years of hybrid working, many organizations swung too far in one direction. Some tried to recreate the traditional office rhythm and expected people back simply because “that’s how it’s always been done.” Others tried to replicate remote work patterns indefinitely and discovered that culture, mentoring and connection began to erode in ways that weren’t immediately visible but proved deeply damaging over time.
What hybrid showed us is that both extremes fail. An office-first world ignores personal well-being and autonomy. A remote-first world neglects connection, learning, belonging and shared identity. People need both, which means organizations need a workplace and operating model that balances both.
This balance is not a “middle ground.” It’s a deliberate system where autonomy and structure support each other rather than compete.
What balance actually looks like inside organizations
It’s tempting to define balance purely as “two days in, three days out,” but balance isn’t a number—it’s a feeling. It is the sense employees have when the workplace supports their work instead of disrupting it, when expectations are clear instead of ambiguous, and when in-person days have purpose rather than being filled with the same tasks they could do more efficiently at home.
A balanced workplace is one where employees know why they’re commuting. They know what the day will give them—collaboration, access to colleagues, clarity, momentum, social connection, exposure, mentoring, problem-solving—things that simply aren’t replicated online. And they know the office is designed to support those moments rather than hinder them.
In practice, balance looks like intentional in-person rhythms rather than forced attendance. It looks like leaders who use the office with purpose, not symbolism. It looks like teams gathering for activities that actually benefit from being together. And it looks like a workplace where employees don’t spend their in-office days hunting for quiet corners or sitting through endless hybrid meetings in rooms that were never designed for them.
Balance, in other words, is when the experience of being in the office aligns with the reason for being there.
The role of workplace design in creating balance
A balanced hybrid model cannot exist in a poorly designed space. If the workplace isn’t built to support collaboration, focus, connection and hybrid meetings, it won’t matter how well-crafted the policy is—people will avoid it.
This is why designing offices around activities, rather than headcount, has become the new standard. Traditional layouts were built for individual focus work, which hybrid has largely relocated to home environments. The modern workplace must provide the things home cannot: places to collaborate deeply, think together, ideate, plan, align and learn from each other. It must also provide genuinely quiet places for individual work—not the illusion of quiet, but real, shielded environments that protect focus without isolating people.
And crucially, the modern workplace must create a feeling of energy. One of the biggest drivers of attendance is the expectation of connection—the sense that something is happening in the office, that other people will be there, that the environment feels alive and worth showing up for. People don’t choose empty offices; they choose energized ones.
Design either amplifies that energy or suffocates it.
The behavioral side of balance
Even the most beautifully designed workplace cannot create balance if behaviors don’t support it. This is where organizations often underestimate the power of clarity. Hybrid work introduced a level of unpredictability that leaders and teams were not prepared for. People no longer automatically knew when colleagues would be in, how hybrid meetings should be run, or what constituted a “good” workday.
Without structure, hybrid becomes chaotic. With too much structure, it becomes rigid.
The middle ground comes from Team Agreements—clear, co-created behavioral norms that help teams understand when to meet in person, how they communicate, how they run meetings, and how they protect focus time. These agreements take the ambiguity out of hybrid work and turn individual choices into shared rhythms. And when teams work with shared rhythms, the workplace feels more consistent, more supportive and more predictable.
Predictability is one of the most underrated drivers of workplace satisfaction. Balance isn’t only about flexibility; it’s about knowing what to expect.
Culture doesn’t survive on autopilot
One of the uncomfortable lessons of the past few years is that culture cannot be left to chance. It used to be shaped by proximity—shared spaces, informal conversations, hallway collisions, side-by-side problem-solving. Hybrid disrupted that foundation. Culture now needs to be maintained intentionally, through clear rituals, shared experiences and purposeful gathering.
The modern office is part of that ritual. It’s the anchor for the story an organization tells itself. But the office alone cannot carry the weight. Culture comes from interactions, not locations. And those interactions must be nurtured through leadership behaviors, team agreements, mentoring systems and environments that make connection the path of least resistance.
Organizations that embrace this are rebuilding culture with strength. Those that don’t are watching culture erode quietly from underneath.
The new reality: balance is not optional
The organizations that will succeed over the next decade are the ones that master balance—not as a slogan, but as a lived experience. They will create workplaces where flexibility and connection reinforce each other, not compete. They will build hybrid models that feel coherent rather than confusing. And they will design environments where people can do their best work, not because they’re told to be there, but because the workplace brings out the best in them.
- Lauren Pollack
- 2 min read
As workplace teams increasingly move under HR leadership, many HR leaders are finding themselves responsible for workplace strategy and real estate decisions—areas that may feel unfamiliar. But here’s the good news: this shift actually makes a lot of sense for where the future of work is headed.
At its core, the workplace is about people—connection, culture, collaboration, well-being, and performance. These are areas HR understands deeply.
When workplace and facilities teams sit within HR, it creates an opportunity to lead with empathy and intention, ensuring that space design supports real human needs. It also opens the door to more engagement-driven strategies—designing with employees, not just for them.
That said, balance is key. HR’s historic focus can create a bias to prioritize what people say they want—like holding onto private offices or dedicated desks—which can unintentionally limit how well the space supports what people need to do. That’s where your partnership with workplace experts becomes essential.
Here are ways HR leaders can support their transition into this expanded role:
Collaborate with workplace experts.
Lean into their knowledge of spatial strategy, utilization data, and design trends. They’ll help translate business goals into environments that truly work. Workplace experts care deeply about how space supports people and may challenge outdated practices that might hinder long-term success.
Engage employees early and often.
Involve employees throughout the process, listen actively, and show how their feedback is shaping outcomes. It builds trust and creates shared ownership.
Innovate how employees are supported during workplace change.
Adapting to a new way of working takes empathy and guidance. Change management, clear communication, and hands-on training help people feel informed and supported.
Shape how culture is expressed through space.
Co-creating etiquette and behavioral expectations helps teams understand how to navigate new environments and collaborate with clarity. Team agreements—an approach that naturally bridges workplace and HR—can help groups collaborate more effectively as ways of working continue to evolve.
Stay curious.
You don’t need all the answers—just a willingness to learn, ask questions, collaborate, and lead with people at the center.
This is an opportunity for HR to support the development of a human-centered and adaptable workplace that aligns with the evolving nature of work. You’ve got this.
CRUX Workplace