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The Office Looks Great. So Why Isn’t Anyone Coming In?

June 25, 2025 · Work/Shift Insights Issue #11

By Frederic Libet Descorne

Leaders keep asking: how do we get people back into the office?

The better question is: why aren’t they coming in already?

It's not for lack of effort. Most companies have done the obvious things. Renovated spaces. Installed neighbourhoods. Added collaboration zones and fancy lounges. They tick the hybrid box, offer amenities, and still attendance stalls.

Because the truth is:

Beautiful spaces don’t guarantee business impact. Aligned ones do.

You don’t get better outcomes by mandating attendance or upgrading soft furnishings. You get there by removing friction. By designing space to support how work actually happens: how people make decisions, build trust, collaborate, focus, and recover.

That means going beyond vibe. Beyond branding. Beyond 'if we build it, they will come.'

Workplaces Should Earn Their Keep

Every workplace is making promises. On the walls, the screensavers, the slogans: collaborate, innovate, care, thrive. But what the space enables day-to-day often tells a different story.

The question is not what your space says your culture is. The question is what your space teaches people to do.

If you want a high-performance culture, you need more than signals. You need infrastructure. Not just technology and furniture, but the spatial, social, and behavioural scaffolding that lets good work happen more easily.

In short, you need alignment. Between what leaders say matters and what the workplace actually enables.

Let me show you what that looks like.

What Alignment Looks Like in Practice

Case 1: French Insurance Company (420 people)

Midway through a broader transformation, leaders at this insurer were unsure if their new workplace was supporting or stalling progress. Despite its sleek aesthetic, collaboration felt transactional, and a quiet disconnect was emerging between teams and leadership.

Through late-night workshops (I’m based in Sydney) and remote journey mapping, one pattern stood out: leadership presence had evaporated. Without clear spatial cues or informal rituals, senior leaders unintentionally withdrew, visible mostly in meetings or via screens. The workplace was signalling distance, not accessibility.

We made three strategic shifts:

• Connection zones were established at key intersections with shared team boards, casual seating, and unbookable drop-in points to create natural collision moments
• Meeting spaces were reframed with visual prompts and scheduling norms that encouraged mixed-role use, breaking down hierarchy
• Leadership routines were mapped against spatial flows, encouraging visibility through simple actions like joining daily team check-ins in shared zones or anchoring key conversations in semi-open spaces

None of these changes required a redesign. Just clarity, intent, and consistency.

• Engagement scores rose by 11 points on the company’s 100-point internal index
• Onboarding time dropped from 22 to 15 days, a 32 percent improvement
• Office use increased naturally, driven by renewed interpersonal energy

"We underestimated how much people missed feeling seen. Once leaders were consistently present in the space, not performing, just being, everything shifted."

Case 2: Sydney-Based Tech Scale-Up (145 people)

This company had a slick fit-out but high turnover. Energy felt scattered. Teams struggled to find rhythm and flow. One leader put it bluntly: "It’s like our office was designed for someone else’s culture."

Through spatial observation, leadership workshops, and anonymous feedback, we uncovered a misalignment between the team’s operating style and the cues the environment was sending.

Mornings were heads-down. Afternoons were collaborative. But the space made no such distinction. Meeting zones were always booked. Focus areas were full of noise. There were no prompts, no transitions, no pattern.

We introduced small but deliberate interventions:

• Visual zoning to support different energy modes across the day
• Soundscaping and layout tweaks to give focus zones acoustic integrity
• Adjusted meeting room protocols to free up spontaneous collaboration space
• Anchored team rituals to physical locations, creating predictability

In the first phase post-implementation:

• Jira sprint completion rates improved by 18 percent
• Team leads reported less coordination overhead and fewer context switches
• Office usage stabilised on core days, without policy enforcement

"It finally supports the way we actually work, not just how someone imagined we might."

How to Spot a Misaligned Workplace

• Instead of "we need more meeting rooms," ask: where are decisions getting stuck?
• Instead of "people aren’t using focus pods," ask: what signals tell them it's OK to unplug?
• Instead of "our hybrid model isn't working," ask: what rituals anchor people when they are on-site?
• Instead of "we've provided everything," ask: what's getting in the way of momentum?

High-performance culture doesn’t come from slogans. It comes from daily behavioural consistency, enabled by space.

What This Means for Each of You

Designers — Design is more than expression. It is intervention.

CFOs — Space is not just a cost. It is a contributor or a drag.

CEOs — Culture is visible. Strategy is spatial.

CRE Leaders — You don’t just manage space. You orchestrate how work happens.

A Note on Limits and Nuance

No single metric tells the whole story. Engagement scores are one signal, not a standalone ROI. Design isn't just styling, but aesthetics alone won’t resolve workflow pain. And yes, CRE leaders already track space usage. But data without interpretation rarely leads to behaviour change.

This approach doesn’t replace deep expertise across functions, it connects the dots between them.

How to Start

Most leaders are asking: how do we get people back in?

If the signals your workplace sends don’t match the systems people rely on, behaviour won’t change.

At Work/Shift, I help organisations decode that gap using the CultureFit Index, a behavioural diagnostic that measures the friction and flow points in your workplace.

It looks at signals like:

• Are teams getting enough protected focus time?
• Are spatial cues aligned with autonomy?
• Is collaboration happening by default, or by friction?

When there’s alignment, culture doesn’t just feel better. It performs better.

Let me know if you'd like to explore where the misalignments are hiding in your workplace.