The Hybrid Era Demands New Ways to Measure Culture + Space Fit

Octobre 27, 2025 · Work/Shift Insights Issue #15 · Topic: Workplace Strategy · Audience: Exec, CRE, HR, Designers

By Frederic Libet Descorne

Old tools do not capture the new frictions in today’s workplaces. It is time to recalibrate how we measure workplace strategy in Australia and globally.

Hybrid work didn’t break your culture.
It just exposed the cracks.

In Australia and elsewhere, those cracks show up differently in every organisation. Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane do not behave like London, Toronto or Dubai, yet leaders everywhere are wrestling with the same question: how do we make hybrid work feel deliberate, not accidental

As I wrote in Hybrid Didn’t Break the Office — Misfit Did, the real challenge isn’t people working from home. It’s the growing disconnect between what people need to perform and what the workplace is actually designed to support.

And here's the surprising part: even when people are in the office, many still struggle to do their best work. That’s not a hybrid problem, that’s a fit problem.

It shows up everywhere:

• Leaders frustrated by “ghost town” office days

• Teams battling noise, isolation, or unclear expectations

• Culture initiatives that fall flat because they’re not grounded in how people actually work

Most organisations are still trying to fix these problems using the wrong instruments.
Engagement surveys miss the spatial layer.
Utilisation data tells you who showed up, not whether they could focus, connect, or thrive.

You can’t fix what you’re not measuring. And right now, most teams aren’t measuring the right things.

So what should we be measuring instead?

Culture and Space: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Culture shows up in behaviour. And behaviour is shaped by space.

That’s why hybrid makes the workplace more important, not less. It becomes an amplifier, for connection, energy, focus, or friction.

When culture and space drift apart, you feel it.
High-performing teams start to burn out.
Office days feel performative instead of productive.
People leave because the experience doesn’t match the values on the wall.

To solve for that, you need a new lens. One that brings culture, behaviour, space, and enablement together in a single view.

A New Diagnostic Standard

That’s where CultureFit360 workplace diagnostic comes in.

It is not a sentiment survey. It is a data backed diagnostic that reveals how people actually work and whether the environment supports that reality, in Australia and across your global footprint.

It maps cultural health, behavioural patterns, spatial friction, and team enablement into one integrated picture.
It turns observation into action.

Because it’s strategy-led, it supports smarter decisions across HR, CRE, IT, and design, not just the team with the floorplan.

What This Makes Possible

When you measure the right things, you make better decisions. Faster.
Leaders can focus their energy where it matters.
Designers get real behavioural data, not vague preferences.
HR, IT, and property stop working in silos.
And employees see changes that actually reflect how they work.

We’ve seen this happen. And it starts with a simple loop:
Listen. Diagnose. Design. Activate. Measure.
Then loop again.

Where the Data Led

In one recent engagement, we found that over half of weekly work time was spent on deep-focus tasks, yet the environment offered little acoustic support or visual privacy.
Simple spatial shifts, including the introduction of focus pods and posture-flexible desks, led to measurable lifts in both performance and workplace pride within weeks.

In the same diagnostic, we saw that 70 percent of meetings were short and small, but most rooms were large, static, and underutilised.
Rebalancing the mix toward smaller huddle rooms with reliable AV removed bottlenecks and helped hybrid teams move faster with less friction.

It’s time to cut through the hybrid noise.
The headlines, hot takes, and guesswork haven’t moved the needle on trust, performance, or belonging. That’s why we’re not here to follow trends.
We’re here to define the problem more clearly, and offer a concrete, credible path forward.
Less noise. More signal. Backed by evidence.

Time to Rethink What You Measure?

Hybrid isn’t going away. But the way we understand it needs to change.
From surface-level sentiment to strategic clarity.

CultureFit360 helps you realign people, place, and purpose with insight that sticks.

We don’t do cookie-cutter. Every engagement is bespoke, fast, and grounded in how your people actually work.

The question isn’t whether hybrid works.
It’s whether your workplace knows how.

Ready to measure what really matters
Learn more about independent workplace strategy in Australia and globally at Work/Shift.