The Office Is Now a Claim About Company Culture

The office used to be the default location of professional work. Hybrid working has removed that default.

The Office for National Statistics found that 28% of working adults in Great Britain hybrid worked between January and March 2025. Access was uneven. Degree-qualified workers were ten times more likely to work in this way than workers with no qualifications, while hybrid work was more common at higher incomes and in less deprived areas.

This creates two markets at once. For many employees, attendance remains compulsory because the job cannot move. For office-based employers, attendance has become a negotiated part of the employment relationship.

An office lease therefore does more than secure desks. It makes a claim about hierarchy, trust, collaboration and who absorbs the cost of being together.

A workplace becomes cultural evidence when employees have another place where the same work can be done.

Hybrid work changed the burden of proof

The employee who can work effectively at home asks a practical question before commuting: what becomes possible in the office that is difficult elsewhere?

The answer cannot be a slogan about collaboration. It must appear in the space, operating model and behaviour of managers.

CBRE's 2025 European Office Occupier Sentiment Survey found that 55% of surveyed companies expected to reduce their office footprint over the medium term. It also found that creating a vibrant office atmosphere was the leading challenge in attracting employees back, cited by 53%. Location, cost and sustainability were central to stay-or-go decisions.

The findings suggest that the office is not disappearing. It is being judged more strictly.

A smaller workplace can still fail if peak attendance produces crowding, meeting-room shortages and noise. A premium building can still feel empty if teams arrive on different days. A well-designed social area can become theatrical if managers remain behind closed doors.

The market is splitting by quality

The Q2 2026 RICS UK Commercial Property Monitor recorded office occupier demand at a net balance of minus 4%. Yet respondents expected strong rental growth for prime offices, with a net balance of plus 51%. Expectations for secondary office rents remained negative at minus 26%.

That gap matters more than the headline.

It indicates a market in which weak demand does not affect every building equally. Occupiers are concentrating on places that are well located, efficient, credible to employees and capable of supporting a deliberate attendance strategy.

The flight to quality is therefore partly a flight from ambiguity. A prime office is easier to defend internally when staff question commuting time and the finance team questions occupancy cost.

Secondary buildings face a harder problem than old finishes. They may offer the wrong floorplate, insufficient ventilation, poor digital infrastructure, weak amenities or a location that adds friction to a hybrid week.

Culture cannot be installed as an amenity

Edgar Schein described organisational culture through visible artefacts, stated values and underlying assumptions. The office belongs to the first category, but it exposes the other two.

A company may state that it values autonomy while monitoring attendance aggressively. It may claim openness while executive areas remain inaccessible. It may celebrate collaboration while providing too few rooms for confidential work.

Employees read these contradictions quickly because the workplace is experienced repeatedly.

This is why office design should begin with behavioural questions:

1. Which activities genuinely improve when people are together?
2. Who controls attendance and scheduling?
3. What happens to employees who need quiet, privacy or accessibility?
4. Does the building make the commute proportionate to the value of the day?
5. Which teams risk becoming invisible because they attend less often?

The answers shape space requirements more reliably than copying another company's collaboration ratio.

The office is also an inequality mechanism

The ONS evidence shows that hybrid access follows qualification, income and geography. That makes office strategy a social question, not merely a utilisation problem.

Senior employees may have larger homes, private workrooms and more control over their schedules. Younger staff may share accommodation and depend more on the workplace for focus, learning and professional networks.

Leesman's Research and Insights Team reported in March 2025 that 62% of employees under 25 lacked a dedicated room or office at home. It also found that 78% believed the office contributed to a sense of community.

These figures should not be used to force universal attendance. They show that the same policy distributes costs and benefits differently.

A company that closes most of its office can remove an important resource from early-career employees. A company that mandates five days can transfer time and travel cost back to staff. The responsible position lies in the operating detail.

Property decisions now expose management decisions

Commercial occupiers can no longer treat workplace strategy as a facilities exercise completed after the lease is signed.

Lease length, floorplate, transport access, break options and energy performance should be tested against the organisation's actual management model. If attendance is expected to change, flexibility has financial value. If culture depends on apprenticeship and informal learning, spatial proximity has operational value.

WastuViz can contribute by testing how a proposed workplace supports different modes, densities and peak-day patterns before fit-out. The visual model should expose trade-offs rather than decorate a predetermined plan.

The office has not become irrelevant. It has become accountable.

Every occupied floor now answers a question employees and investors are already asking: does this company know why it wants people here?

Sources and further reading

• Office for National Statistics, Who has access to hybrid work in Great Britain?, 11 June 2025: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/whohasaccesstohybridworkingreatbritain/latest
• Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, Tarrant Parsons, Q2 2026 UK Commercial Property Monitor, 30 July 2026: https://www.rics.org/content/dam/ricsglobal/documents/market-surveys/Q2-2026_RICS-UK-Commercial-Property-Monitor.pdf
• CBRE Research, European Office Occupier Sentiment Survey 2025: https://www.cbre.co.uk/insights/reports/Office%20Occupier%20Sentiment%20Survey%202025
• Leesman Research and Insights Team, Redefining the workplace for the future, March 2025: https://www.leesmanindex.com/articles/redefining-the-workplace-for-the-future/
• Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, fifth edition, Wiley, 2017.