London offices are offering monogrammed towels and rooftop gardens to tempt staff back into work, says Alex Morgan

Some of the world’s largest companies are pulling the plug on hybrid working, but not without a hitch. In the US, Amazon’s return-to-office (RTO) mandate has been put on pause because of a shortage of desks in New York, Houston and Atlanta, raising the question whether corporates reacclimatising to in-person work have sufficiently ‘rightsized’ their space requirements.

While the examples set out by Trump’s federal buyout, JP Morgan, Salesforce and Barclays in the UK indicate a recent sea change in attitudes to RTO, the logistics of fitting everyone into an office floorplate misses the point that this really is the bare minimum in a series of steps needed to bring workers back in full-time. An environment that employees want to be in; that outguns the comfort of the no-commute or the glare of management, will be key in attracting and retaining talent over the longer-term.

Let me explain. According to KPMG’s CEO Outlook survey, 83 per cent of UK CEOs polled expect employees to work in-person five days a week within the next three years. This is a far cry from 2024 figures from JLL, where over half of all employees said they were commuting to the office fewer than three days a week, espousing – in particular – the greater flexibility afforded when working from home.

More profoundly, however, is that looking deeper into hybrid working policies reveals more leniency granted to high performers, who are more likely to think with their feet when the autonomy they have adjusted to is restricted, especially in highly competitive sectors like technology, or vocational work, like law, where demand for consistent in-person collaboration and the physical presence of high achievers – who also often make for good mentors to newer, less experienced employees – will require something in return. Something that dramatically outweighs that resistance to change, offering a reason for being at the office that is both a compelling alternative to working from home and an advantage.

To meet these expectations, office fitouts have changed to focus more on flexible layouts, high-quality finishes and an assortment of different meeting and workspaces to mix up the experience. This de-densification is a reversal of the pre-pandemic trend towards hot-desking – a workplace strategy that has always been reviewed poorly by the office workers on which it has been imposed. But this is not enough.

Make your office feel premium

For offices to feel premium they need to take a leaf from hotel operators, which have led the creation of the ‘home away from home’.