Here is something nobody in corporate leadership seems to have internalized: the moment you made the office optional, it became a product. And products compete for attention.
Here is something nobody in corporate leadership seems to have internalized: the moment you made the office optional, it became a product.
Before the pandemic, the office was mandatory. You did not need to sell anyone on coming in because they had no choice. The fluorescent lights, the bad coffee, the open floor plan that made every phone call a public performance. None of it mattered because attendance was not a decision. It was a condition of employment.
Zoom went from 10 million daily meeting participants in December 2019 to 300 million by April 2020. That's not growth. That's a civilization-scale behavioral shift that happened to have a brand name attached.
Now? Now you are competing with home. With the couch. With the kitchen where snacks are free and the commute is twelve steps. With the ability to wear pants that have elastic waistbands and take meetings with a cat on your lap. You are competing with comfort and autonomy and freedom, which are, objectively, tough competitors.
And most companies are showing up to that competition with pizza Fridays and a foosball table that has not been level since 2017.
The companies figuring this out are the ones treating their return-to-office strategy like a brand launch. They are asking: what is the value proposition of being here? What can you get in this building that you cannot get at home? What is the experience we are offering?
If your answer is "collaboration" and you have not redesigned a single conference room since 2019, you are lying to your employees and they know it.
Airbnb gets this. They are not requiring anyone to come back to an office. But when they do gather, it is intentional, designed, and event-like. Salesforce turned floors of their tower into community spaces. Some companies are hosting actual programming, workshops, guest speakers. They are giving people a reason to commute beyond "your manager wants to see you here."
The hybrid work debate is not about productivity or culture or collaboration. It is about whether you can make an experience compelling enough that people choose it voluntarily. That is a brand challenge. That is a design challenge. And most companies are failing it because they are still thinking about the office as real estate instead of as a product.
I spend three days a week at home with my cat and two days at a co-working space in Portland. The co-working space wins because it has good coffee, natural light, and a quiet room for calls. That is it. Three features. It is not complicated. But it is intentional. And intention is the difference between a destination and an obligation.