As we enter the fifth year of “Return to Office” strategies, it has become clear that simply returning to offices is not the ultimate solution to the empty, lifeless workplaces still plaguing many organizations around the world. Instead, a better goal is to help employees reattach to offices. This objective, rooted in the psychological concept of “Place Attachment,” promotes a more productive and enriching approach—helping employees emotionally connect to their workplaces by fostering better connections among people.
While most desk-based workers don’t wish to be forced back into offices full-time, a majority express a desire to spend a few days there each week. Their motivations are primarily relational, driven by a desire to connect with their work community, foster camaraderie, and build deeper relationships with co-workers and leaders—connections that technology alone cannot fully support. However, their experiences in offices often mirror what they could just as easily accomplish at home—spending time on video calls, responding to emails, and working alone on documents. Furthermore, with the rise of hybrid work location policies, fewer people are present in the office on a given day, and it is less predictable who might be there. The resulting experience is often underwhelming, with many workers thinking, “I could have done this at home.” The issue isn’t returning—they have returned, but have not found what they were seeking.
Consequently, employees have emotionally detached from their offices, or, in other words, their relationships with their workplaces have deteriorated. While it might seem strange to think of people having relationships with places, our behaviors suggest otherwise. Place Attachment—the emotional bonds and connections we form with specific places—explains why people tend to sit in the same chair at their dinner table, occupy the same seat at their house of worship, or gravitate to the same restaurant or café in a city they rarely visit. When someone refers to “my seat,” they are expressing attachment to an environment to the extent that they consider a specific place their own. Unfortunately, for many organizations, the past several years of remote working has significantly diminished employees’ sense of attachment to their offices. To restore vibrancy to the office, organizations must first help employees reattach to their work environments.
There are many facets to how reattachment can occur, but none is more important than fostering improved interactions and relationships among people within these spaces. We often bond with places through the positive experiences we share with others in them, particularly if those experiences foster a sense of belonging. This requires both a change in work processes and, often, a change in the environment itself.
Managers need to dedicate and prioritize time in the office for meaningful in-person interactions that strengthen relationships among individuals, teams, and the broader community. This can include time for problem-solving, creative work sessions, team alignment, community celebrations, one-on-one development and coaching, and other activities better supported in person than online. Similarly, the design of office spaces must prioritize these interactions, focusing on workshop and project spaces, team neighborhoods, cafés, event areas, and casual conversation zones. In other words, our work processes and physical environments must prioritize relationships if we want to avoid employees operating like freelancers. As people bond with one another, they will bond with the space—but merely “returning” is not enough to make this happen.
This focus on creating human-centered environments also has a long-term advantage. It not only addresses how technology has affected work in the past but also anticipates how it will shape work in the future. With the rise of AI, we can expect more routine, repetitive, and predictable activities to be handled by AI-enabled tools. AI is already improving efficiency and help people to off-load highly technical, demanding, and detailed tasks. As a result, AI-enabled workplaces will place greater emphasis on human behaviors, such as people engaged in creative, team-based problem-solving, co-creation, mentoring, and strategizing. While offices must support effective remote participation, their primary purpose has evolved. Unlike the offices of the 1980s and 1990s, which focused on facilitating interactions between people and screens, AI-enabled offices will prioritize enhancing interactions among people who use screens, requiring a significant shift in priorities.
As organizations evaluate the long-term value of their real estate investments, it will become increasingly clear that asking employees who have detached from their offices to return to spaces designed for outdated ways of working will not produce lasting results. The priority for 2025 is clear: reattach, not just return.