RTO in 2024: Fast Company’s 8-point guide for designing an office your workers actually want to return to

The office has become a place of contentious experimentation. It’s never been harder to know what the office means to workers today, and what it might mean in the future. Companies’ return-to-office mandates have created rifts between employers and employees, who are often at odds when it comes to where the best work gets done—in the office or at home.

But could a better office convince workers that coming in for their 9-to-5 is worth the commute? That is the question we set out to answer in our in-depth guide to the current state of office design and the RTO debate. For this report, Fast Company spoke with dozens of sources across the design world, workers in various sectors, real estate experts, and company executives to uncover what workers want from their offices today, and how leaders can help create an environment that exceeds those expectations. 

From those conversations, one thing is clear: Building a better office isn’t just about fulfilling a wish list of amenities. Creating a workplace employees want to come back to requires an understanding of the current office’s shortcomings—and the willingness to design our way out of them. This report aims to help company leaders prepare themselves for the shape-shifting office of 2024 and beyond.

What you’ll learn from this report

• Which industries are coming back to the office and why
• Key office design trends that workers want
• Insights from CEOs and executives on how they’ve handled RTO
• Data-driven insights on the most and least-used office features
• How to maximize the benefits of an office lease in a tough market

Key sources

• Gensler
• NBBJ
• Rapt Studio
• So-Il
• SpacesOf
• Studio O+A

Introduction

Companies are facing an existential question: How, after more than three years of remote work, can they get employees back to the office? Not long ago, remote work was the exception, not the rule. According to a Gallup survey, 75% of workers were fully on-site in 2019, with only 4% of workers regularly working from home. During the height of the pandemic, those numbers flip-flopped, and office attendance plummeted by as much as 90% in major cities. Now, even with return-to-work mandates in full swing around the country and across almost all sectors, those levels have only rebounded to about half of pre-pandemic occupancy.