Future Workspaces Cultivate Belonging and Foster Emotional Ties

People are creatures of consolation, particularly workers who’ve been working remotely over the previous few years and haven’t solely tailored to however have grown keen on their makeshift workspaces at residence. The 26% of the U.S. workforce working in solely distant positions (Gallup, 2025) has developed place attachment, which means they’ve shaped a constructive emotional bond with their setting—on this case, their distant workspaces. Having traded of their inflexible desks and workplace process chairs in favor of sentimental and comfortable couches that make them really feel secure, distant employees have develop into accustomed to quieter, extra impartial work zones. A lot in order that they’re turning down the choice to return to in-person collaborative workplaces.

Whereas workers are having fun with the comforts of working from residence, they’re additionally being distracted by the comfort of it (i.e., doing laundry, operating fast errands, strolling the canine), all limiting their alternative for mushy ability improvement, in particular person mentorship, and the chance to create and innovate in a collaborative setting. Because the return-to-work dialog continues, there may be an emphasis on creating welcoming and inclusive workplace areas the place workers really feel like they belong.

To attract workers again into the office, workplace constructing house owners must faucet into human wants, redesign work environments to cater to individuals’s numerous wants, and incorporate residential parts that make them really feel like they’re at residence. By fostering place attachment, employers can reengage and retain workers whereas optimizing house utilization by creating work places the place hybrid and full-time workplace workers wish to commute every day.

Fostering Place Attachment By way of Inclusive Design

When designed with an open and inclusive mindset, the office can develop into a vacation spot the place individuals really feel simply as comfy performing duties within the workplace as they do whereas sitting on their sofa, and a group the place one feels relaxed sufficient to be themselves. Constructing house owners, facility managers, and firms who personal or lease their workplace house can work with an inside designer to combine acquainted residential parts equivalent to mushy supplies, rounded furnishings, and hotter, natural shade palettes whereas nonetheless curating an expert work setting. Private and nostalgic parts are additionally a good way to assist workers create a constructive affiliation with their workplace, particularly because the age of customized desks is fading away. 

Past residential aesthetics, strategic layouts and furnishings picks are simply as vital for creating a number of areas that embrace neurodiversity within the office. As an example, some persons are introverted and like working in personal, secluded areas whereas different employees are extroverted and thrive in socially lively environments. By growing workplaces that embrace completely different work preferences, workers really feel revered.