Future Working Life 2026: Why Attendance Follows Relevance, Not Rules

Higher office attendance does not prove that the office strategy is working. It only proves that the office still matters. Castellum’s report points to a tougher decision now: if the office is meant to support culture, learning, focus, and collaboration, what exactly must it do better than home, and which office model, location, and daily conditions make that credible?

The office matters again, but on harder terms

One of the clearest conclusions in Castellum’s report is that the office still plays a strong role in working life. More people see it as important for company culture, wellbeing, learning, and getting work done effectively. The report also shows that many office workers now spend four to five days per week on site.

What matters is that this does not seem to be driven only by formal attendance requirements. The report instead suggests that when the office works well, more people choose to use it. That changes the decision logic. The issue is no longer whether the office matters. It is whether the office performs well enough to justify the role employers want it to play.

That makes the office a business tool rather than a symbolic attendance space.

Employees are not asking for any office

The report shows a clear gap between how many offices are organised today and which office solution employees would actually choose. Private or shared rooms remain the most popular option, while interest in activity-based offices without assigned desks is much weaker.

That matters because the future working life 2026 discussion can easily collapse into a false choice between office work and remote work. Castellum’s data points somewhere more useful. In many organisations, the more decisive question is what kind of office people are being asked to use. Those in private or shared rooms are more satisfied and also spend more days in the office than those in activity-based environments.

That does not mean activity-based solutions are always wrong. It means they should not be treated as a neutral default. If the organisation wants stronger attendance, better focus, and better satisfaction, it has to start from actual use conditions rather than concept labels.

Daily friction still determines whether the model works

Castellum’s report shows that offices generally perform well for collaboration and fairly well for individual work. Support is weaker for phone calls, digital meetings, and hybrid meetings.

That matters because many organisations have already invested in hybrid policies, attendance guidance, and collaboration principles. But if the physical environment does not support today’s meeting patterns, the model still creates friction. An office that is meant to support hybrid work has to enable both focused work and smooth shifts between physical and digital settings.

That is also why workplace analysis becomes more strategically important. The issue is not only how much space is needed, but which daily situations must work without unnecessary friction.

Health, movement, and location are part of the use equation

The report shows that the share of employees who feel their office encourages physical activity continues to rise, and the link to satisfaction is clear. Office location is also very or fairly important to a large majority of office workers.

This is more than a wellbeing detail. When the office becomes a tool for energy, recovery, movement, and workable daily logistics, it affects both attractiveness and actual use. For organisations trying to increase attendance without relying only on control language, that is a strong clue: people are more willing to use places that make everyday work better.

That means location, commuting, workplace concept, and daily usability have to be assessed together rather than in separate tracks.

What organisations still get wrong

Common mistakes include:

1. trying to increase office attendance before defining what the office should solve better than home
2. choosing an office model based on trend, principle, or legacy assumptions rather than actual work patterns
3. treating focus work, meeting quality, and wellbeing as secondary issues
4. viewing office location as separate from the workplace concept
5. trying to solve low utilisation with rules instead of a better office experience and clearer function

The result is often an office that looks important in theory but performs weakly in everyday use.

What better organisations do before changing office model or attendance logic

The stronger organisations start with use and work backwards to the solution. In practice, they:

1. define which work situations the office should support better than other environments
2. test whether the current or proposed office model supports the right balance of focus, meetings, and collaboration
3. weigh location, commuting, and workplace concept in the same analysis
4. track what actually drives attendance, satisfaction, and daily usability
5. translate those findings into decisions on space, function, rules, and investment

This is where WeOffice should be clearly visible. When organisations need to move quickly, they usually need more than strategy language. They need a practical structure for what to measure first, which scenarios to compare, and which decisions need to be made before the next change is locked.

What a better decision base looks like before the next office decision

A better decision base for future working life should not begin with a general office philosophy. It should begin with comparisons between realistic alternatives.

In many organisations, at least four variables need to be weighed together:

1. which work situations the office should solve better than home
2. which office model creates the best balance between focus, collaboration, and meeting quality
3. how location and commuting affect willingness to actually use the office
4. which investments in workplace quality, health, and daily function create the strongest effect on utilisation and satisfaction

That is also where WeOffice becomes operationally relevant. At this stage, organisations often need a decision base that combines workplace strategy, scenario comparison, and prioritisation before the next step, so they can move forward without reinforcing the wrong assumptions.

Four questions to ask before you change office model or attendance logic

1. Which work situations should the office support better than home?
2. Which office solution gives the highest likelihood of both attendance and satisfaction?
3. How do location and commuting affect willingness to actually use the office?
4. Which functions need to be strengthened first to improve daily use fastest?

If those questions are asked early, it becomes easier to right-size the office and avoid locking the workplace into outdated norms or overly generic concepts.

Conclusion: future working life needs better offices, not just stronger attendance rules

Castellum’s report suggests that the future of work is not about choosing between office and remote work. It is about creating an office that is relevant enough for people to genuinely want to use it.

For employers, that means the next step is not more generic attendance pressure. It is better office decisions. Organisations that want stronger use, better focus, and healthier collaboration need to start with daily work logic and translate it into decisions about model, location, function, and investment.

Source: Castellum, Framtidens arbetsliv 2026, published 2026-03-24.