For much of the past five years, workplace strategy has been shaped by what employees say they want. Surveys, sentiment scores and preference polling have become the dominant inputs into design decisions. And yet, across sectors, a quiet contradiction is emerging: stated preferences increasingly diverge from how workplaces are actually used.
This gap, between intention and behaviour, represents the missing 20% that many organisations fail to address. The result is well-intentioned offices that look progressive on paper, but underperform in practice.
There is no question that employee voice matters. According to the CIPD, over 80% of UK organisations now consult employees when shaping workplace or hybrid strategies. Flexibility, collaboration and wellbeing consistently top the list of stated priorities.
Global research echoes this. Gensler’s Workplace Survey reports that employees regularly express a desire for more collaborative environments, social interaction and choice over where and how they work. These insights have driven a wave of office transformations centred on open layouts, informal meeting zones and “destination” collaboration spaces.
On the surface, this appears both progressive and inclusive. But preference alone is an incomplete design input.
Despite positive sentiment towards collaboration, actual space utilisation data tells a different story.
Workplace analytics consistently show that collaboration spaces are among the least consistently used areas of modern offices. Utilisation studies suggest that, outside of peak meeting windows, large informal collaboration zones often sit empty, while enclosed rooms and quiet areas operate at or near capacity.
In parallel, office attendance has stabilised — but engagement has not risen in line with presence. The UK Office for National Statistics reports that while hybrid attendance has normalised, productivity outcomes remain uneven across sectors. Being in the office does not automatically translate into effective work.
The implication is clear: presence without purpose delivers limited value.
The default response to underused offices has often been to add more collaboration space, on the assumption that it will stimulate interaction. But this misunderstands the problem.
Collaboration is not a spatial constant — it is an episodic behaviour. Most knowledge work oscillates between collaboration and focus. When offices are weighted too heavily towards interaction, they unintentionally undermine the very work that enables collaboration to be productive.
Gensler research has repeatedly shown that the ability to focus is the strongest predictor of workplace performance, yet focus and privacy are consistently underprovided in contemporary office design. Employees may say they want collaboration, but their behaviour shows a strong preference for spaces that support concentration, predictability and control.
Across projects, a consistent pattern is emerging. When given genuine choice, employees gravitate towards:
Enclosed rooms for uninterrupted work
Predictable desk setups rather than constant hot-desking
Acoustically controlled environments
Clear signals about how spaces are intended to be use
This is not a rejection of collaboration, but a correction. In uncertain economic conditions, employees value environments that reduce cognitive load and enable them to perform consistently.
According to Gensler, employees who can both collaborate and focus effectively are up to 1.4 times more likely to report higher performance. The missing variable is not more space — it is better balance.
The most effective workplaces are not designed around what people say in isolation, but around what they repeatedly do. Behaviour reveals friction points, unmet needs and operational realities that surveys often obscure.
This requires organisations to shift their framing:
From preference-led design to behaviour-led strategy
From asking “What do you want?” to “How do you actually work?”
From measuring satisfaction to observing performance.
Workplace design, at its best, is not a popularity exercise. It is a strategic tool that aligns space with the rhythms, pressures and priorities of real work.
Organisations that rely solely on employee sentiment risk building spaces that reflect aspiration rather than reality. Those that integrate behavioural insight alongside voice data create workplaces that perform under real-world conditions.
In 2026, the question is no longer whether to listen to employees. It is whether organisations are willing to design for what that listening actually reveals.
The most effective workplaces are designed around behaviour, not surveys.