May 2026
Dr Sepideh Yekani
Dr Peggie Rothe
In recent years, many organisations responded to the widespread adoption of hybrid working by intentionally redesigning workplaces to prioritise collaboration, interaction, and community.
Offices were reimagined as the “collaboration hubs” of the future, spaces designed to rebuild connection and restore shared energy. The underlying belief was clear: collaboration drives company culture, performance, and belonging.
Yet offices host far more than collaboration alone. Across any given day, employees move between a wide range of activities; some individual, some group-based, and the balance between these can vary significantly from one person to another. The nature of work is not uniform, and neither are the ways in which people create value.
Leesman data provides a clear picture of how people work day-to-day: what they do and the balance between solo and collaborative activities. Based on the importance employees assign to individual or collaborative activities, there are five distinct interaction profiles that emerge: Highly individual, Individual, Balanced, Collaborative, and Highly collaborative.
These profiles represent the extent to which an employee’s work is centred on independent tasks versus interaction and shared activity with others.
Of the 600,000+ employees analysed, 20% have a ‘Highly individual’ profile, meaning their work is largely dominated by solo tasks. A further 20% fall into the ‘Individual’ category. The ‘Balanced’ profile (37%) alternates between focused work and collaboration. The ‘Collaborative’ group accounts for 29% of respondents, making it the biggest group, while the ‘Highly collaborative’ profile remains the smallest at just 4%.
This distribution is worth reflecting on. Nearly two-thirds of employees (67%) identify as either individual or balanced in their work style, meaning the majority, or at least half, of their work depends on working solo.
And yet, in recent years, workplace strategies have overwhelmingly prioritised interaction, visibility, and shared activity.
Which raises a pressing question: what is today’s office designed to offer those whose work relies primarily on privacy and distraction-free environments? If collaboration has become the defining feature of the modern workplace, where and how are we supporting focus?
When we look at how these different profiles experience their workplace, it becomes clear that the average office today is more focused on supporting collaborative work. The ‘Highly individual’ group reports the poorest experience, with an average Leesman Index workplace experience score (Lmi) of 67.9. ‘Individual’ employees score 69.5, ‘Balanced’ profiles 69.7, ‘Collaborative’ employees 70.1, and ‘Highly collaborative’ employees report the highest experience at 71.2. In other words, as we move from individual to collaborative profiles, the average workplace experience improves.
This suggests that post-pandemic workplaces are simply better at supporting collaboration than individual work. That may well be intentional. As remote work expanded, offices were repositioned to foster connection and build culture. At the same time, home environments have consistently proven effective at supporting focused, individual tasks.
But therein lies a risk. In solving for collaboration, we may have tilted the system by optimising the office for interaction while underserving the work that makes up the majority of many employees’ days. And considering that their home environments are likely to support their solo work very well, we shouldn’t be surprised if those employees prefer to skip the commute and work from home instead.
The responses to the Leesman Impact statements across all five profiles reinforce this imbalance. Across every key experience metric, enjoyment, sense of community, productivity enablement, knowledge sharing, and wellbeing, outcomes improve steadily as collaboration increases. The gap in agreement between highly collaborative and highly individual employees consistently ranges from 9 to 13 percentage points (pp) across all Impact statements; a clear indication that the workplace is delivering a stronger experience for some profiles than for others.
Collaborative employees thrive in collaborative environments. That alignment makes sense. But when individual-oriented employees report lower experience across every impact question, we should ask whether we are creating structural friction for a significant portion of our workforce.
This is not about personality. It is about different natures of work. Some employees generate value through shared processing and frequent interaction. Others generate value through deep concentration and autonomy. Both forms of work are critical. Yet collaboration is visible and culturally reinforced, while focused work is quieter and perhaps less noticeable.
So, have we made collaboration the dominant operating model, rather than designing for alignment across the full distribution of work styles?
Collaboration may have helped restore culture after the pandemic. But if we treat it as the permanent design principle, we risk amplifying one type of contribution while subtly constraining others. Optimising for a single mode of work, even unintentionally, can come at the expense of overall effectiveness and inclusivity. To truly support the full workforce, organisations need to understand the mix of interaction profiles within their teams and create environments that enable each of them to do their best work.
