The concept of Purposeful Presence will start to appear in every corner of the hybrid working debate. Knowing what it means and understanding how it changes the way employees engage in your workplaces will be critical.

Employees who willingly return to workplaces do so because those spaces support certain work activities better than their homes, in addition to promoting better connection with their colleagues. But they also need it to be a worthwhile experience. This is where ‘Purposeful Presence’ comes in and becomes a force in building future workplace programmes.

The concept is simple: if employees are offered a reasonable level of choice for when they use an office, their trips will increasingly have a particular purpose in mind. That said, Purposeful Presence also offers employers a formidable challenge: employees ‘investing’ in their time in-office will increasingly have heightened expectations for how well those workplaces support that narrower range of tasks.