If your team is avoiding the office because they “just can’t concentrate there,” you’re not imagining it, and you’re definitely not alone.
I’ve seen this pattern more times than I can count.
A business grows. The team gets bigger. The office gets noisier.
People start wearing headphones.
Then they start working from home “just for focus.”
Then suddenly the office feels… empty.
Desks unused.
Meeting rooms booked for one person and a laptop.
Junior staff left to figure things out on their own because no one senior is around to overhear, mentor, or sense when someone’s stuck.
What started as a concentration problem quietly becomes a culture problem
Most teams don’t consciously decide to avoid the office. It just… happens.
“I’ll stay home tomorrow so I can get some real work done.”
“I’ll take this call in my car.”
“I can’t think with all the noise.”
And slowly, the office becomes a place people tolerate… not a place they choose.
The irony?
The very space designed to bring people together starts pulling them apart.
Focus isn’t a personality trait — it’s an environmental condition
This is where I want to gently reframe something:
When people can’t concentrate, it’s rarely a motivation issue.
It’s almost always an environment issue.
Open-plan layouts that were never designed for modern work.
No dedicated quiet rooms.
No clear zoning between noisy and focus-heavy work.
Meeting rooms doing double-duty as call booths and escape pods.
People aren’t being difficult.
They’re adapting to what the space allows.
And when focus disappears, so does learning
One of the most concerning ripple effects I see is what this does to younger or less experienced team members.
Learning doesn’t just happen in meetings or training sessions.
It happens through:
overhearing conversations
watching how problems are solved
asking quick questions without booking a call
absorbing how senior staff think and communicate
When no one’s around because the office is too hard to work in, that learning quietly disappears.
Culture weakens.
Mistakes increase.
Confidence drops.
Not because the team doesn’t care, but because the environment isn’t supporting connection or concentration.
This is why quiet rooms aren’t a “nice to have”
Dedicated focus spaces - whether that’s quiet rooms, phone booths, or properly zoned areas - aren’t a luxury.
They’re one of the highest-impact functional upgrades a business can make.
When focus is protected:
work quality improves
people come back into the office by choice
collaboration becomes easier
learning happens naturally again
culture stabilises
And the office stops feeling like a ghost town.
Where to start (without renovating):
You don’t need to knock down walls or start shopping for furniture.
The first step is simply understanding:
where noise is coming from
where focus is being lost
how people are adapting around the space
which teams need quiet vs collaboration most
That’s exactly why I created the Workspace KPI Audit™
It helps you see - clearly and without judgement - whether your current layout is supporting focus, or quietly pushing your team away.
If focus has become a daily struggle, start with the Workspace KPI Audit™ and get clarity on what your space is really doing to your team.