Gensler Co-Chair: Hot-desking was supposed to save money. It may be costing you your culture

You come into the office expecting a productive, collaborative day. Meetings are scheduled. Work needs to move forward. But you are presented with an immediate challenge: finding a place to sit.

You walk the floor looking for an open desk. The spaces that support focused work are already taken. You choose a temporary spot, aware you may need to move again. Later, when it is time for a virtual meeting, there is no appropriate space available. You take the call in a hallway, hold the meeting from a café, or cancel it altogether.

Experiences like this are becoming increasingly common in workplaces designed around unassigned seating. In the years following COVID, many organizations reduced their real estate footprint and adopted flexible seating strategies to manage the uncertainty of the moment. The logic was straightforward: if fewer employees are in the office on any given day, fewer desks are needed. The math made sense. The human cost did not.

The Data Behind the Desk

But workplace design is not simply about efficiency. It is about how effectively environments support the work people actually do, and how well they accommodate future growth. Flexibility is essential in today’s fast-changing environment — but flexibility means creating spaces that can adapt without sacrificing the stability employees need to perform at their best.

Data from Gensler’s 2026 Global Workplace Survey suggests that unassigned seating may come with unintended tradeoffs. Nearly 60 percent of employees working in unassigned environments say they would prefer a dedicated workspace. That preference reflects measurable differences in how people experience the workplace.

Focus Falls. Belonging Drops. Performance Follows.

Consider what it takes to do deep, focused work. You need a reliable space, free from the low-grade anxiety of wondering whether you will have to move in an hour. In assigned environments, 80% of employees say the office effectively supports that kind of focus. In unassigned settings, the number drops to 67%. That 13-point gap is the difference between an office that enables concentration and one that quietly undermines performance.

Then there is the question of belonging. People who show up each day to the same desk, surrounded by the same colleagues, build something that is difficult to engineer through policy alone: a sense of community. Among employees with assigned seating, 87% report feeling a sense of belonging at work. In unassigned environments, the figure falls by 13% — to 74%. When people feel like visitors in their own workplace, connection suffers. The cumulative effect is significant: lower satisfaction, weaker focus, and a diminished sense of community.

These are not just experience metrics — they are performance indicators and organizations see the consequences in productivity, collaboration, and retention. The findings point to a simple but important insight: work is deeply connected to place.

When the Desk Disappears, So Does the Team

When seating becomes transient, stability begins to erode. Colleagues no longer know where to find one another. Informal conversations begin to require coordination. The spontaneous exchanges that spark new ideas and share valuable information become less frequent. The workplace begins to function less like a shared environment for collaboration and more like a place to park.

This is not a new insight. Research highlighted in Harvard Business Review on coworking and flexible workplaces reinforces this dynamic. Employees perform best when they experience autonomy, meaning, and a sense of community in their work environment. In unassigned or “hot-desking” environments, that sense of community weakens. People become temporary occupants rather than consistent members of a team. Without regular proximity, the trust and familiarity that underpin collaboration are harder to build.

The Fix Is Not Less Flexibility — It’s Smarter Balance

This does not mean design flexibility should disappear. Organizations need workplaces that are adaptable. But flexibility alone is not a strategy — it must be balanced with stability. Hybrid work does not require universal hot-desking. In practice, many organizations are finding that providing assigned seating for employees who are in the office at least three days a week creates a stronger foundation for performance, while still allowing flexibility where it is needed.

Workplace strategies must also account for growth. Too often, organizations design for today’s headcount and assume unassigned seating will absorb future demand. Over time, that approach can diminish culture and reduce the effectiveness of the workplace. Designing for change means planning for scale, flexibility, and continuity.

Now imagine a different version of that morning. You arrive, you sit down, your colleagues are around you, and the work begins. No searching. No uncertainty. No hallway calls. The most effective workplaces are not defined by forced flexibility, but by intentional balance. Assigned seating provides a stable foundation, complemented by a thoughtful mix of collaboration spaces, quiet zones, and shared amenities.

Stability and flexibility are not in tension. Organizations that understand this are already seeing the results in performance, retention, and culture. Those that continue to treat seating as a cost variable risk leaving something far more valuable on the table.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com