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We are currently witnessing a massive shift in workplace strategy. While many leaders initially thought hybrid work was a temporary pitstop, it is becoming clear that a structured 3-day office week is emerging as the new global standard. Major players like Barclays and Google are settling on this “sweet spot” to balance collaboration with flexibility.
But for many managers, this shift has exposed a glaring problem. You want your teams together for culture and innovation, but you are facing resistance. The problem might not be the work—it might be the where.
According to CBRE’s Global Workplace Insights, while 45% of companies now require employees to be in the office three or more days per week, 81% of participants report that leadership expectations and actual employee behaviors are not in sync.
Why the disconnect? It comes down to the Hybrid Hypocrisy: mandating a schedule that ignores the punishing reality of the commute.
The Hybrid Hypocrisy
The logic seems sound: come in three days for “collaboration” and work from home two days for “focus.” However, when your office is located in a congested city centre, the math changes.
If an employee spends three hours commuting round-trip to attend video calls they could have taken from home, the value proposition of the office collapses. In major EU capitals like Paris, Budapest, and Amsterdam, residents report the longest commuting times, with Parisians commuting 31 minutes longer per day than those in the rest of France.
This creates a friction where the “culture” you are trying to build is eroded by the exhaustion of getting there. As recent research highlights, employees who deal with heavy traffic and unpredictable delays experience heightened stress levels, which directly correlates to burnout and “flight risk”. If your team arrives at the central hub drained, they are engaging in “productivity theater”—coffee badging just to be seen—rather than doing deep work.
The Commute as a Hidden Tax
We need to stop viewing the commute as a personal choice and start viewing it as an employment tax. It is an invisible pay cut that costs your employees two resources they cannot get back: time and money.
- The Time Tax: The average worker in major cities loses between one to two hours daily in transit. Over a year, this accumulates to hundreds of hours of lost productivity or personal downtime.
- The Financial Tax: Between fuel, tolls, and fares, the cost of accessing a central business district is rising.
- The “Happiness” Tax: There is a direct link between commute dissatisfaction and lower workplace happiness.
The resistance to the 3-day mandate isn’t just about “wanting to stay home in pyjamas.” It is an economic calculation. In fact, the desire for flexibility is so strong that 48% of European workers would accept an 8% pay cut just to maintain flexible working arrangements. If your employees are willing to earn less to avoid the commute, forcing them back to an expensive, hard-to-reach central hub without a clear purpose is a recipe for high turnover.
The Suburban Solution: Decentralising Your Footprint
If the 3-day week is the “sweet spot” for collaboration, but the commute is the enemy, what is the solution?
For leaders like Pierre and Amélie, the answer may lie in moving the work closer to the worker. This is the Hub-and-Spoke model. Instead of forcing everyone into a singular, expensive central headquarters (the Hub), forward-thinking companies are utilising satellite offices (Spokes) located on the periphery or “ring roads” of major cities.
This isn’t about abandoning the office; it is about strategically relocating it.
- Reducing Friction: Decentralised workspaces significantly reduce commute times. By offering a professional environment closer to where employees actually live (like Workways locations in Brussels Airport or Paris Val d’Europe), you convert a stressful 90-minute trek into a manageable 20-minute drive or cycle.
- Repurposing the “Office”: CBRE reports that 58% of employees go to the office specifically for connection and community, not solo work. A suburban hub allows for this connection without the “tax” of a long commute. It supports the “moments that matter”—brainstorming and team building—without the logistical nightmare.
- Sustainability & Cost: Adopting a hub-and-spoke model isn’t just good for morale; it reduces a company’s carbon footprint by cutting vehicle emissions from long commutes. Furthermore, 43% of companies plan to reduce their portfolio size by more than 30% in the next three years to optimise costs. Moving away from expensive city-centre leases to flexible suburban locations aligns perfectly with this trend.
Conclusion: Is Your Location the Problem?
The data suggests that the future of work is not about eliminating the office, but about optimising where it is. If your hybrid policy feels like a battle, look at a map. Are you asking your team to pay a high “commute tax” for a 3-day mandate that could be satisfied in a more accessible location?
A Strategic Shift: Why We Chose the Ring Road
This specific friction is exactly why we didn’t choose our locations by accident; we chose them by analysing the commute data. Recognising that capitals like Dublin and Paris suffer from some of the highest traffic congestion and lost time in Europe, we made a deliberate decision to position Workways spaces—such as Brussels Airport, Paris Val d’Europe, and Dublin Belgard—on strategic ring roads rather than in the city core.
By adopting this Hub-and-Spoke approach, we aim to intercept the commute before it becomes a grind, offering professional collaboration spaces that are accessible without the “city centre tax”. It is about removing the logistical barriers that make the 3-day mandate feel like a burden, ensuring that when your team travels to work, they arrive ready to collaborate, not recover.
Before you send your next email enforcing a return to a central HQ, we challenge you to survey your team with this single question: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much does our current office location detract from your overall job satisfaction?”
Their answers might just map out your next strategic move. The companies that win the talent war will be those that turn the commute from a barrier into a non-issue.