Redefining office space use in the post CCO era
By Frederick Pilot
October 7, 2025
Return to office (RTO) policies have created controversy, framed as a set to between executive leadership wanting staff to work in centralized, commute in offices (CCOs) and staff preferring to work in their home offices as they did during the public health restrictions during the pandemic years.
RTO mandates have been used to encourage resignations as a blunt personnel reduction strategy, sending the message if you don’t put in office attendance you don’t belong in the organization and should move on.
Another way to view RTO is future shock. As information and communications technology (ICT) and personal devices grew increasingly sophisticated and useful over the preceding four decades starting with the personal computer in the 1980s, it was becoming increasingly clear that they would disrupt the office as it had been known. No longer would daily office attendance with the often time and energy sucking commute be necessary.
The majority of knowledge organizations however didn’t adjust to this slowly emerging reality until the pandemic restrictions forced them to do so and in a space of just two years. The future of knowledge work had arrived but too quickly for organizations to adjust.
So many adopted RTO to lessen the shock. That’s not necessarily maladaptive, but a natural reversion to the known and familiar. That creates a pause to allow time to figure out how to go forward — and not going backward per se.
What’s truly adaptive is recognizing the primary impact of ICT: that knowledge workers no longer must necessarily report to CCOs because that’s the only location where the tools they needed to work were situated. Now they are portable and can communicate easily. That requires rethinking the use of office space and determining its best and most logical use going forward.
One model that looks promising is that of Stamford, Connecticut–based Synchrony, a branded credit card issuer.
According to this item posted October 6, 2025 at Fast Company, the company’s 20,000 employees work in their home offices and at company offices “when in person gatherings occur for training, leadership meetings, innovation sessions, and culture-building events.”
That redefines the office from a regular workplace in their traditional sense to an event driven gathering venue. There, both the presence in the office and the transportation of staff to get there is defined by a specific business purpose and not just showing up. That provides a guiding vision for the post pandemic future, offering a useful template to knowledge organizations experiencing future shock.