Work From Home Didn’t Kill the Office — It Changed What Work Is

When offices emptied in 2020, the story sounded simple. Work moved home. Offices became redundant. Cities would hollow out. Productivity would collapse or soar, depending on who you asked.

None of that fully happened.

What actually broke wasn’t work. It was a set of assumptions that had quietly shaped business for decades.

Before COVID, offices served multiple roles at once. They were places where work happened, but also where control was exercised, culture was signalled, careers were shaped, and legitimacy was displayed. When work moved home, those functions didn’t disappear. They detached from the building.

That separation is the real shift.

Take Goldman Sachs. Its leadership pushed hard for a return to the office, arguing collaboration, training, and culture suffered remotely. At the same time, firms like Shopify declared themselves “digital by default,” shrinking office footprints and hiring globally. These weren’t productivity experiments. They were different beliefs about what work fundamentally is: presence versus output.

The data showed something uncomfortable for traditional management. In many knowledge roles, output didn’t collapse. What struggled instead were management models built on visibility. When leaders couldn’t see people working, they often couldn’t tell whether work was happening. Organisations that measured outcomes adapted. Those that relied on supervision stalled.

This is why the work-from-home debate often feels emotional. It’s not about desks. It’s about control.

But WFH didn’t remove costs. It redistributed them.

Office rent, heating, lighting, cleaning, and equipment were reduced on corporate balance sheets. Those costs reappeared in homes. Employees paid higher energy bills, sacrificed space, upgraded internet, and absorbed isolation costs that never showed up in productivity dashboards. For some workers, flexibility was liberating. For others, it was a quiet transfer of infrastructure responsibility.

Hybrid work amplified these differences.

On paper, hybrid models promised the best of both worlds. In practice, they often created two classes of workers. Those physically present gained informal access, influence, and promotion opportunities. Those remote gained flexibility but lost visibility. Studies across US and European firms began to show proximity bias creeping back in, even when performance was equal.

The office didn’t die. It became a filter.

For businesses, this created a new strategic question: what is the office for now?

Many firms discovered they no longer needed space for daily production but still needed it for signalling. Offices became places for onboarding, client reassurance, investor confidence, and periodic alignment. In sectors like consulting and finance, office presence reassured clients that “serious work” was happening, even if most actual work occurred elsewhere.

The office shifted from operational infrastructure to symbolic infrastructure.

This shift rippled outward.

City centres built around commuter density suffered immediate shock. Lunch cafés, dry cleaners, gyms, transport operators, and small retailers lost predictable footfall. In contrast, suburban and residential areas saw daytime spending rise. Local cafés filled. Home-delivery services expanded. Consumption didn’t disappear. It relocated.

This is why the work-from-home story looks different depending on where you stand. For a city café owner, it looked like collapse. For a neighbourhood coffee shop, it looked like growth.

WFH didn’t destroy demand. It redistributed it.

Small businesses adapted faster than large ones. Without legacy real estate, smaller firms hired remotely, reduced overheads, and competed for talent without matching big-city salaries. In some industries, scale advantages flipped. Flexibility beat footprint.

Meanwhile, labour geography changed.

Workers left expensive cities. Businesses hired across regions and borders. In countries like United Kingdom and United States, this began reshaping housing markets, local tax bases, and wage expectations. A role once priced for London or San Francisco started competing with talent from lower-cost regions.

This didn’t just affect pay. It affected identity.

Work used to anchor people to places, routines, and social networks. Remote work loosened those ties. For some, that meant freedom. For others, detachment. Companies began to notice weaker loyalty, faster job switching, and a more transactional relationship with employers.

Flexibility increased autonomy but often reduced belonging.

This created another tension for founders and executives. Some value speed, serendipity, and informal alignment that physical proximity supports. Others value focus, cost efficiency, and access to wider talent pools. The return-to-office debate often reflects leadership preference as much as business necessity.

There is no single correct model.

The uncomfortable reality is that work itself has fragmented. Some tasks benefit from co-location. Others don’t. Some people thrive remotely. Others don’t. Trying to force a single answer creates friction.

The long-term shift isn’t toward offices or homes. It’s toward intentional design.

Firms that treat work as outcomes supported by systems are adapting. Firms that treat work as attendance enforced by space are struggling.

Cities are adapting too, slowly. Some are rethinking zoning, converting office space into housing, and redesigning centres for mixed-use life rather than nine-to-five density. Others are trying to rewind the clock.

The clock won’t rewind.

Work from home didn’t kill the office. It exposed what offices were really doing.

They were never just places to work. They were tools for control, coordination, signalling, and social structure. Now those functions are being unbundled.

Some will move online. Some will stay physical. Some will disappear.

What replaces them won’t look like the past. It will look uneven, hybrid, and negotiated — shaped by cost structures, management capability, community economics, and human psychology.

The future of work isn’t remote or office-based.

It’s contested.

And that contest is reshaping businesses, cities, careers, and communities in ways that will still be unfolding long after the pandemic fades from memory.