Everyone’s focused on bringing people back to the office. But here’s the thing:
if the workplace tech doesn’t work, neither will your return-to-office plan.
In 2025, some companies invested in new desks. Others repainted the walls. A few even installed fresh coffee stations. But when employees returned, they were met with an old-fashioned meeting room booking process, double-booked spaces, and confusing desk booking systems. This can influence employees to choose to stay home the next time.
The truth is,
bad or outdated tech is now one of the biggest blockers to successful RTO efforts. Let’s unpack what’s going wrong—and how to fix it.
Why Employees Still Aren’t Coming In
You can mandate office days, redesign the layout, and run all the engagement surveys in the world. But if the office experience is broken, especially the tech part, people will opt out. And they are.
According to
a 2023 Gartner report, over 40% of hybrid workers cite poor in-office technology as a primary reason for avoiding their company’s physical workspace.
McKinsey also found that employees in workplaces with seamless digital experiences are 1.8x more likely to report high job satisfaction.
So what’s going wrong?
Four Tech Red Flags That Keep People Away
1. Desk booking systems that cause chaos
Imagine reserving a desk for Wednesday only to find someone else sitting there—or worse, the system crashed before you got in. Inconsistent or unreliable desk booking software breaks trust.
Real comment from an employee in a Leesman Index study
“I’ve stopped booking desks because it’s always a gamble. I just stay home if I want to focus.”
2. Meeting room tablets that never seem to work
Meeting room tablets are supposed to solve problems, not create them. But when they’re out of sync with calendars, slow to respond, or misreport room availability, people waste time hunting for spaces.
According to CBRE,
63% of employees have been unable to find a room despite seeing multiple empty ones—a sign of system breakdowns, not space shortages.
3. No visibility into who’s in the office
Employees don’t just come in for the coffee machine, they come for people. But without a system that shows who’ll be in, office days can feel lonely.
4. Tech that feels outdated and out of touch
Slow Wi-Fi, clunky logins, poor video conferencing setups—these all send the message: this isn’t a serious workspace. And that’s a deal-breaker when home setups are now better than ever.
So What Should Workplace Tech Do?
Here’s what today’s workforce expects from the tech that powers their in-office experience:
- Be seamless – One tap to book a desk. Real-time room availability. Auto-cancellation if no one shows up.
- Be reliable – No outages, syncing issues, or confusing user interfaces.
- Be insightful – Offer facilities teams real-time data on usage, trends, and comfort levels (think temperature, IAQ, occupancy).
- Be social – Help people coordinate days in, see who's around, and plan collaboration opportunities. Support team office days and make it easy to reserve spaces like meeting rooms and project areas.
- Be responsive – Update based on feedback, usage data, and workplace patterns.
And most importantly,
tech should help, not hinder—the reason people came in.
Give your employees a reason to return
No one wants to commute just to fight for a desk or troubleshoot a meeting room display. Employees will come back, but only if the office helps them work better than they can at home.
The most effective full-time RTO strategies
don’t lead with mandates. They lead with experience. And that experience starts with intuitive, dependable, human-first technology.
Let’s stop blaming employee resistance and start looking at the systems we’ve built for them.
Because in the end, return-to-office success isn’t about compliance—it’s about delivering a better workplace experience, powered by tech that works.