Activity-based working: where it fits, where it doesn't.
Activity-based working (ABW) was sold as the default workplace concept for over a decade and is now being declared a failure with the same enthusiasm. Both positions are wrong. ABW works in specific conditions and fails in others, and the determinants are clear. This article describes the conditions honestly so boards can choose with their eyes open.
What ABW actually is
ABW provides a variety of settings — focus, collaboration, social, client-facing — and lets people choose where to work based on what they're doing. People don't own desks; the building provides the right setting for the moment. Done well, it accommodates more people in less space with better fit-for-purpose work environments.
Done badly, it produces a flex floor people experience as a worse version of the office they had before.
The three conditions for ABW to work
ABW succeeds when three conditions are all met:
- Variety and quality of settings — enough genuinely different environments, all of them good.
- Cultural and managerial fit — leaders model the behaviour and managers run teams without needing assigned proximity.
- Supporting technology and protocols — friction-free booking, predictable acoustics, dependable IT, clear norms about behaviour.
Where it fails
Most ABW failures trace back to one of the three conditions being missing — usually the second. An organisation can build a beautiful ABW floor and watch it collapse within months because executives keep assigned offices, managers keep their teams clustered, and the culture treats hot-desking as a downgrade.
The failure is not technical. It's leadership signal, and it's expensive to recover from after move-in. See change management for what that recovery actually requires.
Where it clearly fits
ABW fits knowledge-economy organisations with hybrid working patterns, varied work modes, and leadership willing to model the change. It particularly fits organisations where the variety of work is genuine — consulting, professional services, tech, media — and where teams already operate without daily co-location.
Where it doesn't fit
ABW doesn't fit organisations where work is dominated by routine individual production at a single setting (most call centres, some operational functions), where teams need persistent physical proximity (trading floors, some R&D), or where leadership cannot or will not give up assigned offices. In those contexts a different concept — fixed seating, neighbourhood-based, or hybrid concepts — is more honest.
Frequently asked questions
Is ABW the same as hot-desking?
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No. Hot-desking is a single move — replacing assigned desks with unassigned ones. ABW is a portfolio of differentiated settings designed around actual work modes. ABW reduced to hot-desking is usually the failed version.
What desk ratio is realistic for ABW?
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0.5–0.7 in hybrid contexts. Below 0.5 the building feels under-provisioned at peak; above 0.7 the ABW logic doesn't show in TCO.
Should leadership keep offices in an ABW concept?
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Almost never. Executive offices in an ABW environment send the message that ABW is for others, and that message reliably destroys the concept.
How long does ABW take to land?
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Six to twelve months of active leadership reinforcement before behaviour stabilises. ABW concepts left to land on their own usually revert to informal claimed seating.
Hybrid working and the office concept: rewriting the brief
Hybrid hasn't reduced the role of the office — it's changed it. Designing a headquarters on a pre-hybrid brief produces the wrong building at the wrong cost.
Change management for a new workplace: leadership, not communications
Change management on workplace projects is usually framed as comms and training. The result is announcement followed by surprise. The real work is leadership.