Collaboration Has Changed — Has Your Workplace?
For decades, collaboration had a physical address: the boardroom.
It was a space defined by hierarchy, fixed layouts and presence. The people in the room held the floor. The screen sat at the front. The table anchored authority.
That model no longer reflects how work happens.
Collaboration now moves fluidly between office and remote environments, between formal meetings and informal project work, between scheduled discussions and spontaneous problem-solving. In a single meeting, participants may join from a desk, a collaboration zone, a home office or another country entirely.
Yet many workplaces are still designed around outdated assumptions of presence rather than participation.
And that’s where inequity begins.
From Physical Presence to True Participation
In hybrid environments, inclusion is no longer just a cultural initiative — it is a spatial and technological challenge.
When remote participants struggle to hear clearly, when cameras favour in-room attendees, or when spaces only support one style of interaction, collaboration becomes uneven. Over time, this imbalance influences confidence, contribution and even career progression.
Designing for hybrid inclusion means shifting the question from “How many people fit in this room?” to “Can everyone contribute equally?”
This requires thoughtful integration of layout, acoustics, furniture flexibility and technology. Sightlines matter. Audio clarity matters. The ability to reconfigure space for different group sizes matters.
But before redesign begins, there is a more fundamental issue:
Do you actually know how your collaboration spaces are being used?
Designing for Behaviour, Not Hierarchy
Many organisations discover the same pattern when they look closely at utilisation insight.
Large boardrooms sit underused while smaller rooms are constantly booked. Hybrid-enabled spaces exist, but adoption is inconsistent. Informal collaboration areas may be beautifully designed but rarely occupied.
Without evidence, workplace strategy becomes shaped by seniority, tradition or assumption.
True inclusion means designing around real behaviour.
It means understanding the size of groups that actually meet. It means identifying peak booking patterns. It means recognising how often hybrid participation occurs versus fully in-person gatherings.
When organisations base design decisions on behaviour rather than hierarchy, collaboration spaces begin to reflect how work truly happens.
Seeing the Full Picture of Workplace Movement
Designing equitable collaboration environments requires more than intuition — and more than a single data source.
Many organisations rely heavily on desk sensor data, booking systems or badge entry records to understand occupancy. Each of these provides valuable insight, but each tells only part of the story.
Desk sensors show when someone is physically at their workstation.
Booking systems show intent.
Door or gate data confirms building entry.
But none of these explain what happens in between.
The most revealing insight often lies with the “away from position” population — the people who are not at their desks but are still actively working, collaborating, mentoring or problem-solving elsewhere in the workplace.
These individuals may be gathered in breakout areas, working in project rooms, using quiet focus booths, meeting informally between scheduled sessions or spending extended time in social hubs. If organisations only measure desk occupancy, they risk misinterpreting vibrant collaboration as absence.
In many workplaces, the canteen has quietly evolved into one of the most active collaboration zones in the building. No longer just a place for lunch, it has become a setting for cross-team conversation, informal mentoring, project alignment and culture-building moments. If these areas are excluded from surveys or utilisation analysis, a critical component of collaboration behaviour goes unseen.
This is where Accordant enables a more complete understanding.
By overlaying multiple utilisation sources — including desk sensors, booking platforms, badge or gate data, network connections and structured human observations — Accordant provides a layered, accurate view of workplace activity.
Human observation is particularly powerful in bridging the gaps between static data points. It captures spontaneous gatherings, transitional movement between zones and patterns of use that technology alone may miss. It shows not just whether people are present, but how they are interacting with space.
Through visual workplace mapping, Accordant allows organisations to see these patterns directly on floor plans. Leadership teams can identify where collaboration naturally occurs, rebalance formal and informal environments, reallocate oversized meeting rooms and protect high-value social zones that support inclusion.
When “away from desk” behaviour is understood, collaboration strategy becomes more accurate and more equitable.
Because inclusion isn’t just about who is in the building.
It’s about where they feel able to connect.
The Future of Collaboration Is Deliberate
Hybrid collaboration is not a temporary adjustment. It is a structural evolution of how organisations operate.
The workplaces that succeed in this environment will not simply add more screens or upgrade technology. They will intentionally design spaces that support equitable participation, informed by real usage patterns and aligned with cultural goals.
Collaboration may have left the boardroom.
The question now is whether workplace design will evolve with it.