How fans of the office are making the commute worthwhile - and why
Tuesday, 9 June 2026
Office attendance at a market research company’s Auckland office has soared since a major refurbishment of the space, and it believes it shows the office is not dead, it just requires rethinking.
The Research Agency (TRA) has a “fully flexible” work policy that does not require staff to come into the office, but the company still opted to spend significant funds transforming its Britomart office.
And there was a sound business reason for it ‒ it wanted to help employees do their best work, TRA’s managing director Andrew Lewis said.
“Covid blew up the traditional guard rails of what office work meant, and people got used to a different way of working without the old boundaries.
Read more:
“It changed, and raised our expectations of what a workplace should be, and that’s why it has become hard to get people back into the old style office space.”
But office space that allows for human interaction, collaboration and networking sparks creativity and creates better work, he said.
“So we realised we had to think about what those changed expectations mean and respond by creating options for people, as they will make decisions based on what is the most rewarding space for them to work in.”
It was about earning people’s commute, and so the company consulted with staff extensively to find out what they wanted from their office space before embarking on the refurbishment, he said.
“We wanted a space that feels warm, human, flexible, and genuinely supportive of how our team works day-to-day. A space designed for the way work really happens.”
The end result was an office transformed from a glossy, black showroom-style space that prioritised formal client areas into a more comfortable, inviting space with fewer desks and more shared working areas.
Softer materials, warmer lighting, and improved acoustics were used, and the heart of the office is a communal “town centre” to encourage the sharing of ideas and collaboration.
Lewis said that working with architect José Gutiérrez, they had taken the best of working from home and layered it with spaces for interaction, and the sparks that come from it.
“The space acknowledges that over the course of a day we do different things, from quiet, focused work to meetings to interactions.
“It’s very different to the traditional office where everyone sits in the same place all the time, and doesn’t move around much.”
Since the refit, workplace attendance was much higher than it was previously, he said. Of the company’s 50 Auckland staff, about 30 people are now in the office each day.
“When you talk to people they say there’s the same level of comfort as at home, but it is nicer than working at home. And our latest staff engagement survey showed significant improvement in the collaboration, communication and enablement metrics.”
It was all about creating the right environment for people to do good work with ease, he said.
TRA is far from the only company to rethink office space to cater for modern working patterns and tempt people back to the office with flexible, hybrid environments.
It’s also part of the ethos behind Context Architects’ office fitouts. They have a focus on using “broken plan” layouts to create “nimbleness” for SMEs operating in spaces of 1000sqm or less.
The company’s Christchurch office provided a good example of their use of office space, and last week it was one of the winners in the interior architecture category at the NZIA Canterbury Awards.
Context head of design Alasdair Hood said that to get people back in the office an office had to be a destination and offer something the kitchen table couldn’t, without losing the comforts of working from home.
That goal was definitely driving an office design aesthetic that had a much more familiar-feeling than the tougher, commercial fitouts of the pre-Covid era, he said.
“Beyond the aesthetics, functionality is the key to attracting workers into the office. An office needs to functionally deliver well beyond what a home environment can, to make the commute worthwhile.
“That might include anything from better technology options to dedicated focus zones and social space where the benefits of collegial working are supported.”
But the real test of a workplace was how it felt day to day, and how it could accommodate a variety of tasks being carried out simultaneously, and often for SMEs, in close quarters, he said.
“In our office people choose the setting they work in based on the tasks they’re doing, and there’s plenty of choice and flexibility for that.”
For SMEs, real estate was usually the slowest-moving part of the business, he said.
“The way in which we have addressed this is to treat fitout as furniture, not fixed assets, so 85% of our Christchurch office is fully relocatable, right down to seismically rated walls that demount without leaving a footprint.
“If we grow, shrink or change direction, the workplace adapts with us. And there can be other financial advantages that come with the agility, making it a highly attractive approach if done the right way.”