You've invested in collaborative spaces, upgraded the coffee machine, and even started offering free breakfast on Wednesdays. You're doing everything right to motivate employees to return to the office, right? Not necessarily. While well-intentioned, that enticing breakfast spread could be secretly sabotaging your hybrid work model and employee engagement.

Here's the surprising truth: offering breakfast on a specific day can actually harm your office experience and overall work efficiency.

This blog post is based on interviews with over 300 organisations and collecting information on how they facilitate hybrid work and support collaboration.

The unforeseen consequences of "breakfast wednesdays"

While seemingly a great perk, providing breakfast on a single day creates an artificial incentive for employees to come in on that specific day, regardless of their actual work needs. This leads to:

• Overcrowding and Frustration: Instead of a steady flow throughout the week, you get a Wednesday morning rush. With many companies embracing shared desks and rightsizing their office space, this sudden surge can lead to employees struggling to find a workspace, resulting in frustration and lost productivity.

• Biased Attendance: Employees may choose Wednesday for the free food, even if another day would be more conducive to their tasks or team collaboration. This can disrupt project timelines and hinder effective communication. Even though often idea is to bring people to the office that would otherwise be reluctant to come, the ones that would come anyway might just switch their office days based on not business needs but the availability of a free breakfast.

• Diminished Value of In-Office Time: When the primary motivation for coming in becomes the free breakfast, the true purpose of the office – collaboration, connection, and focused work – gets diluted.

How to get employees to the office (the right way)

Instead of relying on short-term incentives like free food, focus on creating a truly engaging and productive office experience:

• Foster a Culture of Collaboration: Organize team-building activities, workshops, and brainstorming sessions that leverage the power of in-person interaction.

• Provide Purposeful Workspaces: Design your office with a variety of spaces that cater to different work styles – from quiet zones for focused work to collaborative areas for team projects.

• Embrace Flexibility: Offer genuine flexibility in work arrangements, allowing employees to choose the days that best suit their individual needs and work schedules.

• Prioritize Employee Well-being: Create a comfortable and inspiring workspace that promotes employee well-being and makes coming to the office a positive experience.

Improve office experience and collaboration, not just attendance

The key to a successful hybrid work model lies in creating an office environment that truly adds value to employees' work lives. Focus on fostering a sense of community, purpose, and productivity, and you'll find employees naturally gravitating towards the office – no breakfast required.

Studies show that when asked about primary driver to select an office day, a clear majority of employees say that they select office days based on colleagues attendance or work tasks. Alternative drivers and motivators such as lunch present typically less than 10% of prime drivers reported by employees.

If colleagues and work related tasks are the ones driving people to office, why wouldn’t you focus on better facilitate those two needs instead of introducing a non-related drives that overrides potentially the main work related drivers?