Over Half of London’s Startup and Scaleup Leaders Want More In-Person Work. But Why?

While remote working has continued to thrive post-pandemic, the tide seems to be turning towards office attendance.

And are we surprised? Every week, another tech giant’s CEO shouts the benefits of office work from the rooftops. (We’re looking at you, Dell).

But what about the leaders of London’s startup and scaleup scene? Hubble found that over half (52%) of CEOs, Founders and C-level decision-makers want their teams in offices more.

There are multiple key drivers of this trend. In this article, we reveal them—using insights from our Workspace Satisfaction Report 2025!

Why lean more towards ‘office-based’ work?

For our survey, we asked more than 125 startup and scaleup leaders their opinions on what’s working, what isn’t, and what they’d like to change about their chosen workspace strategy.

Out of the respondents who opted to return to the pre-pandemic norm of working full-time in the office, a whopping 86% said they would not change their approach in 2025.

So, if we look at their top reasons for choosing a fully office-based strategy, we can start to understand why leaders at other companies may want to follow suit.

Culture & relationship building

For many office-based companies, in-person interactions are key to building relationships and maintaining a strong company culture—especially for new hires or early-stage businesses.

This explains why plenty of hybrid and remote companies still carve out opportunities for their teams to meet and work in person.

For example, 42% of all hybrid leaders in our survey have set office days for their teams, and 71% of remote companies offer company-wide socials, making it the most common in-person activity.

However, a big challenge for both hybrid and remote companies is building a cohesive team culture. For the respondents in our survey, this can be harder with limited in-person interactions.

This could explain why 39% of hybrid companies are leaning more towards office-based work this year, and 19% of remote companies are considering a similar move.

Collaboration & efficiency

Another reason companies are embracing more office-based work is how easy it is to collaborate.

Offices are great for facilitating organic chats and solving issues immediately—especially for sales, account management, and customer support teams.

A CEO of a fully office-based company with 10–49 employees echoed this sentiment. They wrote:

Proximity & workspace commitment

Working near the office helps maintain work-home boundaries and reinforces commitment to the workspace.

For example, the risk of letting work bleed into relaxation time is significantly lessened, as your home is not the main place where you get work done. The dedicated office is, and that can work wonders for achieving a healthy work-life balance.

This could be why the majority of hybrid leaders in our survey (48%) choose to work “mostly from the office, sometimes at home”. For fully office-based leaders, this figure (unsurprisingly) sits at 56%.

Engagement & alignment

For some leaders, remote work can reduce employee engagement and weaken connections to business goals. One fully office-based leader in our survey reflected on these sentiments, saying:

This attitude toward in-person work highlights its key benefits, which many leaders in our survey pointed out. When asked about the perceived advantages of each strategy, fully office-based leaders mentioned:

• High energy: A lively, densely packed environment that boosts team energy and fosters better information flow.
• Productivity boost: In-person work is viewed as more productive and efficient.

Could this be why fully office-based companies in our survey had the highest satisfaction score? They averaged 7.7 out of 10, compared to 7.3 for hybrid and 7.5 for remote setups.

Desk underutilisation

The set-day hybrid approach—where companies pick specific office days like Tuesdays and Thursdays—was the most popular, with 42% opting for it.

But despite its popularity, it had the lowest satisfaction score, averaging just 6 out of 10.

This is likely due to the cost of unused space on non-office days. Or, as we like to call it, empty desk syndrome. This is when businesses commit to a set amount of office space for a set amount of time, regardless of their usage requirements. 

Not only does this leave C-level executives with a poor office ROI, but it can also contribute to low satisfaction rates surrounding the overall strategy.

This could be why more leaders are considering mandating their staff back into offices this year.

Download our FREE report for even more data!

Keen to delve further into the minds of London’s top startup and scaleup leaders? Our full Workspace Satisfaction Report covers a lot of ground.

We spoke with leaders to get their take on what’s working, what’s not, and what’s next when it comes to their workspace strategies. They shared some fascinating insights on topics like:

• Hybrid, remote, or office-based — where are teams and leaders actually working these days?
• The real pros and cons of each approach
• Do leaders really want employees back in the office more often?
• How are they managing office attendance policies?
• And what changes are they planning over the next year?