As employers adapt to remote work, the biggest question facing them is what to do with their physical offices. Even before the pandemic, many employers had begun questioning the wisdom of open-plan offices, which became popular in the past two decades. With employees seated in close quarters side by side and sharing kitchens and break areas, the offices enabled constant distractions. Once the pandemic hit, they also proved potentially lethal. Now, many companies are questioning the worth of offices at all. Tech companies, including Twitter, Facebook and Shopify, have said they will let many employees work from home permanently. Pinterest paid $89.5 million to cancel a new planned office space in San Francisco, saying more of its employees were going to work remotely in the future. But going fully remote carries its own set of problems.

       New employees and those in search of mentorship will have a hard time at a company if they’ve never met their colleagues in person； if people can’t chat often with colleagues, they trust them less, according to a study from business school professors at Columbia and Northwestern Universities. Remote work can also deal a blow to employees’ mental health； when Ctrip, a Chinese company, let more than 100 employees work from home for four days a week starting in 2010, they were happy for three months, but within nine months, about half wanted to return to the office, according to a study.

       That’s why some business owners are still investing in offices； they are just building a different kind of office. John Sweeden, who runs a small software firm in Oklahoma, broke ground last month on a new office building on a 25-acre plot. The complex is on land that costs a whole lot less than real estate in a crowded city center. Though it’s an office space, much of it will be “a place where zero work gets done,” he says. There will be a large salon for socializing； employees will be encouraged to spend hours there, talking about anything.