Your RTO Strategy Isn’t Failing. Your Midday Experience Is

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Every return-to-office strategy faces a competitor that didn’t meaningfully exist five years ago: a comfortable home office with no commute and greater flexibility. Today, most employees aren’t comparing your office to another office; they’re comparing it to home. 

The workplace experience has become just as important as the work itself. Yet many organizations continue to approach return-to-office primarily as a policy challenge rather than an experience challenge. Conversations about attendance requirements, flexibility guidelines, and manager discretion matter, but they only go so far. Because when employees come into the office, they’re really making a value calculation: Is the experience worth the trip? 

 The Untapped Power of Midday 

What I’ve come to believe is that one of the biggest opportunities in return-to-office isn’t found in policy; instead, it’s found in the middle of the day. The stretch between late morning and early afternoon has an outsized impact on how employees feel about being onsite. It’s where relationships are built, energy is restored, and ideas are exchanged.  

Yet in many organizations, the middle of the day is left to chance. People scatter, eat alone, or leave the office altogether. The result is a workplace that functions efficiently but fails to create connections. For all the attention paid to office design and return-to-office policies, too little is devoted to the experiences that make being onsite worthwhile. 

JLL’s 2025 Workforce Preference Barometer found that nearly 40% of employees believe their workplace experience needs improvement. In other words, many employees are telling employers that the office has not yet earned the commute. Food and beverage experiences consistently rank among the most valued workplace offerings. Not because employees are looking for free lunches, but because they’re looking for reasons to believe the office offers something they can’t get at home. 

 Facilities managers and HR leaders are quickly recognizing that a thoughtfully designed midday experience can influence dwell time, collaboration, and workplace satisfaction. The goal isn’t simply feeding people, it’s creating moments of connection, convenience, routine, and belonging. 

Designing Reasons to Stay 

One downtown Chicago office tower we work with offers a good example. An underutilized café was transformed into a hospitality-driven gathering space featuring chef-created menu experiences, culinary showcases, wine programming, and community activations. The objective wasn’t foodservice; it was to create a destination inside the building that encouraged employees to stay, interact, and engage during the middle of the day. The results were telling. What began as a dining venue became a social hub. 

We’ve seen similar outcomes through recurring tenant experiences such as seasonal tasting events, Mardi Gras celebrations, summer barbecue pop-ups, trivia competitions, karaoke events, and sports-themed activations. Attendance quickly became a catalyst for interaction among employees who otherwise may never have connected. 

Importantly, these experiences create something many organizations desperately need: opportunities for human interaction that aren’t tied to another meeting invitation. 

Convenience matters as well. We’ve partnered with clients to redesign traditional grab-and-go programs to function more like curated retail experiences. The differences include better product quality, all-day availability, and more engaging merchandising. The result? Increased participation and reduced number of employees leaving the building during the workday. 

The lessons weren’t only about food; they were about friction. People are more likely to remain engaged when the workplace makes their day easier, not harder. 

 We’re also seeing organizations use hospitality programming to activate slower building occupancy days. Book clubs, local business partnerships, seasonal events, chef demonstrations, and community gatherings provide additional reasons for employees to choose the office when attendance might otherwise lag. 

The ROI of Connection 

Almost every company is already investing heavily in talent acquisition, retention, office space, technology, and culture-building initiatives. Hospitality experiences help unlock greater value from those investments by creating more opportunities for employees to connect, collaborate, and engage with the workplace. That’s why the return on investment shows up in a Café P&L, as well as increased space utilization and improved tenant and employee satisfaction. 

The most effective leaders understand that workplace culture is rarely built through policy alone. It’s built through experiences, a shared meal, a spontaneous discussion, and a celebration that breaks up the routine. The moments employees remember are often the ones that never appear on their calendar. 

That’s why return-to-office discussions need to evolve. The question is no longer how to get employees back into the office; it’s what kind of experience awaits them when they arrive. 

Home has become a legitimate competitor in the workplace. Organizations that acknowledge that reality and intentionally design experiences that foster connection, energy, and belonging will have an advantage over those that continue relying primarily on policy. 

Marc Hinson is Chief People Officer at Phoenix3 Collective and Infuse Hospitality, which provides corporate dining and hospitality management services. He has more than three decades of experience building people-first cultures across the hospitality, restaurant, and real estate industries, including some of the country’s most recognized multi-concept restaurant brands.

The Cost of One More Chance: Because You Can’t Run a Business from Hope Island

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One of the more common leadership mistakes I have observed throughout my career is not making bad decisions. It is delaying decisions that leaders already know they need to make. In most cases, underperformance is not a surprise. Leaders see it and discuss it; yet months and sometimes years pass before meaningful action is taken. It’s based on the belief that the next quarter will be better, the next project will go smoother, or the next promise will finally be fulfilled.

I sometimes refer to this as living on Hope Island. The organization knows there is a problem, but instead of addressing it, leadership becomes convinced that the next time will somehow produce a different outcome.

Building a business without optimism is nearly impossible. But hope is not a substitute for accountability, and it certainly is not a strategy.

The Cost of Staying

What prompted me to think about this were several situations I have heard about over the last year that share a remarkably similar outcome. Different organizations. Different industries. Different circumstances. Yet the decision-making process followed a very familiar pattern.

In each case, opportunities for improvement had been identified. Alternative approaches had been explored. The need for better performance was not in question. Yet when it came time to make a decision, leadership ultimately chose to stay the course and hope performance improved.

I get it. Replacing a long-standing partner can create disruption, introduce uncertainty, and requires time, energy, and effort. Continuing the existing relationship often feels easier. The reality is that staying has a cost too, and in many cases, that cost exceeds the disruption of making a change.

Years ago, I found myself making a similar mistake. Our organization was working with a web services provider that had been a good partner for many years. The relationship was positive, and the platform had served us well during early stages of growth. The challenge was that our business had evolved faster than their capabilities.

Reporting functionality was limited. New features we needed were not being developed. Integration opportunities were becoming increasingly important, but the platform could not support them.  My team recognized the problem, yet we stayed longer than we should have. Not because the provider was performing poorly, but because they were no longer positioned to help us get where we needed to go.

Looking back, I realized the true cost was not what we were paying. The real cost was the opportunities we were missing. We delayed improvements, postponed efficiencies, and limited our ability to capitalize on new opportunities because we were reluctant to make a difficult change.

That experience taught me an important lesson: sometimes a partner can continue delivering acceptable performance while simultaneously holding an organization back from achieving its full potential.

The reality is that this isn’t just a leadership problem. It’s a human one. Most of us have spent time on Hope Island ourselves. We stay on the same cell phone provider long after a better option exists. We continue using the lawn company that doesn’t do a great job because finding a replacement feels inconvenient. We stick with advisors, contractors and doctors that no longer meet our expectations because the familiarity feels more comfortable than making a change. In both business and life, we often tolerate situations that are merely acceptable because change feels uncertain.

Not Being Served

A friend recently shared a story that reinforced this lesson. For years, he worked with the same insurance broker and never questioned the relationship. Every renewal conversation was positive, coverage appeared adequate and pricing seemed reasonable. There was no obvious reason to look elsewhere.

Eventually, he decided to seek a second opinion. What he discovered was not fraud or misconduct. In fact, the broker had done many things well. The issue was that opportunities to improve coverage had been overlooked, cost-saving options had never been explored, and recommendations that should have been made years earlier were never brought forward.

His observation was simple but powerful. “I wasn’t being defrauded. But I certainly wasn’t being served.” That distinction matters. Many underperforming relationships are not disasters. They are simply relationships where expectations have stopped evolving, accountability has diminished, and performance is no longer being measured against what is possible.

Performance, Not Promises

One of the most dangerous questions leaders ask is: “Should we give them another chance?” A far better question is: “Have they earned another chance?” The distinction is important because promises and performance are not the same thing. Promises create optimism while performance creates confidence.

Exceptional leaders understand that confidence should be earned through measurable action, demonstrated results, and sustained improvement over time. They do not make decisions solely on what a partner says they will do. They evaluate what has actually been done.

The strongest organizations maintain high standards because they understand that accountability protects the interests of everyone involved, including employees, customers, residents, patients, and stakeholders.

Creating a New Standard of Accountability

One lesson I have learned over the years is that accountability should never depend on contract renewal discussions, annual reviews, complaints, or subjective opinions about whether things seem to be going well. Performance should be visible.

That belief has heavily influenced how we have built Phoenix3 Collective and why we invested so heavily in developing a proprietary technology platform focused on complete transparency around the metrics that matter most to our clients. We establish expectations upfront. We define key performance indicators together. We align on what success looks like and provide ongoing visibility into performance against those expectations.

When performance is transparent, accountability becomes part of the relationship rather than a difficult conversation at the end of it. Quite frankly, that is how every business partnership should operate.

The goal is not to wait until someone is asking whether a provider deserves one more chance. The goal is to ensure that everyone knows exactly how performance is tracking long before that question ever needs to be asked. Transparency creates accountability and accountability creates performance. Most importantly, it eliminates a trip to Hope Island in the first place.

Richard B. Schenkel, Founder and CEO of Phoenix3 Collective LLC