Five years after the Covid-19 pandemic upended how and where people work, the idea of the home office is still in flux.
Across Los Angeles County, workplace design has moved away from dense, uniform layouts toward environments that borrow heavily from residential and hospitality settings – an effort to make the commute feel worthwhile in a hybrid era.
Softer lighting, lounge-style seating and flexible gathering spaces are no longer fringe amenities – they’re increasingly baseline expectations for employers trying to reassert the office’s relevance.
That shift has complicated the business of office construction. Toluca Lake–based GCX – specializing in commercial interior buildouts and renovations, with a focus on office environments – has seen firsthand how post-pandemic workplace projects demand more coordination, customization and cost discipline than their pre-2020 predecessors.
“There is no more one-size-fits-all,” says GCX managing partner Greg O’Connor, who co-founded the firm with fellow managing partner Jarred Walker in 2018.
Together, they manage the complete execution of workplace projects, from procurement and budgeting through construction. The two came up through commercial construction together – O’Connor as a superintendent and Walker through procurement and project management.
“That alignment allowed us to deliver projects faster, more efficiently, and with fewer surprises for clients,” Walker says. “When we started GCX, the goal was to cut out the noise that exists in a lot of construction projects and focus on what actually matters to the client — their budget, their timeline and what they’re trying to achieve.”
Traditional vs. hybrid
O’Connor and Walker’s client-first approach has become increasingly critical as workplace construction has grown more complex.
According to a 2025 McKinsey & Co. report, demand for offices – as they are currently designed – in many major cities globally is likely to remain structurally lower by 2030, as hybrid and flexible work arrangements become normalized. On average, employees are spending roughly 30% less time in the office than before the pandemic, with attendance remaining below pre-2020 levels – a sign that office space demand may not fully rebound without reimagining its function.
As companies try to entice employees back, builders and designers like GCX say the post-pandemic workplace is far more technically demanding and expensive to execute than its pre-Covid counterpart. Today’s office environments require complex mechanical systems that must accommodate fluctuating occupancy patterns. Higher material and labor costs also constrain them.
“People are still trying to figure out what’s going to work,” O’Connor says. “Companies still do not have a universal game plan for back to office.”
A 2025 report from JLL Real Estate Services noted that several factors are reshaping business investment assumptions – including policy shifts in trade, immigration and federal spending – that are “creating short-term impacts that companies must balance against long-term needs while competing for limited high-quality space and little new product.”
The report found that “as a result, builders and occupiers alike are having difficulty staying proactive and managing these challenges.”
That uncertainty complicates planning and execution, and it carries broader consequences. Without a clear strategy, companies risk higher turnover, which can have significant financial implications, particularly as competition for skilled workers remains tight and retention has become a priority for employers navigating hybrid work models.
The Society of Human Resource Management estimates average onboarding costs at nearly $4,700 per employee, before factoring in lost productivity, training time and cultural disruption. For higher-level roles, replacement costs can reach 150% of salary or more, magnifying the impact of even modest increases in attrition.
Employee satisfaction is now shaping not only design decisions but also how much space companies lease, how often employees come in and how offices are programmed day to day. A 2026 report by Circles, a Massachusetts-based employee experience company, found that the “real workplace divide” is no longer between remote and in-office work, but “between organizations offering structured flexibility and those where arrangements feel chaotic and constantly negotiated.” The report noted that 28% of hybrid employees still feel disconnected from organizational culture. At the same time, companies that provide clear frameworks with room for autonomy are more likely to build sustainable workplace models.
Full-time return
Those findings are reflected in Los Angeles, where designers say few employers are enforcing a full-time return.
“We see hybrid work being the norm for the most part,” says Sejal Sonani, managing partner at HLW, a global architecture, interior design and planning firm headquartered in New York City with offices in Santa Monica. “We have yet to meet any clients, especially in Los Angeles, that have actually enforced the full five days a week in the office.”
A Gallup poll found that in 2025, 51% of full-time, remote-capable U.S. employees worked a hybrid schedule, spending slightly less than half the workweek in the office. While more than three-quarters cited work-life balance as a key benefit, many also reported difficulty accessing resources and collaborating effectively, placing added pressure on designers and builders to create spaces that support both productivity and connection without sacrificing flexibility or employee autonomy.
“Hybrid work really only succeeds when teams clearly see the value of coming in – through collaboration, energy, mentorship and client engagement,” says David Huchteman, chief executive of Carrier Johnson + Culture, a multidisciplinary architecture and design firm headquartered in San Diego.
Office location, he adds, now matters more than ever.
“Shorter commutes and access to talent centers directly influence the success and the hit rate of return to office,” Huchteman says. “If folks are coming into the office and they’re just sitting there in front of a screen doing Teams calls and Zoom calls, they’re not seeing what that value is.”
That emphasis on making the office worth the commute is influencing how offices are designed and built. The JLL report found that organizations are prioritizing adaptable design strategies, including modular solutions that can accommodate fluctuating attendance and evolving work styles.
“Pre-2020, we had gotten into a little more prescriptive approach,” Sonani said. “There were proven trends people were still following. These days, every client has a different need, different approach, different work culture, different budget and scheduling requirements.”
‘More like home’
As office design becomes more tailored to individual cultures, the era of uniform open-plan layouts is giving way to environments modeled after hospitality and residential settings.
“We’re not seeing huge, large open workstation spaces like we were pre-Covid,” says Walker.
Local buildouts that GCX handled design for include the 21,000-square-foot home office of Calabasas-based Poms & Associates, which includes a 900-gallon fish tank; Authentic Brands Group’s 10,000-square-foot outpost in Beverly Hills; the full-service gymnasium Fred Fitness in Santa Monica; the 20,000-square-foot Century City headquarters of global consulting firm Korn Ferry; the Colliers International outpost in Woodland Hills; and Farmers Insurance Credit Union in Woodland Hills.
“Everyone wants their spaces to feel more like home or more like a hotel,” Walker says.
That shift reflects a broader cultural change.
“As a population, the home became the heart and soul of people’s livelihood during the pandemic,” says Marin Gertler, chief design officer at Carrier Johnson. “What we’re seeing now is that sensitivity people expect in their homes — comfort, warmth and human-centered design — being brought back into the workplace so it feels like a second home.”
Designers say those influences have fundamentally changed how office interiors are conceived.
“A lot of the trends we developed in residential design are now informing office environments – softer materials, hospitality influences and spaces people actually want to be in,” Gertler says. “While that direction isn’t entirely new, it was dramatically accelerated over the past five years.”
Cost of new designs
But translating those expectations into physical space comes at a cost. JLL estimates that in the first quarter of 2025, the average cost to fit out a moderate-style, medium-quality office reached $280 per square foot, with regional variation driven by labor and material pricing. The firm noted that trade tensions and shifting policies have added uncertainty to supply chains, potentially pushing up fit-out costs in the long term.
“Cost is a big one – it drives so much of the conversation,” Huchteman says. “In Los Angeles, it’s everything — labor shortages, price escalation, inflation and materials coming from overseas. All of those factors are impacting cost at the same time.”
Those pressures are often embedded in the basics of construction.
“Mechanical, electrical and plumbing represent about 70% of the cost of any given space,” Walker says. “Those are need-to-have systems, and clients are often surprised by the overall baseline cost because there’s just no getting around them.”
O’Connor says those realities require careful prioritization.
“Cost is such a big factor that it drives much of the conversation,” he says.
As a result, design decisions are increasingly made earlier in the process.
“Cost certainty is pushing design decisions much earlier,” Gertler says. “There’s a greater reliance on systems and fabrication that offer more predictability and resiliency.”
Those financial pressures are unfolding alongside growing awareness of the human costs of workplace disconnection. A recent Glassdoor survey indicated that burnout among U.S. professionals has escalated to unprecedented levels, with burnout mentioned in employee reviews up 32% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025 and up 50% since the fourth quarter of 2019. The findings suggest that prolonged hybrid and remote arrangements, when poorly structured, can intensify stress rather than alleviate it.
The World Health Organization defines burnout as a “syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”
Circles estimates that U.S. businesses incur $154 billion annually in stress-related absenteeism linked to isolation and disengagement, highlighting how employee well-being has become a measurable business concern rather than a soft cultural issue.
Harvard Business Review has also warned that loneliness can erode trust and team cohesion, undermining innovation and performance.
Designers argue that physical space can help counteract those trends by fostering informal interaction, visibility and a greater sense of belonging. Gertler said today’s offices aim to create environments that “humanize what were once cold, corporate spaces and make people more comfortable spending time there.”
“It requires a lot of upfront thinking about what’s going to provide the greatest impact and value to the overall design,” O’Connor says.
