The Dugout Theory
My son didn’t touch the field during his baseball game this past weekend.
Neither did his pitching partner.
They weren’t even in the bullpen.
But don’t you dare tell me they weren’t in the game.
I watched them hang off the dugout fence, warming up outfielders between innings, grabbing bats, and cheering — relentlessly, loudly — for every single teammate. When the team clawed back from a deficit, they were the ones keeping the energy alive. And when it was finally over? They were the first ones out of the dugout, orchestrating the Gatorade ice bath for the coach — raising the moment, toasting their leader, making that win unforgettable for everyone who was there.
It’s the kind of scene you want to photograph. Pure, unscripted joy. Camaraderie that doesn’t need a team-building consultant to manufacture it.
And it hit me, standing there on the sideline, probably getting sunscreen on my sunglasses as usual, this is exactly what’s missing from most return-to-office strategies.
You can mandate the commute. You cannot mandate the feeling of belonging to something.
The Problem Isn’t the Policy. It’s the Experience.
Companies have been trying to solve the wrong problem.
The conversation is almost always exclusively about how many days, which days, badge swipes, and desk ratios. And I get it. There are real business reasons behind those decisions. But here’s what the data is screaming, and too few people are listening to:
- Only 23% of employees say they feel a strong sense of belonging at work. (Gallup, 2024)
- Teams with high belonging scores show 56% better job performance, 50% lower turnover risk, and 75% fewer sick days. (Harvard Business Review)
- The #1 reason employees say they come to the office willingly? To collaborate and connect with colleagues, not to sit at a desk doing work they could do at home. (Microsoft Work Trend Index, 2024)
Read that last one again.
People will commute. People will sit in traffic, pay for parking, heat up sad leftovers in a communal microwave, if the office offers them something they can’t replicate at home.
What they can’t replicate at home is belonging. And most offices aren’t designed for that.
Every Role Matters: But Does Your Office Know That?
Back to the dugout for a second.
My son wasn’t pitching. He wasn’t batting. By every traditional metric used to evaluate a baseball game, he wasn’t contributing. And yet, the team needed him. The coach needed him. The energy of that win belonged to him as much as anyone who touched the field.
The celebration was for everyone.
Now ask yourself: Does your office work that way?
Does the entry-level employee who spent three hours prepping the slide deck get a moment of recognition before the senior partner walks into the room? Does the operations coordinator who kept the logistics together for the big client pitch get to feel that win? Or do they return to a workstation tucked in a corner, headphones on, invisible?
Here’s the workplace design reality: most offices were built for function, not for feeling. They were designed around how work gets done, not around how people feel while doing it. The result is environments that are perfectly efficient and deeply lonely.
- 44% of employees report feeling lonely at work — up significantly since the pandemic shifted collaboration norms. (Cigna Loneliness Index)
- Employees who feel their contributions are recognized are 2.7 times more likely to be highly engaged. (Gallup)
Recognition isn’t just an HR initiative. It’s a spatial strategy. The question is whether your physical environment creates the conditions for those moments, or silently suffocates them.
The office doesn’t need to compete with the living room. It needs to offer something the living room will never have: a team in your corner.
What ‘Belonging by Design’ Actually Looks Like
At HF Planners, we talk a lot about earning the commute, the idea that the office has to justify the trip. But I’d take that a step further. The office must earn the emotional investment.
That means thinking beyond square footage and furniture specs. It means asking deeper questions:
Does your entry-level employee have a mentor to high-five after a big pitch?
If your office layout creates physical distance between senior leaders and junior staff, no casual collisions, no shared spaces, no visibility, you’ve designed hierarchy into the floor plan. People feel it even if they can’t name it.
Do you have spaces for the team to huddle, to practice, to prepare?
The baseball analogy holds: the dugout exists for a reason. It’s not a waiting room, it’s the nerve center of the game. Collaboration rooms, team zones, and flexible gathering spaces aren’t amenities. They’re the dugout. They’re where strategy becomes culture.
Can everyone celebrate together, even the ones who weren’t in the spotlight?
The Gatorade bath moment doesn’t happen in a conference room with assigned seating. It happens when there’s a space — physical and psychological — where letting your guard down feels safe. Breakout areas. Communal tables. A coffee bar that actually invites lingering. These aren’t perks. They belong to the infrastructure.
Are your tools and technology set up for contribution, or just for compliance?
Hybrid work exposed something we didn’t want to admit: much office technology was built for the person in the room, not for the person on the screen. When collaboration tools create a two-tiered experience — those who can read the whiteboard and those who can’t — you’ve told part of your team they don’t fully matter. That message lands harder than any RTO memo.
The ROI of Not Getting This Right
I know. You have a CFO. You need the business case.
Here’s what the research says about what happens when workplaces fail to create genuine belonging.
- Disengaged employees cost U.S. businesses an estimated $1.9 trillion in lost productivity annually. (Gallup, 2024)
- Turnover for a single employee typically costs 50–200% of that person’s annual salary when you factor in recruiting, onboarding, and lost institutional knowledge.
- Companies in the top quartile for employee experience report 2x the innovation, 25% higher profitability, and significantly lower absenteeism. (McKinsey)
The office that earns genuine engagement, not mandated attendance, but real, voluntary enthusiasm, pays back every dollar spent on its design. The one that doesn’t? It becomes a very expensive place to be unhappy.
An office that makes people feel like they matter is not a luxury. It is your single most powerful retention strategy.
So, What Do We Do?
Start by asking different questions.
Instead of: “How do we get people back in the office?” ask: “What does this office offer that nowhere else can?”
Instead of: “How do we maximize space utilization?” ask: “Are we designing space that makes every person feel like they belong to something worth showing up for?”
Workplace strategy has never been just about the work. It’s about the people doing the work. It’s about the rookie who’s watching how the veterans carry themselves, learning by proximity. It’s about the manager who catches someone doing something right and says so out loud in a hallway, where three other people can overhear. It’s about the culture that builds in the moments between meetings.
My son didn’t pitch a single inning this weekend. But he helped win that game.
And he walked off that field standing as tall as anyone.
Your office should make everyone feel that way.