The research in 60 seconds
Researchers at Mid Sweden University studied managers in a Swedish municipality of 620 administrative staff after it moved into a new activity-based office (no fixed desks, zoned by noise level) combined with working from home, since the building only had space for 60% of the workforce at once. Seventy-one managers answered open-ended survey questions on risks, opportunities and expectations three months after the move, and six were interviewed in depth roughly a year later. Managers described becoming more formal, more deliberately visible, more trust-based and more individually attentive to staff, while absorbing extra relational and administrative effort the new setup didn't hand back to them.
So what?
The interesting part of this study isn't that hybrid work changes how managers lead. Instead, it is the specific shape of the change when two things happen together: no fixed desk for anyone, and the option to work from home. Managers lost the casual, spatial cues that used to tell them who needed a conversation, who seemed off, or who was even in the building that day. What they described doing instead is worth paying attention to: turning spontaneous corridor chats into scheduled meetings, deliberately walking the floor to stay visible, and asking staff directly and more often how they're doing, because they can no longer just notice.
The researchers call this a "relational load" effect, and it points to something organisations planning similar moves tend to underweight. Activity-based working and WFH are usually pitched to staff as flexibility and autonomy. For managers in this study, sustaining that flexibility for others meant working harder to stay present and connected themselves, often in workspaces that weren't well suited to their own tasks either. One clear example: several managers described struggling to hold confidential conversations, performance issues, sensitive client information, in open zones that weren't designed for privacy.
For leaders
Expect the transition to cost you time before it saves anyone else's. If you're leading a team through a move to activity-based or unassigned-desk working, budget for genuinely more 1:1 contact and coordination effort in the first months, not less, even though the space is designed to reduce overhead.
Replace casual observation with a deliberate check-in habit. Managers in this study lost the ability to notice wellbeing problems by walking past someone's desk. Build a short, direct, recurring check-in into your week rather than waiting to notice something's wrong.
For teams and organisations
Plan explicit support for managers in an ABW/WFH transition, not just for employees. This study's authors specifically recommend training, tools and peer forums for managers navigating this shift. A generic hybrid-work policy aimed at staff flexibility won't address what managers are absorbing.
Build a structured onboarding path for people joining teams with no fixed desks. Managers described new starters taking noticeably longer to learn who's on their team and who to ask for help, since there's no shared office or corridor to pick that up informally.
