Employers have spent the past two years trying to get people back to their desks. Many have learned that a mandate on its own is a weak tool.
Hassell’s latest Workplace Futures Survey, The Mandate Mirage, polled 3,000 office workers across the UK, US, Australia and Asia. It found that poorly executed mandates can cut UK compliance by up to 41%. Offices tell a different story. In premium workplaces, half of staff chose to come in, compared with 22% in lower-quality spaces. Recently renovated offices saw in-person working rise by 15%.
The message for HR teams is uncomfortable but useful. If people are choosing between the office and their kitchen table, the office has to win on experience. One of the most overlooked parts of that experience is light.
Why light belongs on the HR agenda
Daylight is usually treated as a facilities issue, decided by architects and forgotten once the lease is signed. The evidence suggests it deserves more attention from the people responsible for wellbeing and retention.
A peer-reviewed study of office workers, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in 2020, found that people working in spaces with optimised daylight and views slept an average of 37 minutes longer per night than those in poorly lit conditions. They also performed better on cognitive tests.
Sleep, focus and mood all affect absence, productivity and how people feel about their employer. For a team that already resents the commute, a dim, glare-filled office confirms every reason they had for staying at home.
More glass is not the answer
The obvious fix, bigger windows, often creates new problems. Direct sun produces glare on screens, hot spots near the glazing and blinds that stay down all day. Desks in the middle of deep floor plates can still be several metres from any natural light.
Designers are increasingly solving this with materials that spread light rather than simply letting more of it in. Translucent partitions and ceilings carry daylight further into a building while keeping meeting rooms and quiet zones private.
The better products are built for exactly this job. Polycarbonate interior panels diffuse light softly and evenly, which cuts glare on screens, and some can integrate LED lighting to create illuminated walls and ceilings for darker months or late shifts. Because the panels are lightweight and impact-resistant, they hold up in breakout spaces and corridors as well as in meeting rooms.
Controlling the sun, not just the lights
Inside fixes only go so far if the building fights the sun all afternoon. External shading is often the missing piece, particularly in older offices that were never designed with comfort in mind.
The worst glare usually comes from low morning and afternoon sun on east- and west-facing walls. Vertical sun shading made from adjustable translucent louvres tackles this directly, letting facilities teams balance light and heat through the day rather than choosing between darkness and glare. Some of these systems, including Danpal’s DanpaShade range, can be retrofitted to existing buildings and linked to building automation. They are designed to cut heat gain without shutting out natural light, which also eases the load on air conditioning. That is a useful point when the business case reaches the finance team.
Questions HR should be asking
HR rarely owns the building, but it can shape the brief. Before the next refurbishment or lease decision, it is worth asking facilities and design teams a few direct questions:
How many desks are more than a few metres from natural light, and who sits there?
Where do staff complain about glare, heat or headaches, and at what times of day?
Do wellbeing surveys ask about lighting and thermal comfort, or only about workload and benefits?
Can quick, low-disruption changes, such as translucent partitions or external shading, be made before a full refit?
Making the office worth the commute
Attendance policies will keep changing. What the research consistently shows is that people respond to places that make their working day better, and are quick to resist ones that make it worse.
Light is not the only factor, but it is one of the few that affects everyone in the building, every day. Employers who treat it as part of their wellbeing strategy, rather than an
