There is a moment every founder, HR leader, or operations head eventually faces an empty commercial floor, sunlight cutting through dusty windows, trying to feel whether this is the one. Whether this address, this floor plan, this neighbourhood will become the place where your people do their best work, where culture quietly takes root, where the company’s next chapter begins.
Most get it wrong. Not because they don’t care but because they’re asking the wrong question. They ask: “Is this space affordable and available?” when they should be asking: “Will this space support the people inside it?”
The Cost of Wrong Address
Let’s be direct about a pain point we hear constantly from business leaders across Pune, Mumbai, and Bengaluru: the office was chosen for the CFO, not the team.
A central business district address looked impressive on a business card. A peripheral tech park offered lower per-square-foot rates. A multi-tenant commercial complex was available immediately. These are all valid financial considerations, but when your people spend 40 minutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic each way, when the nearest lunch option is a vending machine, when the building feels anonymous and soul draining by 3 PM, the math changes completely.
Research by Leesman Index found that more than 40% of employees globally feel their workplace does not support their productivity. A significant portion of that dissatisfaction begins before they even sit down; it begins with the commute, the neighbourhood, the building’s entrance, the moment they step off the elevator. The location sets the tone for the entire human experience of work.
Poor location decisions accelerate three of the most damaging outcomes a business can face: talent attrition, absenteeism, and disengagement. And unlike a design refresh, you cannot fix the wrong address with furniture.
What People-First Location Strategy Means
At Studio AsA, we approach location decisions the same way we approach every workplace design challenge: by starting with the people who will inhabit the space.
A People-First location strategy asks five foundational questions before a lease is signed:
- Who are your people, and where do they live? The single most underused data point in office location decisions is employee home location data. Plot your team on a map. Where is the geographic centre of gravity? What’s the average commute from a 10 km radius? For a growing startup hiring talent from specific neighbourhoods or colleges, proximity to that talent pool is a strategic advantage. Explore Workplace Strategies that Spark Collaboration and Creativity.
- What does arrival feel like? The human experience of a workplace begins before the door opens. The quality of public transport access, the walkability of the surroundings, and the presence of cafés, parks, and lunch spots are extensions of the workplace environment. Gensler’s Workplace Surveys consistently show that employees who feel their overall work environment, including commute and neighbourhood, supports them are measurably more engaged, more creative, and more likely to stay. Read more on Creating a Welcoming Entrance: Designing Impressive Reception Areas.
- Does the building support your culture or contradict it? A creative agency in a rigid, security-heavy corporate tower is a culture mismatch. A financial services firm in a bare-bones co-working floor sends the wrong signal to clients and candidates alike. The building’s architecture, common areas, lobby, and even its reputation in the city carry meaning. They communicate values before a single word is spoken. Explore The Impact of Workplace Culture on Office Design: Aligning Spaces with Values.
- Can the space grow with you? One of the most expensive mistakes we see is leasing a space that fits the team today with no consideration for where headcount will be in 24 months. A People-First approach accounts for growth not just in square footage, but in the kinds of work the team will be doing. Collaboration-heavy phases need different environments than deep-focus phases. Read more on How Flexible Workspaces Can Help Organisations.
- Does this location support wellbeing mentally and physically? Access to natural light, proximity to green spaces, air quality, and noise levels from surrounding streets are determinants of cognitive performance and mental health. Studies by Harvard University show that access to natural elements, even views of greenery, can lower workplace stress by up to 30% while improving focus and creative output. Explore Office Design & Mental Health: The Overlooked Connection.
The Five Filters for Smarter Location Decisions
When Studio AsA works with clients on pre-lease workplace strategy, we run every potential location through a practical five-filter framework. Think of these as the non-negotiables before a designer ever touches a floor plan.
Filter 1: Accessibility Score
Map all three modes of arrival: private vehicle, public transport, and active transit (walking or cycling). A location that scores well on only one of these three will systematically disadvantage a portion of your team. Hybrid offices need to be genuinely easy to reach on days when people choose to come in. Obligation is not the same as motivation.
Filter 2: Neighbourhood Vitality
What surrounds the building matters as much as what is inside it. Access to quality food, banking, fitness, medical services, and green space directly impacts employee wellbeing and the quality of informal client interactions. The neighbourhood is the extended campus.
Related Reading: The Recipe for a Great Cafeteria Design
Filter 3: Infrastructure Readiness
Power backup, internet redundancy, HVAC quality, floor-plate flexibility, and building management responsiveness are the invisible backbone of a productive workplace. A beautiful interior design loses all its value during the third unplanned power cut of the month.
Filter 4: Brand Alignment
Consider the office’s identity your location sends to three audiences: your team, your clients, and the talent you haven’t hired yet. A location in a vibrant, well-connected business district signals ambition, stability, and relevance. A hidden address in an obscure industrial zone regardless of the interior design can undermine brand perception before a meeting begins.
Filter 5: Future Flexibility
Does the lease allow for expansion within the building? Can the floor plate be reconfigured as team size or work modes evolve? Locking into a rigid space for five years in a period of accelerating change is a structural risk. Smart location decisions build optionality into the agreement.
Related Reading: Smart Office Technology for a Connected and Efficient Workplace
The Hybrid Reality Changes the Calculus
Here is something most real estate consultants won’t tell you: in the hybrid work era, the purpose of the office has fundamentally shifted and that shift changes what location means.
When people came to the office five days a week out of necessity, location was primarily about logistics. Today, when people come to the office by choice, location is about experience. The office must earn the commute. It must offer something the home cannot — serendipitous connection, a sense of belonging, the energy of being around people who care about the same things you do.
That means your location must be somewhere people want to go, not just somewhere they can tolerate. Proximity to culture, energy, diversity of experience, these matter. A location that sits in a dead zone of the city, accessible only by car, surrounded by parking lots and concrete, will always struggle to compete with a well-designed home office.
The offices that win in the hybrid era are the ones where location, design, and culture work together as a single, coherent argument for being present.
A Note
For businesses operating across India’s Tier 1 cities, location decisions carry additional layers of complexity. In Pune, the micro-market differences between Baner, Koregaon Park, Viman Nagar, and Hinjewadi can mean the difference between a 20-minute commute and a 70-minute one for the same team, particularly given the city’s uneven infrastructure development. In Bengaluru, proximity to the metro network has become a genuine talent advantage as road congestion has worsened. In Mumbai, floor plate sizes and building age profiles vary dramatically across submarkets.
These are the lived realities of the people your office must serve. Getting the location right in an Indian urban context requires local knowledge, data, and a genuine commitment to the human experience.
Location and Design Are One Conversation
The most common mistake businesses make is treating location and design as sequential decisions: first sign the lease, then call the designer. In reality, these are a single, deeply interconnected conversation.
The orientation of the floor plate determines natural light availability. The floor’s structural grid constrains layout flexibility. The building’s common areas shape first impressions for every visitor and new hire. The neighbourhood’s noise profile influences acoustic design requirements.
At Studio AsA, we believe the best workplace outcomes happen when the design team is brought in before the lease is signed. Not to approve the space aesthetically, but to evaluate it functionally and experientially, with a clear understanding of how the people inside it will live and work.
Because ultimately, choosing the right office location is not about finding a space. It is about finding the foundation for a human experience, one that gives your people every possible reason to show up, to connect, and to do the work that matters.
Start With Your People.
If you’re in the process of evaluating office locations, whether you’re relocating, expanding, or setting up for the first time, we’d encourage you to begin with a workplace strategy conversation rather than a property search.
Understand your people’s needs first. Map the experience you want them to have. Let that vision guide the location decision, the floor plan, the design, in that order.
Studio AsA is a workplace design studio headquartered in Pune, with projects across Mumbai, Bengaluru, and beyond. We design offices that prioritise human well-being from the address to the last detail.
