{"id":417884,"date":"2026-07-30T11:23:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T11:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/417884\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T11:23:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T11:23:11","slug":"how-an-l-a-company-ditched-rigid-office-mandates-and-got-workers-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/417884\/","title":{"rendered":"How an L.A. company ditched rigid office mandates and got workers back"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Los Angeles video gaming company Riot Games abandoned its return-to-office requirements in January, and surprisingly, more of its employees have been showing up at work. <\/p>\n

Two years of dictating that everyone commute into work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays was hurting the morale as well as the productivity of many. Riot decided on a radical revamp of its policies to allow more flexibility, said Riot President Hoby Darling.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe company-wide cadence was too rigid and didn\u2019t reflect the different ways teams work and didn\u2019t bring people together for the moments that could have the most impact,\u201d he said. \u201cOur goal was never to create rules for their own sake. It was to create the environment where Riot is the best place to make games.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company pivoted from a three-days-per-week requirement to a roughly three-days-per-month expectation, with each team leader deciding when more attendance is mandatory depending on when people need to be in person with their team. <\/p>\n

More than seven months into the new policy, the results have been impressive, the company said. Attendance and productivity have risen. <\/p>\n

The Los Angeles metropolitan area and other big California population centers are below the national average in office attendance, according to Kastle Systems<\/a>, which tracks badge swipes. L.A. office attendance was 47% at the beginning of the month, less than the national average of 53% and far below the 73% recorded in Austin. <\/p>\n

\"Traffic <\/p>\n

Traffic on the Arroyo Seco Parkway and 110 Freeway with downtown Los Angeles in the background.<\/p>\n

(Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

While some companies are adding incentives to come into the office, others are doubling down on requirements by adding restrictions and punishments, as well as finding more ways to monitor whether employees are actually showing up. <\/p>\n

\u201cOffices aren\u2019t being abandoned; they\u2019re actually just being redefined,\u201d said Paul Morgan, global chief operating officer of real estate management services at brokerage JLL. <\/p>\n

Years into trying different carrots and sticks, many companies are finding out that they need to offer more than free donuts to get employees to embrace long commutes in places like Los Angeles. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe stick doesn\u2019t really work well long term,\u201d said Morgan. \u201cPeople have tried various carrots like free-bagel Wednesdays, and those kind of things didn\u2019t go over real well.\u201d<\/p>\n

There has been an ongoing war between some employees and companies to circumvent the intent of return-to-office mandates. <\/p>\n

Employees are still coffee badging, the practice of swiping into the office and sticking around long enough to have a cup of coffee before heading out to finish the workday at home or elsewhere. Another ruse is called ghost booking, which entails an employee booking conference rooms or workstations online to suggest they are in the office. <\/p>\n

A recent report by JLL estimates that more than a third of bookings these days are made by people who don\u2019t use them. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, some managers are using big-brotherish tracking methods such as following the locations of employees\u2019 Wi-Fi connections or their company-issued mobile phones while also trying to make being in the office more appealing. Some are even tracking keystrokes at the office computer.<\/p>\n

Riot Games has gone all out to create a workplace<\/a> that is intended to attract and retain talent on-site.<\/p>\n

Riot \u2014 the maker of \u201cLeague of Legends,\u201d one of the world\u2019s biggest multiplayer video games \u2014 has long tried to make its offices as appealing as possible. Its 2,600 Los Angeles employees have access to a free commissary and an endless supply of cereal, packaged snacks and other prepared fare at small food stations scattered throughout the sprawling campus on Olympic Boulevard. <\/p>\n

One of its hot spots is Bilgewater Brew, an elaborate coffee bar named after a fictional port city in \u201cLeague of Legends.\u201d <\/p>\n

An increasing number of companies are using the power of coffee to get employees to come and stay in the office, said Steve Quick, chief executive of North America for ISS S\/A, a global facility management and workplace services company. <\/p>\n

\"Riot <\/p>\n

Riot Games has long sought to make its offices more appealing by offering amenities such as Bilgewater Brew, a coffee bar named after a fictional city in \u201cLeague of Legends,\u201d shown in 2022.<\/p>\n

(Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe amount of time and money they\u2019re spending on the coffee experience is insane,\u201d Quick said. <\/p>\n

These perks are particularly important in Los Angeles and other metropolitan areas where many are stuck in more than an hour of traffic to and from work. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s blindingly, flashingly obvious that the more onerous the commute is, the lower the occupancy rates,\u201d Quick said. <\/p>\n

Riot is trying to go above and beyond to make its office space an attractive place to collaborate. It sponsors a hackathon called Thunderdome where employees build passion projects. <\/p>\n

As it slashed its office attendance requirements this year, it introduced what it calls \u201cRed Talks\u201d (a play on TED Talks) where company leaders and outside experts talk about their perspectives and creative processes that sometimes go deep into the craft of making games. <\/p>\n

Giving employees and teams more freedom to choose when they would meet in the office has led to more people showing up, with 2026 attendance trending 15% above the average of prior years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year, more Rioters are working together from our L.A. office than at any point since we returned in 2022,\u201d said the company\u2019s president, Darling, using the company\u2019s nickname for Riot employees. \u201cBut more important is how that time together is being used. We\u2019re seeing teams using that time with greater intention.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles video gaming company Riot Games abandoned its return-to-office requirements in January, and surprisingly, more of its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[167145,1804,828,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,167148,32801,346,167146,592,31633,167147,315,115943,1968,72],"class_list":["post-417884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-coffee-badging","tag-company","tag-employee","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-more-attendance","tag-national-average","tag-office","tag-office-attendance","tag-people","tag-riot","tag-steve-quick","tag-time","tag-wednesdays","tag-work","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}