Mapiq is challenging a familiar return-to-office assumption. Badge swipes show who entered the building. They do not show whether people worked together.
The workplace management vendor has introduced Groups. The feature helps employees coordinate office days around real collaboration. It moves attention from attendance targets to shared presence.
Groups lets workers create their own coordination circles. These can include project teams, mentoring pairs, lunch groups, or cross-functional squads. Employees can see planned office days for up to three weeks. They can also invite a whole group to a shared booking.
This approach avoids rigid IT-managed structures. Traditional directories often reflect reporting lines, not daily working habits. Groups lets employees model how work actually happens. That matters in hybrid environments, where collaboration often crosses departments.
The feature also works inside Microsoft Teams and Outlook. That reduces tool switching for busy teams. For IT and UC leaders, this integration matters. Adoption improves when coordination lives inside familiar collaboration platforms.
Before tools like Groups, employees relied on messy workarounds. They checked calendars, sent chat messages, or maintained spreadsheets. Those methods often failed as teams grew. Real-time planning can reduce that friction.
However, workplace leaders still need careful measurement. Planned collaboration does not guarantee meaningful interaction. A shared office day can still become separate laptop work. The best platforms should show intent, but avoid overclaiming results.
Workplace strategist Corinne Murray has warned against confusing attendance with collaboration. She argues that social connection supports knowledge work. It helps teams avoid duplicated effort and hidden misalignment.
“That socializing piece is the connective tissue that makes sure that we all are moving in lockstep with one another, which when you’re running a business, it’s a pretty essential thing. Otherwise, you might have the same initiative in four different parts of your organization… but you have four of them instead of one because no one talked to one another.”
Mapiq has also launched Badge Data Importer. This tool converts raw badge data into standardized attendance reports. It can process data from different access control systems. It also supports reporting across multiple office locations.
That capability will appeal to operations teams. Many organizations still need compliance reporting for office policies. Badge data answers whether people arrived. It does not explain why they came, or whom they met.
Together, the two features present a broader workplace data model. Badge Data Importer measures presence. Groups helps employees create reasons for presence. Leaders can then compare attendance with planned collaboration.
Still, companies should avoid over-optimizing every office interaction. Unplanned encounters can create value too. Murray’s research at WeWork highlighted that small delays sometimes sparked useful human contact.
For telecom, UC, and IT professionals, the message is clear. Hybrid work needs more than mandates. It needs coordination layers that connect people, places, and collaboration tools.
The office will remain important for many organizations. But its value will depend on purpose. As Murray noted, “Offices are not going away… but do we need to be around one another when we’re doing our heads-down work? I would argue no. The purpose and function of it is what will evolve.”
