Does going into the office really spark ideas? Why Flagship, a remote-first company, still chooses to gather
Hello. I’m Haruka, Chief of Staff at Flagship.
The phrase "return to office" comes up more and more often these days. Remote work lowers productivity. Gathering in one place makes communication livelier. New ideas emerge from casual small talk. There is certainly something to these arguments.
In fact, there is information you can only pick up face to face. One look at someone's expression and you notice they seem to be struggling. A chance conversation with someone you never work with can be exactly what gives you a different perspective.
But does simply coming into the office automatically increase communication, accelerate work, and generate creative ideas? We don't think it is that simple.
In this article, you will learn:
- How much of the claim that "going to the office raises productivity" actually holds up
- The difference between being in the same place and collaboration actually happening
- The idea of "relationship savings" — what is hard to get anywhere but in person
- Why Flagship actively chooses remote work, and why we still gather regularly
- Why "meeting every day" and "meeting when it matters" are worth separating
Is it true that "going to the office raises productivity"?
On 12 September 2026, NewsPicks published "The real enemy of organisational productivity has been found", which uses the return-to-office movement at several companies as a starting point to examine the relationship between working from home and productivity.
Discussions about how we work tend to run on intuition: "surely productivity is higher when everyone is in the office," or "surely remote lets you concentrate better." What matters, though, is not treating the format itself — office or remote — as the answer.
What actually drives productivity? Which kind of work suits which kind of environment? And what problem are we trying to solve by choosing a given way of working? That is where the thinking has to start.
Being in the same place does not, by itself, create collaboration
You can bring everyone into the office, but if each person has their earphones in and is focused on their own work, the situation may not be fundamentally different from working online. And haven’t you seen a colleague who is in the office and yet spends the whole day facing an online meeting? Nor does every chat that starts by chance on the way between meeting rooms lead to a new idea or a useful hand-off.
If anything, an environment where anyone can talk to you at any time means more interruptions for people who need to think deeply, and deep work gets fragmented. In other words, being physically close and being psychologically and organisationally close are two different things.
What matters is less "where you work" than whether information is shared, whether people understand each other's situations, and whether the right communication can happen when it is needed. Going to the office is not a machine that generates ideas on its own. That said, we have no interest in dismissing the value of working face to face either.
Some things only happen in person
There are things that are hard to get online and easy to get in person. Reading subtle context in an instant from someone's expression or mood — "they look stuck," "now would be a good moment to say something." Running into someone who normally works on a different project during a break or on the way somewhere, and encountering a perspective you didn't have.
Even without talking about work itself, sharing a meal or an offhand conversation can leave you with the sense that "this is someone I could bring a question to."
None of this shows up as an immediate result. But once a relationship has been formed, it makes later communication on Slack and in online meetings run more smoothly. Rather than speeding up the work directly, time spent together in person may be better understood as building the "relationship savings" that future collaboration draws on.
Why Flagship chooses remote work
At Flagship, remote work from anywhere in Japan is the default. Our office is available to use, but daily attendance is not the premise.
This is not simply a perk, nor is it a passive choice made because "the work can be done without coming in." We have put our thinking about how we work into words as our Remote Work Charter.
There, remote work is positioned not as a constrained way of working or an option arrived at by elimination, but as a way of working actively chosen in order to maximise value creation and innovation.
When you need to think deeply, you choose for yourself the place and the time where you focus best. You organise your thoughts, share them in text, and keep the information searchable and referenceable later. When a discussion is complex, when feelings need to be shared, or when the conversation is exploratory, you use an online meeting. And when you judge that meeting in person is what moves things forward, you quickly set up and agree on an in-person meeting or a short offsite.
Working remotely does not mean everything must be completed online at all costs. What matters is choosing the communication method that best fits the purpose of the work.
Why we still gather regularly
Flagship's members work from many different regions. Day to day, work moves through Slack and online meetings — and alongside that, we hold "Get Together," a company-wide event that brings members to Tokyo once a quarter.
The purpose, however, is not "we haven't seen each other lately, so let's all get in a room." If we are going to be in the same place, we want it to be time that gives us what is hard to get online.
That is why past Get Togethers have included workshops and team activities on themes far removed from day-to-day work. Learning how colleagues approach their work. Talking with members you rarely speak to. Thinking together, in the same room, about the ideas the company holds to be important. We create that time deliberately.
(From top: a workshop using LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, a stamp rally around the neighbourhood of the office, and a paper tower challenge.)
Precisely because we work remotely, conversation comes easily when we haven't seen each other for a while. Unlike being in the same office every day, there is a sense that "we finally get to see each other, so let's talk." We suspect that the very fact of meeting only occasionally is part of what makes the exchange happen.
And the conversations and relationships formed that day stay with us after everyone returns to their own place of work. The bar for writing "about what we discussed the other day" or "mind if I run something by you?" on Slack drops a little. That is one of the things we look for in gathering offline.
"Meeting every day" and "meeting when it matters" are not the same thing
The important point here is that recognising the value of meeting in person is not the same as requiring people to come in every day.
Work that means concentrating for hours on design or implementation. Work that means thinking carefully and writing. Work that means reading through documents and organising your own thinking. For that kind of work, having few interruptions and being able to choose the environment where you personally focus best can matter more.
On the other hand, when you want to work through a thought that isn't yet in words, to discuss the team's direction, or to get to know each other's character and thinking, the value of being in the same place goes up.
That is why, rather than treating "office or remote" as a binary choice to be fixed in policy, we work backwards from the purpose of the work and the communication.
The question isn't remote or office — it's how you design it
We don't believe remote work solves every problem, and we don't believe gathering in an office is meaningless. Remote work has many advantages: freedom from location, easier protection of focused time, and colleagues who can join from many regions. Face-to-face has its own: dense information exchange that includes expression and atmosphere, chance encounters, and the power to deepen relationships.
The question is not which one to pick. It is what each one's strengths are for, and how to use them.
Gathering every day does not automatically make an organisation stronger. Going fully remote does not automatically make a company free and productive. What is required is to design communication, information sharing, focus, dialogue, and human relationships — each of them, deliberately.
Flagship's Remote Work Charter sets out a way of thinking that values the value created and the trust built rather than "physical visibility" or "time consumed."
What we are aiming for is not merely "a company where you can work from anywhere."
When it's better to concentrate alone, work alone.
When online is enough, stay online.
When meeting is better, meet properly.
And when we do meet, we don't make gathering itself the goal; we create the dialogue and the relationships that only that time can produce. Rather than deciding where we work, we keep designing how we work. That is what remote work means at Flagship.
Flagship is hiring colleagues from across Japan. To learn more about the way of working and the culture we value, please take a look at the following.