The order came in January: five days a week at the desk, for everyone, from the first of March. Seven months later the trains are full, the sandwich queue at the station runs out of the door, and the question the order was meant to answer is still open.

Has the work changed?

What was measured

We asked nine large employers in the financial district for the numbers they use themselves. Six agreed, on the condition that they were not named.

• Output per person, by each firm's own measure: flat in five, up 2 % in one
• Hours in the building: up by a third
• Meetings held in person: doubled
• People who left within six months of the order: between 4 % and 11 %

The firms that lost the most people were the ones that gave the least notice.

What people say

On the 07:42 from the eastern suburbs, a group of colleagues who used to travel in two days a week now share a table every morning.

"I see my team more and my children less," one analyst said. "The work is the same work. It just happens in a louder room."

Her manager, two seats away, did not disagree. He said the thing that improved was the speed of small decisions. The thing that got worse was anything that needed two quiet hours.

The quiet change

Three of the six firms have started booking silent floors, with no calls and no meetings before eleven. One has brought back a single home day a month and calls it a reading day.

None of them describes this as a reversal. All of them say the building is full, which was the point.