Every company has a podcast – but are offices built for it?

There was a time when “the office” meant desks, meeting rooms, screens and, if you were lucky, a decent coffee machine.

Now, the office has a new job. Companies are fighting harder for attention, and many are investing in content to build their brands and reach new customers. Podcasts, webinars, social video and internal broadcasts are becoming part of everyday business communication.

Just look at M&S, where Kathryn Turner, Director of Product Development at M&S Food, has gone viral on TikTok by sharing behind-the-scenes product stories, reaching nearly 50,000 followers in less than a month.

All of this means the office has to work harder, doubling as a podcast studio, a video suite for social content, or a live demo space for sales teams. But that only works if the infrastructure underneath can keep up.

Every company is becoming a media company

It can sometimes feel like every business now has a podcast. PwC has Economics in business, Nike has Trained, and even Trader Joe’s has Inside Trader Joe’s, giving listeners a behind-the-scenes look at product sourcing and store culture.

But it is not just the biggest brands who are creating content, organisations across many sectors are becoming influencers. The RSPB’s Bird of the Week TikTok series is a great example, using quick-cut, funny and educational content to bring conservation stories to a wider audience – showing that even non-profits are now thinking like content creators.

This is not just a trend. If content creation is now part of how businesses communicate, that changes what today’s office needs to support.

A boardroom may now double as a broadcast space. A meeting room may need to host hybrid events. But a quiet office corner cannot be “studio” if the Wi-Fi drops, the sound echoes and the video freezes halfway through.

Continued push to Return to office raises the stakes

This shift is happening as office attendance rises. Major employers including Amazon and Instagram have increased expectations around office attendance, while UK office occupancy hit a post-pandemic high in early 2026. CIPD research also found that 51% of organisations now require employees to be on-site for a minimum number of days each week.

That creates a challenge for facilities, workplace and IT leaders. If employees can record good audio, join reliable video calls and run digital events from home, the office experience needs to be at least as good. Nobody wants to commute in just to battle patchy Wi-Fi, poor sound or video kit that takes three people to make it work.

For facilities, workplace and IT leaders, this is the point where a content trend stops being just a marketing issue and starts becoming an infrastructure question.

Older offices were not built for always-on content

Many offices were designed around a different model of work: desks, email, meeting rooms and basic connectivity. Even when video conferencing became standard, the assumption was usually that a few rooms would need decent AV.

That is no longer enough. A modern office might look ready for content creation, with smart meeting rooms and spaces designed for hybrid work. But the real test comes when a webinar starts and the video freezes, the audio drops, or the connection struggles just as a spokesperson is delivering a key message.

That is when the issue becomes clear. The problem is not always the room itself, but whether the cabling, connectivity, and AV infrastructure underneath can support the way the business now communicates.

Infrastructure needs to come first

For businesses planning office upgrades, connectivity cannot be treated as a late-stage fit-out detail. Podcast rooms, webinar spaces and hybrid event suites need the right foundations from the start, from cabling and bandwidth to wireless coverage, AV design, acoustics and resilience.

So yes, every company might have a podcast. But if the studio keeps cutting out, the webinar keeps buffering or the CEO’s video update sounds like it was recorded underwater, the issue is probably not the content plan. It is the infrastructure behind it.

Getting those foundations right also means working with the right technology partner. Rather than treating connectivity, AV, wireless and network infrastructure as separate projects, businesses benefit from an integrated approach that considers how every system will work together from day one. An experienced partner can help future-proof the workplace, minimise disruption during delivery and ensure the technology supports both today’s communication needs and tomorrow’s ways of working.

For facilities, workplace and IT leaders, the message is simple: design offices for how businesses communicate now, not how they worked ten years ago. This generation of workplace will not just be judged by how it looks, but by how well it connects.