Everyone's Back in the Office. Almost No One Can Prove It's Working.

The return-to-office debate has been settled by mandates. The harder question, whether the office is actually earning its keep, is the one most organizations still can't answer. A look at the data, and what to do about it.

In partnership with Othership

For four years, "where should we work?" was the most exhausting question in HR. In 2026, it is effectively closed. The mandates have landed, the badges are swiping, and most people are back at their desks at least part of the week. But winning the mandate is not the same as winning the argument. A growing number of organizations have ordered everyone back to a space they cannot actually measure, justifying a major cost and a charged cultural decision with data that, in most cases, does not exist.

The return is real. The office won, on paper.

The numbers leave little doubt about direction. According to JLL, 55% of Fortune 100 companies now require five days a week in the office, up from just 5% in 2021. Across the broader market, roughly a quarter of companies require fully in-person work, two-thirds operate hybrid models, and only a small fraction remain fully remote. By 2026, the share of companies mandating five days on-site is still climbing.

Enforcement has hardened alongside the policies. The proportion of companies tracking attendance jumped from 45% to 69% in a single year, and a third of employers now tie office presence to performance reviews. The employee leverage that defined 2021 has largely evaporated: where surveys once found the overwhelming majority of workers would quit over a strict return mandate, that number has collapsed. The Great Resignation has quietly become the Great Compliance.

55% of the Fortune 100 now require five days in office, up from 5% in 2021. 69% of companies now track attendance. And average office utilization sits at just 43%.

We mandated our way to a number we can't see.

Here is the uncomfortable part. The same organizations enforcing attendance to the day mostly cannot tell you what happens once people walk in. Roughly 90% of organizations still rely on badge-swipe data as their primary measure of the office, and a badge swipe only confirms that someone entered a building. It says nothing about whether they sat at a desk for eight hours, spent the day in three meetings, or left after forty minutes.

The gaps compound quickly. One large employer discovered that 20% of its workforce, more than 10,000 people, never badged in on a given day at all, despite being present. And when asked to grade their own workplace data, only 7% of organizations rate their collection capability as "excellent." The result is a striking disconnect: average office utilization sits around 43%, meaning even with return mandates in force, most offices run well below the capacity they were designed and priced for.

"I can pull attendance data all day. I still can't tell my CFO whether the office is worth what we're paying for it."

That sentiment, which one of our partners hears constantly from People leaders, captures the whole problem. It is not a data shortage. Most companies are drowning in badge logs, booking tools, and wifi records. It is a visibility shortage: no single, trustworthy picture of how the space is actually used. And in a year when every line item is under scrutiny, a blind spot that large is expensive.

You're paying for 100% of a space you use half of.

Translate 43% utilization into a budget and the math gets pointed. Most enterprises are paying for 100% of their footprint to serve roughly 50% of the daily need. Analysts estimate organizations that can accurately forecast attendance and right-size accordingly can cut real estate spend by 30 to 40% without reducing headcount or imposing rigid schedules. That is not a rounding error. For most companies, real estate is the second-largest line on the page after payroll.

The market is already moving. A majority of corporate real estate teams expect their portfolios to contract over the next three years, and the most-cited reason is simply that less space is needed in a hybrid world. The metric that matters is shifting too, from cost per square foot to cost per occupied desk: total real estate spend divided by the desks people actually use, not the desks you happen to lease. The companies that can calculate that number have a lever. The ones still counting badge swipes do not.

Measurement is the leadership skill of 2026.

This is not really a facilities story. It is a leadership one. McLean & Company's 2026 HR Trends Report, based on responses from 1,626 leaders, found that controlling costs has fallen as a priority while innovation surged from tenth place to second. Organizations are realizing that getting through sustained disruption is less about cutting and more about investing wisely, which makes knowing what actually works more valuable than ever.

Yet the same research surfaces a persistent evidence gap. Fewer than a third of HR teams say they can effectively measure the ROI of their own programs. Fewer than half of organizations hold leaders accountable for acting in line with their stated values. The pattern repeats everywhere you look in 2026: the decisions are getting bigger and more consequential, and the evidence underneath them is getting thinner. The office is simply the most visible, most expensive example. The leaders who stand out next year will be the ones who can replace conviction with proof.

From managing the office by anecdote to managing it by reality.

Closing the gap does not mean buying another badge system. It means layering the signals you already have, access data, room and desk bookings, wifi, occupancy sensors, into one picture that is accurate enough to act on. That is exactly the problem our partner Othership works on: a scheduler, utilization tracking, and space analytics that show leaders how their workplace is genuinely used, not just who walked through the door.

We think this is useful enough to our community that we are doing something with them directly. achieve and Othership are inviting a small group of HR leaders into a founding research cohort: a free pilot of the platform, working sessions to interpret what your own data reveals, and a co-authored case study you keep and we share with the broader community. There are 10 spots.

Book 20 minutes with the Othership team →

The return-to-office fight is over, but the harder work is just starting. The organizations that win the next phase will not be the ones with the strictest mandate. They will be the ones who can look a CFO in the eye and prove the office is worth it, then redesign the space, the schedule, and the experience around what the data actually says. That starts with being able to see it.

Sources

• JLL / Fortune 100 five-day mandates and RTO adoption, via Return to Office Statistics 2026 and the Skedda RTO Policy Tracker 2026.
• Attendance tracking 45% to 69%, performance ties, compliance shift, via Gable Office Benchmarks 2026 and RTO Compliance 2026.
• Badge-data limits, 7% "excellent," 20% non-badging, via Density: Why Badge Data Isn't Enough and the Gable Space Utilization Guide.
• 43% average utilization, XY Sense Workplace Utilization Index Q2+Q3 2025, via HubStar.
• 30 to 40% real estate savings, portfolio contraction, cost per occupied desk, via OfficeSpace: Space Optimization 2026 and the Upflex Hybrid Office Guide 2026.
• McLean & Company HR Trends Report 2026 (n=1,626), via PR Newswire and UNLEASH.

This brief is produced by achieve Engagement in partnership with Othership. We share partner content only when we believe it is genuinely useful to HR leaders. The reporting, analysis, and point of view are our own.