Office Occupiers Plan To Dramatically Shrink Footprints Even As Attendance Mandates Rise

The ongoing push to bring workers back to the office isn't preventing companies from shrinking the size of those workplaces.

A new survey from Boston-based workplace strategy firm Robin found that while the vast majority of companies are mandating worker attendance, nearly as many firms are shrinking their office footprints, with further downsizing planned for 2024. 

Robin surveyed 500 business owners and facilities managers and found that the number of employers mandating some amount of office attendance jumped 20% from 2022 to 88%. But even as executives push to get employees to show up, 80% of companies have downsized their office footprints since the pandemic, and a further 75% of business owners plan to reduce their square footage next year.

Of those who reported plans to downsize, 69% said they would reduce their space by 50% or more, while 31% are planning reductions of 25% or less.  

“It looks like an opposing trend, but it’s really not,” Micah Remley, the CEO of Robin, told the Boston Globe. “Over the past year, we’re finally seeing companies have a vision of what they want to accomplish in their office space, and they’re putting those plans into action.”

The number of companies that have already downsized was up 20% in the latest survey compared to last year, suggesting that executives have, to some extent, embraced hybrid work as a hardened habit among their workforce. Only 42% of those surveyed said they believe that offices will go back to pre-pandemic levels of activity.

The reductions come as 78% of employers surveyed are mandating a minimum of three days of office attendance.

For the 12% of organizations that mandate full-time attendance, the reasoning is driven more by past commitments than any other factor. More than 40% of those business owners said they didn’t offer hybrid work because they had already invested in a new office space, while 30% said it would impact their in-office culture and 27% said workers were unable to do their jobs outside of the office. 

The push to further reduce office footprints comes as 82% of respondents expressed concerns about their ability to stay in their current space, whether because of fears of a recession or because much of the space they occupy isn’t being used. Only 28% of survey respondents said their entire office space was being utilized, and 40% said they use half or less of their office. 

As business owners shrink footprints, they are also shifting how their spaces are designed to reflect changes in how people work. Nearly 90% of employers are changing their office layouts to support employee demands, with more than half adding wellness spaces, quiet rooms or phone booths, collaboration rooms and lounge areas.

Hot desking, where offices eschew individual workstations for spaces that aren’t assigned to specific employees, was being used by nearly 53% of survey respondents. 

The continued retraction of office footprints threatens to further pressure office valuations as leases get smaller, according to analysts at Morgan Stanley. 

“Along with work from home, hot desking is one of the most structurally damaging headwinds facing the office market,” Morgan Stanley equity research analyst Sebastian Isola and colleagues wrote in a note to clients, as reported by Bloomberg.

“Were it to be adopted more broadly, the reduction in floorspace requirements would likely have a considerable impact on occupational demand,” they said.

The trends in office usage could drive values down by 35% by 2025 without a full recovery before 2024, according to Capital Economics.