I Looked at Their 80% Wednesday. Here's What It Was Really Telling Me.
I was sitting with an organisation last week and they shared their occupancy data with me; 40% attendance on Mondays and Fridays, with an 80% peak on Wednesdays.
According to XY Sense's latest Workplace Utilization Index, drawing on data from over 63,000 workspaces across nine countries, Tuesday utilisation reached 52% globally while Friday held at 30%, a 22-point gap that has remained stable across multiple consecutive reporting periods. What I'm seeing on the ground is entirely consistent with what the global data is telling us.
The questions they asked: "What are other organisations doing about this when creating their new workplace? Is the goal to increase attendance? Improve performance? Get people back in the office?"
All great questions but I don't think they're asking the right one. This isn't about getting more people back in the office. It's about getting them back for the right reasons.
Research from McKinsey found that coworkers feel they work together ten times better when they co-locate for at least 50% of the working week. This highlights why the physical workplace still matters.
So the right questions are: "Why are we asking people to come to the workplace in the first place? What are we asking them to gather for?"
Until you can answer clearly, no design decision, policy, or attendance target will land.
People don't need to be in the office and that's ok
Individual, heads-down work can be done just as effectively from home, and research suggests often better. The office is no longer the place for deep, concentrated, focused work, and many would argue it never really was. Organisations enforcing attendance mandates without a clear purpose behind them will struggle to make them stick.
We first need to understand what the workplace is actually for. When I work with organisations, I start by understanding how their people are actually working right now, what their patterns of behaviour look like, who they're working with, when, how and where. I look to understand how those patterns have developed; how policy or process have influenced them, and how the environment has either enabled or constrained them. From there, we can start to explore how they could work better.
And what I consistently find is this. The workplace is a space where individuals and teams gather to solve complex problems they couldn't solve alone. It's where cross-disciplinary teams come together to explore multiple and diverse perspectives. The conversations that matter are happening in collaboration spaces, meeting rooms, and informal corridor moments; not at workstations. This is the work that genuinely requires human proximity.
So when an organisation is focused purely on attendance data, there's a hidden problem that their 80% Wednesday is actually highlighting.
High attendance does not mean the right people are in at the same time.
Organic attendance ≠ intentional collaboration
If the teams that need each other aren't in the office on the same day, that number is misleading.
XY Sense data shows that many organisations are now hitting 80–90% utilisation for high-demand spaces like conference rooms on core midweek days, so that peak isn't just misleading, it's creating its own capacity constraints.
More people. Wrong conditions. Right day, but wrong reasons.
The impact I've observed when organisations get this wrong is consistent: projects slow down, decisions stall, and output quality suffers. This is not a people problem, it's a conditions problem. And too often, the solution organisations reach for is a mandate.
What's missing in that scenario is the change management overlay. Many organisations believe in the "build it and they will come" approach. In reality, it doesn't work.
Without supporting people into new ways of working, old habits will prevail. By embedding a robust change management approach, sustainable change becomes achievable. This means restructuring behaviours so teams understand who they need to be with, and building operating rhythms around how work actually flows.
The result - the right people, in the right place, on the right day. By design, not by default.
The design of your workplace must follow the purpose of your workplace
A beautiful environment that doesn't support people to do their best work won't get them in. A collaboration-heavy organisation needs a very different workplace to one focused on concentration. The physical design is only part of the answer.
There is so much more that needs to wrap around the physical environment for it to succeed - communication tools and frameworks, policies and procedures, onboarding into new ways of working (now and into the future), management behaviours, and executive buy-in that is sustained well beyond handover.
Your next workplace is a systemic change. Not a fit-out. Ways of working need to become embedded into the operations of the organisation, and long-term success depends on what happens after the keys are handed over.
As Shivaun Ryan, Head of Customer Success and GM-North America at XY Sense, put it:
"Workplace attendance isn't something you can simply will to be. It requires a combination of strategic policies and incentives that underscore the value of in-office attendance for teams and individuals alike."
And this is the work I love supporting my clients through. Not just creating a beautiful space, but embedding sustainable change through a holistic approach.
