Under half of North American office-goers are coming in for less than 6 hours a day, a new study says
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- 43% of workers returning to the office came in for under 6 hours in the first half of 2023, said a workplace analytics firm.
- In the same period, average office occupancy rates in North America peaked at 35% per week.
- Firms have been seeing significant pushback to their return-to-office mandates.
About 43% of North American workers who ventured back to the office clocked in for fewer than six hours a day during the first half of 2023, according to a report by workplace occupancy analytics firm Basking published on August 3.
The remaining 57%, or 3 in 5 office-goers whose data was analyzed, went in for over six hours daily. This compares to almost 60% in the Asia-Pacific region and 58% in Europe during the first half of the year. A typical work day runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
That's a big drop from before the pandemic, when about 84% of office visits lasted for six hours or more, per the Washington Post.
The firm used WiFi usage to measure office occupancy and visits. It is not immediately clear how the firm derived the data.
Those clocking in for the shortest stints — representing about 1 in 5 North American office-goers — did so for less than 3 hours a day.
And that's the office workers that did come in. Average office occupancy rates in North America peaked at 35% a week during the first half of the year, per Basking's data.
The start and end of the workweek were the least popular for office-goers, with North American offices seeing a 17% occupancy rate on Monday. The occupancy rate dropped to about 12% on Friday.
Employers have been increasingly demanding that workers return to the office, with RTO pushes from bosses at companies like Amazon, Apple, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan.
JP Morgan took to tracking ID card swipes to ensure hybrid workers come in at least three days a week. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs demanded workers be present in the office five days a week in August.
However, employees are pushing back against their RTO mandates.
And back in April, over two-thirds of the 700 executives at US financial services firms surveyed by Deloitte said they would quit if their workplaces mandated 5-day-a-week presence in the office.
Basking did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, sent outside regular business hours.