More than one-third of desks in offices around the globe are unoccupied all week, according to a new report, raising questions about how well workplaces are designed as companies struggle to get employees back into them.

The report, from Australian workplace sensor provider XY Sense, found that 36% of so-called work points — cubicles and desks — are never occupied, “indicating a general oversupply”. Of those that are used, 29% were for three hours or less on a given day.

Just 14% were occupied for five or more hours, according to the study that tracked 24 855 unique work areas in nine regions including the US, UK, Hong Kong and Singapore. Among the spaces used the most are meeting rooms for two or three people, which are 90% full on average. Overall, office utilisation is stuck at about 50% of pre-pandemic levels.

The findings illustrate the challenges faced by organisations as they assess office-space needs. Workers and managers both say they should be on site at least a third of the time, according to research from Boston Consulting Group, but much of that in-person time is no longer spent tethered to a desk.

Spaces for small, private huddles, more open collaboration, and sound-proof enclosures for individual head-down work are all more relevant today compared with old-fashioned cubicles. Yet 80% of total floor space is taken up by individual workstations, with just 20% left for collaboration, XY Sense found.

“It’s time to rethink the humble desk,” said Alex Birch, co-founder and CEO of XY Sense. “They dominate space in our offices, they’re expensive and we’re just not using them the way we were pre-pandemic. Companies just need less of them now that people do the majority of their focus work at home. Companies should either redeploy that desk space for better workplace experiences or pocket the savings, but they can’t ignore the waste that’s going on.”

Away from desks

Other data support the shift away from desks. Research from office furniture maker Haworth found that 85% of employees had their own individual workstations before 2020, yet less than half do now. Following years where companies simply crammed as many employees as they could into static cubicle farms, or long rows of workstations, some see the changes wrought by remote work as long overdue.

“For far too long, we designed offices as if we’re potted plants,” said Kay Sargent, director of the workplace practice at architecture and design firm HOK. “Are you really inviting people back to the office to have them sit at a desk all day? Or do you want to encourage them to connect, mentor and innovate?”

The dearth of desk usage could also prompt employers to rethink their space needs. More than nine out of 10 big organisations reported low office utilisation rates in a survey by CBRE, and more than half expect to reduce their property footprints over the next three years. According to XY Sense’s data, office utilisation didn’t change much between the first and second quarters of 2023. But about one million US desk workers face mandates to return to offices more often by the end of the year, according to brokerage JLL.

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“We need to address the fact that we’ve accidentally created call centre environments with the acres of large open workstations that are a feature of most offices these days,” Domino Risch, a principal and co-leader of the workplace and commercial sector at architect Hassell, said in the report. “The sea of repetitive banks of open plan workstations that typical knowledge-based organisations have just aren’t fit for purpose anymore.” — Matthew Boyle, (c) 2023 Bloomberg LP