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Return to the office is a global trend with Paris at the forefront

October 16, 2024

How did the return to offices continue in 2024 and where might it go in the future? A survey compared data from 6 global cities, Paris, New York, Singapore, Sydney and Toronto, and found that the average days in the office per week has changed since Covid among full-time city centre workers.

Paris comes out on top, with 3.5 days spent in the office. Central New York, the center of many stories about reluctance to return to the workplace, employees reported that they go to the office 3.1 days per week. Only Toronto had lower office attendance, coming in just below London’s 2.7 days.

According to the think tank Centre for Cities, the shift back to the office from fully remote working has resulted in both employers and employees increasingly understanding the value of being in the office. Tightening mandates show this on the employer side. 95 percent of workers surveyed said there were benefits to being in the office, with the benefits of collaboration between and building relationships with colleagues being the most widely recognized. And while they would come in fewer days than currently required if no mandate were in place, workers would still spend at least part of the week in the office of their own volition. Prevailing attitudes from employees appear to have shifted from ‘I can do my job anywhere’ to ‘I don’t need to be in the office every day’.

“This suggests two factors that have shaped the discussion about the return to the office are much less important than conventionally understood. The first is that companies must redesign their offices and offer a menu of perks to entice their staff to come in. In reality, workers already recognize the benefit of coming in and very few say they dislike being in the office. The second is that employers appear to have more scope to increase mandates than they may think. Much smaller shares of London workers (9 percent) say they would look for another job if employers increased in-office mandates, compared to 37 percent of London employers not increasing mandates for fear of staff quitting. And this gap is larger in most other international cities,” concluded the authors.

Despite this recognition of the value of face-to-face interaction in the office, there are no strong indications that there is a push for a higher return. As usual, business leaders should lead by example. More senior staff coming into the office could improve decision-making, productivity, and the development of younger colleagues.

Source: Centre for Cities | Bloomberg