The office came back harder than anyone planned for
For three years the story was that offices were half empty. It has stopped being true. CBRE's global benchmarking programme, covering client portfolios of 28 million m², puts average building utilisation at 53% in 2025 — up from 38% in 2024 and 35% in 2023. That is the largest single-year jump since tracking began.
The busiest day matters more than the weekly average, and it has moved further. Peak utilisation now averages 80% globally, above the 65–70% that most organisations treated as full before the pandemic.
Central and Eastern Europe is on the same curve
This is not only a New York and Singapore story. In CBRE's CEE survey of more than 50 companies across Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and South-East Europe, a quarter now report average utilisation in the 61–80% band — up from 14% a year earlier. Fewer than 30% still sit at 40% or below.
And the peak, again, is where it turns. The share of CEE companies whose busiest day reaches 81–100% has climbed from 26% to 35%. Earlier rightsizing has left some offices close to overcrowded on a Tuesday while the weekly average still looks comfortable.
Meanwhile, the instrument panel is a badge reader
Here is the problem. A third of CEE companies measure utilisation with entry-card swipes. More than a quarter do it by having someone walk the floor and count. Fewer than one in ten use occupancy sensors or network data — the only tools that show which spaces get used, when, and for what.
A badge swipe proves somebody came in. It cannot tell you that the focus rooms sat empty all week while every four-person meeting room was double-booked by 09:30. Without that, every decision about which spaces to keep is a guess wearing a spreadsheet.
The floor plan is already being rebuilt on that data
This would matter less if nothing were happening. But the reallocation is well under way. Across CBRE's global benchmarking, individual desk space — "Me" space — has fallen from 56% of the floor plate in 2021 to 35% in 2025. Collaboration, support and amenity space absorbed the difference — amenity space alone more than doubled.
The logic behind it is sound as far as it goes: 68% of employees name collaboration with colleagues as a very important reason to come in, against 17% for focus and concentration. Design has followed. The share of practitioners who expect activity-based layouts to define the future office rose from 17% to 40% in a year, while focus-based layouts fell from 71% to 42%.
But our own surveys say the focus problem is getting worse, not better
Before every office we design, we survey the people who will use it. Across 2,078 employees at 10 organisations, focused heads-down work takes 35% of the working week — more than meetings, calls or collaboration — and it is the single most common reason people give for coming in at all.
Then we ask how well the current office supports each activity. Routine desk work scores +76. Internal meetings, +68. Focused work — the thing people do most and travel in for — scores +35. Confidential conversation and rest score below zero.
So both things are true at once. People come in for each other, and the collaboration space is right to grow. But they also come in to think, and that is the need the building already serves worst. Cutting individual space without replacing it with somewhere genuinely quiet does not rebalance an office. It removes the one thing that was nearly working.
The gap is management, not policy
The last piece is the least technical and the most decisive. Globally, 70% of organisations say employees are in the office less than leaders expect — up from 61% the year before. Seven in ten monitor attendance. Fewer than three in ten actually enforce what they monitor, and 82% name employee resistance as the reason.
In CEE the support that would close that gap is largely missing. 77% run no change and communications programme alongside their hybrid policy. Fewer than one in five invest in hybrid technology or training. And 13% train their managers — the lowest-ranked of the eleven support measures tested, below printed guides and design guidelines.
Which produces the most quietly damning number in the CEE data: companies communicate office-first working to 11% of their people while targeting it for 21% — and 11% turn up that way. At the other end, 13% are told they may be mostly remote, and 26% end up working that way. The policy is not being broken. It is being ignored, because nobody is managing it.
How well do you actually know your own office?
The same five things we establish in the first week of any workplace study. Answer honestly — the point is to find out where the blind spot is, not to score well.
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In CEE, 33% rely on badge swipes and 28% on walking the floor. Fewer than one in ten use sensors or network data.
35% of CEE companies now hit 81–100% on their peak day, up from 26%. A comfortable average hides an uncomfortable Tuesday.
Focused work fills 35% of the week and is the top reason people come in — and it is the activity offices support worst. Utilisation data alone will never show you this.
13% of CEE companies train managers, and 77% run no change and communications programme at all. This is where policies quietly stop being real.
Individual desk space has already fallen from 56% to 35% of the global floor plate since 2021. Most of that was decided on less evidence than the first option.
- Watch the peak, not the average. Peak utilisation averages 80% globally and a third of CEE companies now reach 81–100% on their busiest day.
- Badge data is attendance, not utilisation. Under 10% of CEE companies can see which spaces are actually used.
- Individual space has gone from 56% to 35% of the floor plate since 2021 — while the activity offices support worst is still focused work.
- The gap is management, not policy. 77% run no communications programme and 13% train their managers.
Sources: CBRE 2026 Global Workplace & Occupancy Insights (Parts 1, 2 and 4), CBRE Research, drawn from client portfolios totalling 28 million m²; CBRE CEE State of the Workplace Survey 2025, July 2025, more than 50 companies across Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and South-East Europe; and CREATE.Studio's own pre-move workplace surveys, 2,078 responses across 10 organisations, 2022–2026.