For years, enterprise technology has treated the workplace differently from other major functions. Sales teams have customer relationship management systems, finance has enterprise resource planning, and HR has systems of record for workforce data. Yet the physical environment in which those roles operate has often been managed through a patchwork of spreadsheets, booking applications, access-control data, and facilities tools.
However, that gap is becoming harder to defend. Hybrid work has made office demand less predictable, while businesses face pressure to control real-estate costs and make in-person time worthwhile for employees. JLL’s 2026 Global Occupancy Planning Benchmark Report puts global office utilization at 56%, against a 74% target, revised down from 81%, illustrating both the return of office attendance and the continuing mismatch between portfolio assumptions and how space is actually used.
Erin Mulligan Helgren, Chief Executive Officer of OfficeSpace Software, argues that meeting this target effectively and alleviating the issues caused by unpredictable workforce flows requires businesses to treat the office as a system of record.
Why Hybrid Work and RTO Have Intensified the Need
The central change is that the office is no longer static infrastructure. Before the pandemic, businesses could lease space, assign desks, and revisit capacity planning annually, with seats being relatively easy to account for. However, hybrid patterns, changing attendance policies, and a greater focus on employee experience have turned those decisions into a continual operational exercise. The question is no longer simply how much space a company occupies, but whether it has the right kind of space, in the right locations, on the days people need it.
That matters because average occupancy can hide large differences between days and teams. Kastle Systems’ access-control data, which tracks more than 300,000 users across 10 US metro areas, reported national office occupancy of 52.9% in its latest measure, with a 62.6% peak-day figure. A portfolio that appears lightly used across a week may still be overcrowded on Tuesday and Wednesday, while large areas sit empty at other times.
Helgren argues that many companies still do not have the information they need to deal with this. “The office is too expensive, too visible, and too strategic to manage with guesswork,” she says.
Without clear, shared data on how space is being used, leaders may make decisions based on what they happen to see. A busy floor, an empty meeting room, or a booking calendar does not show the full picture. It cannot tell leaders whether a room was used, whether employees could sit near their teams, or whether the office supported the work people came in to do.
The financial impact can be significant. OfficeSpace’s February 2026 Built World Market Report, based on 954 organizations and 116 million square feet of office space, points to the cost of getting space planning wrong. The company says healthcare organization Quantum Health avoided $13.5 million in renovation costs by using workplace data to make better planning decisions. OfficeSpace estimates the wider US cost of poorly matched workplaces at $1.3 trillion.
Although that is the company’s own calculation, the broader point is straightforward: when businesses do not understand how employees use their offices, they risk paying for space they do not need or providing workplaces that do not meet employees’ needs.
