There has certainly been enough in the news about companies requiring employees to return to the office. It seems that nearly every day, we learn another large employer has announced employees need to be in the office on a full-time basis. Following announcements made by large companies such as Amazon and Google that require employees back in the office, it seems that nearly every business has abandoned the work at home or hybrid work models.  But sometimes it helps to get the actual data to understand what’s happening on the ground.

One of the largest providers of building access control systems tracks how many people return to work based on employees utilizing keycards, fobs, codes, and access apps to gain access to their offices. Kastle Systems gathers this data and provides an on-going back-to-work barometer of 10 large U.S. cities.

Kastle Systems Back to Work Barometer (Create link to: www.kastle.com/safety-wellness/getting-america-back-to-work)

Although our home market of Chicago is included in Kastle’s 10-city barometer, we don’t have this data for CARMEN’s home markets of Indianapolis and Louisville. Yet, the results are interesting and possibly valuable to compare our own businesses to what’s happening in cities in other parts of the country with respect to Peak Days for companies operating on a hybrid work model, Occupancy Over Time from March 2020 through today, and weekly occupancy trends.

This information may be nothing more than interesting. However, for companies that continue to modify their work model, this data can provide insight to the actual numbers to help you to develop a back to work plan that is based on data rather than hunches. I provided this information to a CARMEN client late last year that was in the process of reworking its hybrid work policy and a few days later received a note from the CEO that the data I referred to their HR Director made a huge difference in the policy they were developing for workers to return to the office.

I want to hear from you!   I’d love to know what you’re doing with respect to employee work models and changes your planning or policies you’ve implemented to improve productivity and employee engagement.