Hybrid working has become the norm in many organisations, but how it is structured determines whether it actually delivers value. More and more organisations are discovering that a lack of clear agreements leads to empty offices on Mondays and Fridays and overcrowded spaces on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Structured hybrid working with fixed office days offers a solution, provided it is implemented thoughtfully.
Why Unstructured Hybrid Working Falls Short
In 2025, average office occupancy in the Netherlands increased to 59%, compared with 56% a year earlier. However, that average tells only part of the story. Tuesdays and Thursdays remain by far the busiest days, while the beginning and end of the week are underutilised. In 73% of the organisations surveyed, Tuesday was the busiest day of the week.
This difference between average and peak occupancy is exactly where problems arise. Globally, average office utilisation stood at 53%, while average peak utilisation reached 80%. Organisations that focus solely on weekly averages risk overlooking capacity shortages on busy days and maintaining too much office space or space that is poorly configured for actual demand.
Anchor Days Are Different from Office Attendance Requirements
There is an important distinction that is often overlooked. An office attendance requirement determines how many days someone works in the office. Anchor days determine which days those are. Only the latter ensures that colleagues who need to work together are present at the same time.
A company-wide rule requiring everyone to attend on Tuesdays and Thursdays only increases existing peak demand. A better approach is to schedule teams that depend heavily on one another on the same days, while spreading less interdependent teams throughout the week. This makes better use of Mondays and Fridays and helps prevent overcrowded meeting rooms, waiting times and excessive noise on popular office days.
Give Every Office Day a Clear Purpose
Office attendance alone does not improve productivity. The value of time spent in the office depends on what people do there: meetings, decision-making, knowledge sharing, coaching, onboarding and building social connections. Depending on the role, individual focused work can often be carried out just as effectively elsewhere.
Few things undermine a hybrid working policy faster than employees commuting to the office only to spend the entire day on video calls with colleagues working from home. According to Gallup, teams with a clear hybrid collaboration plan were 66% more likely to report being engaged and 29% less likely to experience burnout. Yet almost half of hybrid employees had not discussed shared working arrangements in 2024. This presents a clear opportunity for improvement.
Mandatory Office Attendance Is No Guarantee of Success
The international trend is moving towards stricter office attendance requirements. In 2025, 49% of the organisations surveyed required employees to work a fixed number of days in the office, compared with 27% in 2023. However, research does not demonstrate an automatic improvement in productivity from such requirements. A large randomised study found that hybrid working reduced employee turnover from 7.2% to 4.8%, without any measurable difference in performance.
The lesson is straightforward: greater office attendance does not automatically lead to better collaboration or innovation. Uniform rules imposed from the top down can create resistance and are more likely to be perceived as unfair. Agreements developed and supported by teams tend to work better, especially when reasonable exceptions are allowed for part-time employees, informal carers, people with long commutes and new employees.
From Working Patterns to Office Space Requirements
In our view, this is where the greatest opportunity lies. Many organisations start with the wrong question: how much office space can we reduce? The process should work the other way around. First, establish the working patterns, then determine the required space allocation, capacity and implementation.
This requires a combination of data and practical insights:
- Measure attendance, peak occupancy, bookings and actual space utilisation by day, hour, team and zone.
- Supplement these figures with interviews or surveys about collaboration, concentration, wellbeing and how effectively the workplace supports employees.
- Identify dependencies between teams and use these insights to establish shared anchor days.
- Design the workplace around recurring peak demand and the mix of activities, rather than simply the number of employees or assigned desks.
An office can be underutilised on average while still lacking sufficient meeting rooms or quiet workspaces on Tuesdays. Reducing office space too quickly based on average occupancy can therefore create serious capacity shortages on the days when the office is needed most.
Involve the Right Stakeholders Early
Workplace strategy affects HR, IT, facilities management and leadership simultaneously. Involve the works council at an early stage, particularly if you intend to monitor office attendance. Data from access badges or entry systems can quickly become a form of employee monitoring.
Where possible, use aggregated data collected solely for the intended purpose and ensure employee consultation and participation requirements are addressed in advance.
Office planning should also be aligned with mobility and sustainability objectives. Spreading office attendance more evenly throughout the week can reduce pressure during rush hours. In addition, larger employers in the Netherlands are required to report on work-related mobility.
Make Informed Decisions Instead of Guessing
Structured hybrid working with carefully planned anchor days creates more predictable office occupancy, supports better collaboration and provides a stronger foundation for real estate decisions.
Start with a small pilot, compare the results before and after implementation, and only scale up when the data supports doing so.
At BESPARK, we bring together workplace strategy, data and design to ensure that policies, employee behaviour, technology and physical space work together.
This transforms your workplace into a tool that supports productivity and wellbeing, rather than a source of frustration.