Businesses Spent Years Shrinking Their Offices. Now Staff Are Being Called Back In
For the past few years, the office maths seemed pretty easy. If fewer people were coming in each day, businesses didn’t need as much space.
Some gave up entire floors. Others moved into smaller offices or changed their layouts around hybrid working. There wasn’t much point paying for rows of empty desks if half the team was working from home.
Now, just as businesses have got used to that idea, things are changing again.
Barclays will ask most employees to work from the office at least three days a week from October, up from two. Senior staff will be expected in four days. The decision has already caused a backlash, with thousands of UK employees represented by Unite backing an open letter against the change, according to The Guardian.
Most of the argument about returning to the office has been about workers. How much longer will people spend commuting? What happens to childcare? Are people more productive at home or sitting next to their colleagues?
But there is another, much more practical problem for businesses. Some of them may no longer have enough office space.
Some Businesses May Have Cut Too Far
That might sound strange after years of hearing about empty offices, but there are signs it is already happening.
Research from property firm CBRE found that 21% of European companies planning to expand their offices said they had previously cut too much space, or that more staff were coming in than expected. A year earlier, just 7% gave those reasons.
The figure was even higher in Britain. One in three UK companies planning to expand said they had either cut too much space after the pandemic or were seeing more people in the office than they expected.
It isn’t hard to see how businesses ended up here. A few years ago, cutting office space looked like an obvious way to save money. If only 50 people were going to turn up each day, why keep paying for 100 desks?
The problem comes when 50 starts becoming 70 or 80. CBRE found that 54% of European employers wanted staff in the office at least three days a week, but only 42% were actually getting that level of attendance.
The gap was even bigger in financial services. Some 61% wanted staff in at least three days, while just 32% were achieving it. Barclays is now trying to change that.
Tuesday Is The Problem
This isn’t really a return to the old five-day office week. Hybrid working is still common. The difference is that offices are getting busier, and lots of people want to use them on the same days.
CBRE’s latest workplace research found that average office use across the buildings it studied rose to 53% in 2025, up from 38% a year earlier.
On the busiest days, however, that figure reached 80%. Anyone who works in a hybrid office will probably recognise what that looks like.
Monday can be quiet. Friday can feel almost empty. Then Tuesday arrives and suddenly every meeting room is booked, the kitchen is packed and somebody is walking around with a laptop trying to find somewhere to sit.
It creates a strange problem for businesses. They can have too much office space for most of the week and not enough when people actually want to use it.
Asking staff to come in more often doesn’t necessarily solve that. If everyone still chooses Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, those days just get busier.
Then Somebody Has To Find 200 Desks
Changing an office policy can be done with an email. Changing the office itself takes a bit more work.
For some businesses, it might mean adding a few desks or turning an unused room back into workspace.
For others, it can mean reopening a floor, bringing furniture back from storage, moving teams around or taking on more space.
Then come all the boring details that nobody thinks about when the new office policy is announced.
Where are the extra desks coming from? Is there enough IT equipment? Are there enough meeting rooms? Can the internet connection handle more people? If teams are moving between floors or buildings, when can furniture actually be brought in?
The physical move can sometimes happen surprisingly quickly. Commercial relocation company SFI Logistics says in its guide to how long an office move takes that a small or medium-sized office can sometimes be moved over a weekend. The preparation usually takes much longer.
Internet connections may need to be arranged weeks beforehand. Desks and chairs have to arrive at the right time. Computers need to move from one place to another without leaving half the company unable to work on Monday morning.
It isn’t the interesting part of the return-to-office debate. But once a business decides it wants more people back, somebody has to work out where they are all going to sit.
Finding Another Office Isn’t Always Easy Either
Some companies will eventually decide that moving things around isn’t enough. But businesses looking for a new office may find plenty of other companies doing the same thing.
CBRE found that 52% of European businesses planning an office move within the next three years were worried about finding enough good-quality office space in the right places. In the UK, that rose to 60%.
That doesn’t mean Britain is running out of offices. Plenty of businesses are still cutting space, and asking staff to come in for another day doesn’t automatically mean a company needs to move.
It does show how messy the office story has become. A few years ago, the direction looked fairly obvious. People would spend more time working from home, businesses would need fewer desks and companies could spend less on office space.
It hasn’t quite worked out that way. Some businesses are still shrinking. Others have realised they cut too much. And plenty have enough space on paper, only to discover that everyone wants to use it at exactly the same time.
Barclays is one of the latest big employers to ask staff to spend another day at their desks. Other companies making the same decision may find that getting people back through the door is only half the problem. They still need somewhere to put them.
