CBRE report shows office use rises as employees seek collaboration

Office use is becoming more intentional

CBRE’s latest workplace data points to a simple shift with big consequences for managers: people are coming in less for individual desk time and more for collaboration. The firm says average office utilization has climbed to 53 percent, up from 38 percent in 2024 and 35 percent in 2023, while 68 percent of respondents said the main reason they go to the office is to work with colleagues.

For a company like monday.com, that changes the job of workplace leaders. The question is no longer whether hybrid work exists, but how to make the in-office days worth the commute, especially for product, engineering, and sales teams that already rely on fast coordination across functions and time zones.

What CBRE is measuring, and why it matters now

CBRE’s 2026 Global Workplace and Occupancy Insights is a four-part series built around the evolution of hybrid work, the connected employee experience, leadership and employee alignment, AI and technology for space optimization, and the future of CRE professionals. CBRE says the report draws on five years of benchmarking and sentiment surveys going back to 2021, with global data from clients representing 303 million square feet, or 28 million square meters, and an average office portfolio size of 5 million square feet.

That scale matters because it makes the report less of a one-company snapshot and more of a planning baseline. CBRE is effectively saying that hybrid has moved from an emergency setup into a long-running operating model, one that keeps changing as companies refine how often people come in, what they do when they arrive, and how much space they actually need.

For workplace leaders, the key takeaway is not just that attendance is rising. It is that attendance is being shaped by purpose, and that purpose is collaboration.

Collaboration is driving attendance, not seat time

The strongest finding in the report is the reason people give for being in the office: collaboration. CBRE says 68 percent of respondents identified working with colleagues as the biggest driver of office attendance. That should push managers away from generic attendance policies and toward more deliberate team design.

If the office is a collaboration hub, then anchor days should be built around shared work, not spread evenly across the week by habit. Product reviews, sprint planning, customer call debriefs, deal strategy, and cross-functional problem solving all belong on the same days when possible, because employees are already telling employers that the trip in is justified by in-person interaction.

The report also shows that peak utilization has reached 80 percent, which CBRE says is above its benchmark for the first time since the pandemic. That means the busiest days are getting crowded even as average utilization remains far below full capacity. Managers should read that as a warning sign: a weakly coordinated hybrid schedule can create overloaded Tuesdays and Wednesdays, empty Thursdays, and a lot of wasted space in between.

The office is being overbooked in some places and underused in others

CBRE says global occupancy has reached 111 percent, meaning more people are allocated to buildings than there are physical seats. That is one of the most actionable numbers in the report because it shows a familiar hybrid problem in hard terms: teams are being asked to gather, but the real estate footprint has not fully adapted to how they gather.

At the same time, 79 percent of respondents said their utilization target is above 65 percent. That suggests most organizations are still tuning their workplace model rather than locking it in. For monday.com leaders, that argues for flexibility, not rigidity. The goal should be to steer teams toward a meaningful occupancy pattern that supports collaboration without creating a squeeze on days when everyone shows up.

This is where office design becomes a management issue, not just a facilities issue. If people are using the office for meetings, brainstorming, onboarding, and relationship-building, then there needs to be enough collaborative space, fewer dead zones, and better rotation of seats, rooms, and project areas.

What managers should change now

The clearest near-term move is to make anchor days intentional. Choose days when teams are already likely to collaborate, then align them around the work that benefits most from being face-to-face. That includes planning sessions, product roadmaps, pipeline reviews, customer handoffs, and key cross-team conversations.

A second move is to tighten meeting norms. monday.com’s own remote collaboration guidance emphasizes central digital workspaces, clear communication rules, and intentional hybrid-meeting design. That aligns closely with CBRE’s finding that the office is being used for interaction, not passive attendance. If a meeting includes remote participants, managers should make the format clear in advance, assign a facilitator, and avoid side conversations that exclude people dialing in.

A third move is to rethink space allocation. Hybrid offices need more collaboration zones, fewer permanently reserved seats, and better support for short, high-value meetings. If peak utilization is hitting 80 percent while average utilization sits at 53 percent, then the answer is not simply to add more desks. It is to match space to behavior: project rooms, phone rooms, team tables, and areas that can be repurposed across the week.

AI and analytics can help, but only if the basics are in place

CBRE also highlights AI and analytics as tools for optimizing space, but says data quality and lack of expertise are still major barriers. That matters because workplace technology only works when leaders trust the underlying data and know how to act on it. Without reliable utilization tracking, occupancy planning becomes guesswork.

For monday.com, this is especially relevant because the company has been positioning itself as an AI Work Platform, with people and agents working together to get work done. That framing fits the broader workplace trend CBRE is describing: companies want systems that help them coordinate more intelligently, not just more digitally. In practical terms, that means tying room-booking data, team schedules, and hybrid meeting norms into a clear operating model rather than treating them as separate problems.

The implication for sales and customer-facing teams is just as useful. CBRE’s numbers give a concrete language for explaining hybrid work to customers who are still trying to right-size offices, redesign team schedules, or justify collaboration spaces. The office has not disappeared. It has become a more selective tool, used when the work is truly better together.

The new standard is purposeful presence

The most important shift in the CBRE data is not attendance itself, but intent. Companies are bringing people in for collaboration-based activities, and employees are responding when the office gives them something they cannot easily get at home. That makes hybrid work less about where work happens and more about what kind of work belongs where.

For monday.com managers, the next step is straightforward: schedule the right teams together, redesign meetings so hybrid participation is equitable, and treat office space as a shared collaboration asset instead of a row of empty seats. The firms that adapt to that model will get more from each commute, each room, and each day in the office.