Offices have historically been pretty empty on Fridays. Now, according to an analysis of dozens of Density customers, it appears Mondays are following suit.
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays have always enjoyed the highest utilization rates (most folks are familiar with the mid-week mountain effect). According to our data, pre-pandemic offices saw a roughly 40-42% utilization rate during these days.
Mondays used to see just a slight dip in utilization (39%) compared to their mid-week counterparts.
Today, that dip is much more considerable.
While Tuesday-Thursday utilization rates hover at around 23-26% in this Return-to-Office era, Mondays are only seeing an average utilization rate of 18%.
In other words, Mondays are behaving a lot like Fridays.
It’s no surprise that workplace utilization has not reached pre-pandemic levels. Our data shows it’s dropped to 18% — about half what it was in 2020.
But the drop is even more profound for Mondays and Fridays. Mondays have experienced a 55% drop in average utilization (from 38.8% in February 2020 to 18% in March 2023). Fridays have experienced a similar 55% drop (from 30% in February 2020 to 14% in September 2022).
The takeaway
Workplace leaders are hyper-focused on creating workplace experiences that attract employees to the office.
And while many employees want to (and do) come to the office 1-2 days a week, the data is clear: people like to work from home Mondays and Fridays. What can (and should) workplace leaders do with that insight?
Do you shut down offices on these days to save on operational costs; or create programs designed to bring people in on those days? Answering these questions will be atop the priority lists of workplace leaders in 2023.
Density’s analysis is based on 188 complete floor plans split among 27 major customers, between February 2020 and March 2023. Numbers are based on the average of the “hourly average utilization” at the floor level, between 8 am and 6 pm local time, Monday through Friday.
