Despite all the talk of hybrid work, office layouts are still clinging to a bygone era. VergeSense’s latest 2025 Workplace Occupancy & Utilisation Index, the world’s largest dataset on office space usage, reveals that companies are struggling to adapt their workspaces to modern needs, leading to inefficiency, wasted space, and a mismatch between design and reality.
One of the biggest takeaways is that desks still dominate. More than half of office space is dedicated to desks, while collaboration areas remain scarce, even as employees split time between remote and in-person work.
The study, which analysed more than 190,000 spaces across 156 million square feet of commercial real estate, also found that meeting rooms are often too large for the actual number of attendees, with nearly half designed for five or more people—despite the rise of virtual and hybrid collaboration.
Dan Ryan, CEO and co-founder at VergeSense, said: “We’ve been navigating workplace changes since our founding in 2017 and have learned that companies are missing out on opportunities to increase productivity, improve collaboration, and enhance employee and workplace experience. We know from first-hand customer experience that utilising data to create adaptable spaces is enabling leaders to remain agile in a dynamic work landscape and will be crucial as occupancy levels continue to rise.”
Another surprising insight is that North America lags behind in office attendance. While APAC and EMEA offices hover around 10.7% and 10.8% capacity usage, North America sits at just 7.6%, reflecting continued resistance to in-office mandates.
So, what’s next? Workplace leaders need to rethink office design, shrinking oversized meeting rooms, boosting collaboration areas, and optimising spaces based on real-world behaviour rather than outdated assumptions.