Work location policy remains in a state of flux. Metrigy’s Workplace Collaboration and Employee Experience 2027 global study of 403 organizations found that one-third require knowledge workers in the office full time, and those with hybrid policies require an average of 3.5 in-office days per week.
With mandates this common, attendance data such as badge swipes and desk occupancy might be expected to serve as the main yardstick for hybrid work. However, our research shows that attendance is a secondary measure for most organizations, and that the companies seeing the greatest results from collaboration technology rely more heavily on what employees tell them. The difference between counting people and understanding their experience is where IT and business leaders have the most room to improve how they evaluate work location strategies.
Attendance Is One Measure Among Several
When asked how they evaluate the success of their remote or hybrid work strategy, research participants most often cite cost savings and employee surveys, each named by more than half. About half track employee turnover, while roughly one-third (35.7%) use in-office attendance, placing it near the bottom of the list alongside environmental metrics. Very few organizations don’t actively evaluate their strategy at all.
Attendance data supports real-estate planning and helps justify investment in meeting rooms and reservation software. However, it shows where people work rather than how well they work or whether they plan to stay. Among organizations that require office time, the most common reasons are better informal collaboration and higher productivity, each cited by about half, and neither outcome shows up in an attendance report.
Successful Organizations Ask Their Employees
Metrigy’s Success Group for this study consists of the 95 organizations reporting above-average gains in productivity, cost reduction, and employee satisfaction from workplace collaboration technology investments. These organizations use employee surveys to evaluate hybrid work far more often than others, at 70.0% vs. 53.5% of the Non-Success Group, and they are also more likely to track environmental metrics.
The same pattern appears in how organizations measure their broader collaboration strategy. Employee feedback is the most common success measure overall, and the Success Group uses it at about the same rate as everyone else. Where successful organizations differ is in adding direct evidence of results, measuring productivity gains at 53.2% vs. 41.3% of others and tracking business process improvements more often.
This emphasis on employee input doesn’t mean successful organizations are moving away from the office. Those that require office time are the most convinced that the office raises productivity, and more than half of the Success Group expects its office space to grow in 2027. They also give employees more choice, with 34.0% operating fully flexible policies vs. 20.1% of others.
Formal Engagement Measurement Is Spreading
Just over half of organizations have a formal approach to measuring employee job satisfaction and engagement, and many more plan to implement one by the end of 2027. Adoption rises with company size, from fewer than half of small organizations (fewer than 250 employees) to most mid-size firms (between 250 and 2,500 employees).
Almost no Success Group organizations rule it out, while a small share of the Non-Success Group has no plans. Successful organizations also involve HR in collaboration technology decisions more often than the Non-Success Group, which may help connect engagement findings to the tools employees use every day.
Employee Experience Platforms Provide the Channel
Measuring engagement at scale depends on a consistent way to reach a distributed workforce. Our research shows that about half of organizations use employee experience platforms designed for community building and company-wide information sharing, and roughly one-fifth more plan to deploy one by the end of 2027.
The Success Group leads adoption, with nearly two-thirds using one compared with fewer than half of others, and no Success Group organization reports having no plans to adopt one. These platforms aren’t engagement measurement tools in themselves, but they provide the ability to share information and gather input across office, hybrid, and remote employees in one place.
From Occupancy Reports to Employee Experience
The same difference shows up in how organizations use desk and room reservation software. Space utilization reporting is the top feature for the Non-Success Group and the only feature it uses more often than the Success Group. Successful organizations use more of the platform, led by the ability to sit near colleagues, and are nearly twice as likely to use healthy-workplace monitoring.
What IT and Business Leaders Should Do
For companies not already doing the following, Metrigy recommends:
- • Treat attendance as one input – Use badge and occupancy data for space planning and pair it with employee surveys and turnover data when evaluating whether a hybrid strategy is working.
- Formalize engagement measurement – Put a recurring, formal approach to measuring job satisfaction and engagement in place, with a defined owner and schedule, and involve HR alongside IT, as the Success Group more often does.
- Use an employee experience platform to close the loop – Evaluate whether your platform provides the ability to run pulse surveys and report back on what changed as a result, so employees see that their input leads to action.
- Get more from workplace data – Look beyond space utilization reports to reservation features that support the employee experience, such as sitting near colleagues and healthy-workplace monitoring.
- Measure outcomes directly – Add productivity gains and business process improvements to the collaboration scorecard, since these are the measures where the Success Group differs most from others.
Successfully evaluating hybrid work requires understanding where employees work, measuring how engaged and productive they are, and acting on what they report. Attendance data answers the first of those questions, and successful organizations ask their employees for the rest.
For more on the study, see https://www.metrigy.com/product/workplace-collaboration-and-employee-experience-2027/.
