Why innovate? Why now?
Welcome to the workplace shift. Daily commutes to the office and one-to-one assigned seats have gone the way of fax machines and fluorescent lighting—there’s little room for them in modern workplaces.
The balance of power is also shifting; employee preferences are driving significant changes in how we work. A study by Deloitte found that 66% of financial service leaders with remote and hybrid options would leave their firm if they were asked to return to the office full time. According to a study by CBRE, 80% of office occupiers are hybrid, driving change in how workplace leaders manage space. Today’s modern workplace demands flexibility, efficiency, and technology-driven solutions to meet the evolving needs of both employees and employers.
Why? Because hybrid work isn’t just a trend—it’s the future of financial services.
Why do employee preferences matter?
More than 96% of decision-makers in financial services say offering hybrid and flexible work options is crucial to retaining top performers. These leaders recognize that employees have options—namely, looking elsewhere for a more flexible role. To stay competitive in the growing financial sector, firms are adapting to employee needs to attract and retain talent. This means flexible, dynamic spaces and exceptional employee experiences—but that’s easier said than done.
To cultivate a thriving hybrid environment at scale, organizations are investing in workplace technology to streamline processes including onboarding, move management, and space and real estate planning.
The question isn’t whether to offer hybrid work—it’s how to implement it effectively.
Source: Flex Index
The digital workplace transformation
We live in a digital-first, data-driven world, especially when it comes to how we work. Rapidly evolving technology and AI tools are creating opportunities for complete workplace transformation, enabling teams across all industries to drive even more value in physical offices.
Financial institutions and adjacent industries from software to healthcare face ongoing challenges, from swift regulatory changes to pressing cybersecurity threats. The workplace environment has a direct impact on a team’s ability to address larger challenges and organizational goals. The ideal environment is agile and human-centric, fostering both individual productivity and team collaboration.
Must-have hybrid technology
Desk booking software
With these tools, employees can easily book desks—whether through on-site kiosks, mobile apps, or Slack or Teams—before they even arrive. This removes the guesswork around office attendance, helping space planners and facilities teams optimize capacity for any given day. It also simplifies the booking experience, eliminating the need for outdated sign-up sheets.
Intuitive desk booking tools support employee well-being by offering the power of choice. Individuals can set up recurring bookings of their favorite desk and find a spot near their coworkers. If your office has more flexible seating policies and employees aren’t assigned to a specific desk, desk booking software makes it easier to grab an ideal seat last-minute, or practice desk lending, hot desking, or hoteling. This level of agility helps teams maximize space usage and spot opportunities to reduce space and lower costs and energy consumption.
Meeting room booking software
Many employees have likely had the experience of arriving at a meeting room only to find it occupied. A room booking system gives teams complete visibility into which spaces are reserved and when they’re available. To enhance the workplace experience even further, you can integrate sensors or WiFi tracking to display real-time occupancy and automatically free up rooms if no one checks in.
Room booking systems can also help teams understand how much space they need. Is the largest conference room rarely booked? Do teams prefer smaller spaces that can accommodate just a few employees for ad hoc meetings? Room booking systems help you answer these questions so you can better plan and reconfigure spaces to match how teams actually work.
Wayfinding and kiosks
With dynamic seating, employees need an intuitive way to navigate the office and find available work stations. Wayfinding solutions help hybrid workers efficiently locate desks, conference rooms, and colleagues. Consider the experience of employees or clients visiting the office for the first time. Wayfinding tools eliminate confusion, reduce lost productivity, and improve employee experience by providing clear navigation to workstations, meeting rooms, and shared workspaces. This reduces administrative burden by limiting the number of inquiries facility teams receive about where to find certain resources or areas of the office.
Employee coordination tools
One of the most challenging aspects of hybrid work is coordinating employee schedules. Though the majority of financial services companies in the U.S. allow for either employee choice (26.4%) or flexible hybrid (45.3%), just 1.1% of companies practice “structured hybrid,” requiring both a specific number of days as well as specific days of the week in-office. Whether or not teams have a structured hybrid policy or offer more flexibility, employee coordination software is essential for hybrid collaboration.
Employee coordination tools include integrated desk booking software to inform employees which days colleagues have booked a desk (and therefore plan to come into the office), scheduling software, connecting meeting rooms to calendar invites based on employee location, and leveraging presence data to show where teams are in the office in real time.
Digital space planning tools
Workplace management platforms provide block and stack planning, collaborative scenario planning, and move management, simplifying small reshuffles and major relocations. These tools allow you to “drag and drop” teams and departments across different floors and sites, and can integrate with HRIS data for accurate employee headcounts.
Request management
Facilities managers spend a great deal of time responding to maintenance requests. Request management software allows two-way communication between employees and facilities managers when areas of the office need attention, enabling teams to resolve requests faster, provide context, and even automatically assign requests to delegates. Advanced request management software allows employees to attach photos and location details to requests, and lets FMs prioritize urgent requests. This not only gives employees visibility into the status of their requests, it also helps build trust between teams, ensures a safe and maintained work environment, and eliminates disorganized work order queues.
“I’ve got maintenance guys on the road all the time, and it was hard for them to pick up an Excel spreadsheet and see which requests were on there. Request Manager is so intuitive, and the ease of use of this tool is remarkable.”
Sharon Taylor
Assistant Vice President of Facilities, Centra Credit Union
IoT
Badges, Sensors, and WiFi
Desk and room booking, employee coordination tools, and wayfinding all become simpler with the support of IoT devices, including office hardware your teams may already be using.
Badges: If teams use badges to check into the office or their desks, workplace leaders can leverage badge swipe data to accurately measure attendance without the need for manual attendance tracking. By surfacing badge swipe data in a workplace management platform, teams can confirm whether employees are actually using the desks they book, and employees can see available desks in real-time to prevent double-bookings. Additionally, facilities teams don’t have to spend hours manually “cleaning” badge data. Instead, a platform like OfficeSpace normalizes the data across various sources, so you get an accurate picture of occupancy and utilization, not just attendance. Badge systems also improve security by controlling access to your spaces.
WiFi: Facilities teams and workplace leaders can gain critical insights from WiFi login data alone, including:
Device connections: Monitoring which devices connect to the WiFi network provides valuable insights into employee movement, workspace usage, and overall productivity.
Signal strength: Analyzing WiFi signal strength across different areas helps optimize office layouts, improving both space utilization and employee experience while offering key performance metrics.
Location data: Tracking device locations within the WiFi network enhances security and delivers critical insights for space planning. By understanding which meeting rooms, desks, and workspaces see the most activity, you can better align your office setup with real occupancy patterns.
Smart offices utilize sensors to track key environmental factors such as air quality, lighting, and temperature, enabling teams to optimize comfort and create a more productive workspace.
Metrics that matter
Data-driven insights are critical for understanding office utilization and making informed space management decisions. According to CBRE, organizations leveraging occupancy analytics have seen a 15-30% improvement in space utilization. If you manage a hybrid workforce, it’s important to leverage metrics from across the workplace. Workplace analytics help you quantify office usage, identify peak occupancy trends, and fine-tune hybrid strategies.
Space utilization
Space utilization metrics reveal how space is being used over time. The more FMs and space planners are able to see how employees are using the office, the more they’ll be able to both improve efficiency and reduce costs. These insights allow decision makers to answer critical questions about their spaces, including whether policies are working, which types of spaces are the least and most popular, and attendance peaks and averages in a given location.
Occupancy
Space occupancy is the extent to which a physical space is occupied at a given point in time. In an office, this usually refers to the number of people occupying existing seats. Occupancy rate (also known as ‘percent occupancy’ or ‘space occupancy rate’) is a static snapshot of office use. As such, it has historically been the focus of traditional office settings, which themselves tend to be more static.
Presence data
Presence data combines occupancy with utilization data to help teams understand how, when, and where people are using the office. Presence data uses many data points from a variety of sources, including badge swipes, sensors, WiFi, and desk and room booking software. With the right tools, you can evaluate presence on multiple levels, including by department, team, and employee. Surfacing this data into reporting tools enables you to quickly identify attendance trends and make strategic decisions around spaces and operations.
For example, if you know which days of the week are the busiest at the office, you can schedule catering and cleaning services accordingly, scaling back on quieter days to save costs and resources. Additionally, if you have insights into peak occupancy and the critical mass of your space, you might opt for flexible seating arrangements. Rather than one-to-one assigned desks, you can get more out of your space with a shared neighborhood seating model, with fewer desks than employees.
Instead of planning around when you think employees will come into the office, presence data gives you concrete, real-time reporting to make confident decisions about your workspace.
Density
According to future of work expert Phil Kirschner, traditional workplace density was once measured by square feet per employee, based on one-to-one desk assignments and full-time office attendance. However, with the rise of hybrid work, this metric is outdated.
In today’s flexible work environment, workplace density is better understood through employee behavior and office utilization patterns. Kirschner suggests that companies analyze factors such as the average number of office visits per employee over a given period to accurately assess workspace demand.
A key concept in modern workplace planning, according to Kirschner, is “experienced density”—the way employees perceive space, comfort, and crowding in the office. The ideal level of workspace availability varies by company, but treating density as an employee experience metric can help organizations optimize office space for productivity, collaboration, and hybrid work success.
Vibrancy
The WorkTech Academy’s report on the World of Work in 2025 highlights a new metric: office vibrancy, which includes occupancy, utilization patterns, and noise levels. “A vibrant workspace should have the buzz many employees miss during remote work,” the report says.
Qualitative insights
Employee feedback during performance reviews, surveys, and 1:1 meetings is important for gauging employee sentiment, preferences, and behavior. Data is essential, but conversations with your team are still deeply important. These can take the form of shorter and more frequent pulse surveys, annual engagement surveys, and Employee Net Promoter scores (eNPS).
The power of employee experience
Whether you’re in the midst of a workplace transition due to RTO mandates or are committed to building an efficient hybrid workplace, exceptional employee experience is key to drive lasting engagement and workplace success.
WorkTech Academy’s 2025 World of Work report predicts that employee wellbeing will only become more tied to financial success for businesses going forward, highlighting the impact of wellbeing and comfort on performance. Workplaces that embrace biophilic design and ergonomic seating, for example, are likely to see returns in employee engagement, productivity, and retention.
Beyond comfort and wellbeing, a positive employee experience hinges on removing workplace friction. This includes automating manual tasks with workplace technology and AI, fostering autonomy with tools to replace manual check-ins and attendance tracking, enabling collaboration, and adapting spaces to match employee behaviors and preferences.
As we mentioned, the tools you provide teams to manage their workdays matter most, including collaboration and communication tools, wayfinding and employee coordination, and intuitive desk and room booking apps.
Getting data right
According to the same WorkTech Academy report, organizations should simply start by understanding what good and bad workdays look like, tapping into valuable data they may already collect. This can include employee engagement surveys, but also facilities request tickets, supplier performance feedback, and social media activity.
As we covered in our section on essential hybrid technology, workplace leaders can use a variety of resources to analyze and adapt to employee needs, including presence, occupancy, and utilization data, space management tools, and IoT sensors.
Hybrid work on Wall Street
While many companies on Wall Street and throughout the financial sector are requiring teams to return to in-person work five days a week, others are bucking the trend and doubling down on hybrid.
BlackRock, which recently moved to a new headquarters in Hudson Yards, requires four days in-office. During the slower summer season, however, BlackRock employees are permitted to work remotely for two weeks. In a memo seen by the Financial Times and Bloomberg, BlackRock’s COO Rob Goldstein and Human Resources Chief Caroline Heller shared the impact of in-person collaboration on the organization:
“We have felt the energy generated by being together, in our larger offices, our newer spaces. This energy, and the horizontal collaboration it powers, are what make BlackRock so special.” The company noted that finding solutions together as a team is easier done in person.
Citigroup is committed to three days a week in-office. CEO Jane Fraser told Business Insider that she views their flexible policy as a recruitment tool, giving them a leg up over competitors to attract top talent. Despite the flexible schedule, Citi has still invested over $1 billion to renovate the Citi Tower in London into what they call their “workplace of the future.”
Goldman Sachs initially mandated a full return-to-office (RTO), but faced resistance from employees. Despite the company’s preference for in-office work, many employees continued to work remotely or hybrid, forcing leadership to adjust expectations. Compliance with the mandate has remained a challenge, highlighting the ongoing debate over flexibility versus traditional in-office work structures.
Rolling out your hybrid strategy in 5 steps
1. Listen to employees
The way we work has changed, and employees are more vocal than ever before about what they need to be successful and stay engaged. According to CBRE’s research, structured collaboration days improve engagement and increase in-office attendance by 20%. Polling teams gives leaders powerful insight into how, where, and when the best work happens, according to employees themselves. We recommend asking teams what work they prefer to do while in the office, what tools and technology they need, and what space types are most conducive to their in-office goals.
2. Define goals and metrics
Once you’ve solicited feedback on employee needs, you can identify concrete workplace goals and KPIs to measure success. Understanding which goals will most directly impact your organization’s performance objectives is key to building a hybrid strategy that moves the needle for your team. For example, you may have a goal of increasing office utilization or attendance, but what impact does increased attendance have on the business? Does in-office work continually drive revenue and innovation, or are teams more productive with a schedule that balances remote and in-person work? If you start by aligning company culture to KPIs and overarching business goals, you’ll have a better lens through which you can assess the meaning behind the metrics.
3. Get ahead of common workplace challenges
Here are a few of the most common challenges hybrid teams face and how to solve them:
Challenge #1: It’s hard to get remote teams back in the office.
Employee engagement rates for hybrid work rank highest compared to rates for remote and fully in-office—but not by much. Most employees would be just as happy at home. To make time in the office more effective and rewarding, the benefits of hybrid models need to outweigh the alternatives.
Solution:
- Create purposeful programming: Give teams a reason to come into the office, including social events, in-person workshops, and training sessions.
- Offer commuting benefits: Consider subsidizing public transportation costs, free parking passes, or providing stipends to offset the cost of gas for employees who drive to the office. Companies that provide commuting stipends see a 10-15% increase in voluntary in-office attendance
. - Support flexible workstations: Provide a variety of work settings, including quiet zones, collaboration spaces, break rooms, and open areas.
Challenge #2: Organizations lack high-fidelity insights to make smart real estate decisions
Hybrid work makes space needs unpredictable. Yet many finance organizations are locked into long-term leases, meaning companies need to either optimize existing space or expand portfolios.
Solution:
- Leverage real estate portfolio insights within a workplace management platform to understand space utilization, site capacity, growth projections, and lease costs.
- Use scenario planning tools empower facility managers to experiment with office layouts, anticipate future space demands, and prevent costly missteps. This is especially valuable for organizations looking to expand, downsize, or relocate. Whether adapting to hybrid work, optimizing space, or reallocating resources, scenario planning enables data-driven decision-making before committing to final changes.
Challenge #3: Your workspace is static.
Managing workspaces once involved creating static floor plans and one-to-one seating assignments, and was heavily tied to growth patterns like new hires or reductions in headcount. Today, offices require more agile space planning, especially when it comes to optimizing real estate and accommodating new, flexible ways of working.
Solution:
- Embrace flexible seating arrangements. Hot desking, hoteling, and ABW (activity-based working) are key features of a modern, flexible workplace.
Many hybrid offices enable hot desking (ad hoc desk booking, rather than assigned desks) to unlock flexibility and reduce facility costs.
The benefits:
- Flexibility: Employees can choose the right spot in the office depending on their daily tasks.
- Knowledge sharing: Break down department barriers. Sit next to different colleagues to learn more about their roles and see the bigger company picture.
- Cost savings: By moving away from 1:1 assigned seating, you can reduce or repurpose office space.
With “Desk Lending” or “reverse hoteling,” employees have assigned desks, but they can share their desks with other employees when they’re out of town, or if they have different hybrid schedules than their colleagues.
Learn more about flexible seating strategies and how they help teams optimize the hybrid workplace.
4. Get connected with integrations
When implementing new programs into your hybrid workplace, one of the biggest considerations is which programs will work well with the systems you already have in place. CBRE’s research shows that integrated digital workplace platforms can improve hybrid efficiency by up to 25%. Platforms like OfficeSpace integrate with various tools like Slack, Teams, and Google Calendar. This integration versatility allows you to seamlessly incorporate new tools into your workplace.
5. Get employee buy-in
When you introduce new programs into the office, it can take time for employees to get on board. While the end goal is to make things easier and more efficient, there may be growing pains. Be open and transparent about the transition process and make managers available to answer questions.
Security essentials: Benefits of a digital workplace transformation
For financial services IT decision-makers, security risks and lack of technology are key barriers to adopting a hybrid model. Embracing a “smart” office that is equipped with IoT devices, automation, and visitor management systems can make workplaces more secure. Smart offices use advanced security measures, such as multi-layered access control and cybersecurity systems.
Key “smart office” features:
- Biometric authentication systems to prevent unauthorized individuals from accessing certain areas.
- Robust cybersecurity protocols to protect sensitive data and identify system vulnerabilities.
- Visitor management systems:
- Pre-entry visitor screening and digital check-ins reduce security risks.
- Verified IDs and photo badges ensure authorized access.
- Instant staff notifications, security watchlists, and comprehensive visitor logs enhance overall security.
- Tech advances assist in office management:
- Environmental, occupancy, and equipment monitoring sensors provide real-time data, enhancing comfort and safety.
- Data analysis facilitates continuous workplace improvement by identifying safety concerns, optimizing space utilization, and improving resource management. Learn more about why smart offices are safer.
Ready to transform your workplace? OfficeSpace helps organizations in the finance sector get hybrid down to a science, with intuitive, digital space planning, real-time utilization insights, and employee engagement tools. Learn more.
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