A data-driven look at where workplaces stand today and where they’re heading next.

As 2025 winds down, one message has become clear: organizations are still struggling to understand how their workplaces are performing, even as hybrid work expectations rise and return-to-office policies expand. Leaders are navigating cultural tension, operational pressure, and a rapidly shifting technology landscape.

Drawing on insights from InnerSpace CEO James Wu, InnerSpace Client Success leader Brennan Stang, and behavior-based workplace data across global enterprise portfolios, we break down the key lessons from 2025 and the emerging trends that will define 2026.

2025: The Year Workplace Leaders Realized They Were Flying Blind

1. RTO Happened - But No One Knew If It Was Working

In 2025, organizations made a decisive push toward return-to-office (RTO) mandates. Policies tightened, badge swipes increased, and office spaces looked fuller on the surface. But below that surface, one issue became impossible to ignore: no one actually knew what was happening inside their workplaces.

As Brennan Stang put it:

“Everyone rolled out RTO. But no one knew what was really happening.”

Despite an abundance of data sources, leaders found themselves drowning in contradictions:

• Badge data showed upticks in attendance — but revealed nothing about where people worked, how long they stayed, or whether they collaborated.
  
  
• Booking systems showed meeting rooms as perpetually “full,” though many remained empty because of ghost meetings.
  
  
• Sensors were offline, inaccurate, or simply unable to capture real usage.
  
  
• Legacy Wi-Fi analytics weren’t precise enough to distinguish passing through vs. staying in a space.
  
  
• Employee perception often had no correlation with any available data source.

James Wu summarized the confusion well:

Leaders were left with “a picture that was blurry at best and misleading at worst.”

2. Headcount Stopped Being Enough

For years, workplace analytics revolved around the simplest possible question:
How many people came in today?

By 2025, leaders realized this metric — once the industry’s gold standard — no longer captured the complexities of hybrid work.

James Wu captured the shift clearly:

“Counting bodies may have been acceptable in 2019, but not today.”

Teams needed to understand behavior, not just attendance:

• Why are people choosing to come in?
  
  
• What work are they doing when they’re on-site?
  
  
• Who are they interacting with?
  
  
• Where are bottlenecks or underused spaces?
  
  
• How do team behaviors differ across functions or days?

This created a major mindset shift:
From mandates → to meaning.

Leading organizations realized they could no longer force employees back — they needed to create conditions that attracted them back.

Real-world example:

An InnerSpace client discovered that although attendance was high mid-week, employees weren’t collaborating more, they were scattering across floors to avoid congestion. Simply counting bodies masked the fact that the office layout was working against the RTO goals. This insight led to a redesign of shared spaces and a redistribution of teams.

3. Fear of “Getting RTO Wrong” Became Real

One of the most unexpected and consistent themes of 2025 was the fear of reputational damage.
Executives worried not just about making the wrong workplace decisions — but about those decisions becoming public.

As Brennan shared in the transcript, a CRE leader with one of our clients confided:

“Our biggest goal is just to not end up on Business Insider.”

High-profile RTO missteps at major companies shaped the industry’s mindset. Leaders became acutely aware of:

• Employee backlash on social platforms
• Public scrutiny of RTO mandates
• The reputational cost of overcrowding, lack of meeting space, or unfair policies
• The cultural consequences of appearing out of touch

This fear pushed organizations away from blunt mandates and toward more thoughtful workplace design - strategies that prioritized fairness, transparency, and employee experience.

Real-world example:

Following layoffs and tightening RTO expectations, employees directly asked the leadership of one of our clients:

“What are you doing to bring back our goodwill?"

This pressure forced the company to rethink not just attendance policies, but the overall experience of being in the office, leading to more intentional planning around collaboration spaces, community-building, and meeting density.

What Organizations Tried in 2025 and What Actually Worked

1. Old Tools Failed

In 2025, CRE and workplace teams attempted to bring clarity to hybrid work using the same tools they had relied on for the last decade. Instead, these tools amplified confusion. Across conversations with clients and industry leaders, several consistent patterns emerged:

• Sensors lacked reliability.
  Many organizations discovered that traditional hardware sensors, long treated as “ground truth”, were offline, out of battery, miscalibrated, or blocked by building firewalls. Even when functional, they provided only binary signals: someone triggered a sensor, not whether a space was being used meaningfully. 

As Brennan noted, nearly every major enterprise client was exploring ripping out sensor networks entirely because “they have tried everything under the sun and nothing gives them the level of data they can make confident decisions with.”

• Manual counts were too limited.
  Some teams reverted to old-fashioned clipboards and walk-throughs. But these snapshots revealed only who was present in a moment, not how long they stayed, where they moved, or how behavior shifted across days. They were labor-intensive, prone to bias, and impossible to scale across portfolios.
• Booking systems were filled with ghost meetings.
  Ghost meetings, where rooms show as booked but sit empty, became a major source of friction. Badge data might show a spike in entries, but bookings suggested every meeting room was full, and employee sentiment said the opposite. These contradictions eroded trust in workplace tools and left leaders uncertain about true demand.
• Legacy Wi-Fi analytics lacked accuracy.
  Some organizations tried to recycle outdated Wi-Fi systems for space insights. But as James pointed out, traditional Wi-Fi data was “confounded by inaccuracies,” and its blind spots produced wildly inconsistent results.

Example: One company saw utilization vary by 40% depending on which data source they checked - badge, booking, Wi-Fi, or perception. None matched. As a result, leaders were effectively running their RTO programs “by the seat of their pants,” unable to tell whether their policies were working, and unsure which spaces mattered or why certain days were congested.

2. Behavior-Based Data Unlocked Real Transformation

A pivotal shift occurred mid-year: the companies that made meaningful progress were those that transitioned to behavior-based space insights, tracking movement, collaboration patterns, adjacency, congestion, and time spent in specific zones.

These insights were not abstractions. They were modeled from actual behavioral patterns, giving leaders real confidence to act.

Real-world examples across multiple enterprise portfolios illustrated this shift:

• Rebalancing overcrowded floors

A client with one floor “bursting at the seams” and another nearly empty finally understood the imbalance through InnerSpace’s behavioral analytics. Using team-level data, Brennan showed them exactly which groups were overloading the 24/7 floor - and where they could be redistributed. Within months, occupancy became more balanced across floors, reducing stress on amenities and improving the daily experience for hundreds of employees.

• Modeling the impact of four-day-per-week RTO

Organizations wanted to know whether shifting employees to four days in-office would break their buildings. Behavioral data allowed them to simulate concurrency, thresholds, and peak-day patterns before making a decision.

• Testing layout scenarios before making costly changes

Behavior-based insights enabled clients to answer questions that once felt impossible, such as:

• What if we removed 20% of desks?
• What if we added more meeting rooms?
• Would this relieve pressure on collaboration zones?

One client explored cutting workstations and increasing conference rooms. With behavioral modeling, they could see exactly how those changes would affect peak usage and workstation congestion  - without moving a single desk.

• Moving from reactive to proactive

With early-warning signals, like predicting which buildings would hit capacity weeks before it happened, leaders no longer waited for complaints. They prepared in advance, communicating expectations and adjusting workplace operations ahead of demand.

3. Micro Decisions Outweighed Macro Real Estate Strategy

In 2025, the biggest surprise was that organizations were not using space data primarily for large-scale portfolio cuts.

James Wu described it clearly:

“The real value we’re delivering day-to-day has nothing to do with closing buildings.”

Instead, the value came from micro decisions - the operational adjustments that directly shape employee experience and productivity:

• Improving meeting room availability
• Reducing congestion in high-traffic areas
• Redistributing teams based on collaboration patterns
• Prioritizing amenities that strengthen community
• Understanding time-on-site by team or function
• Identifying which days create friction versus flow

For organizations that own their buildings, the goal was not downsizing, but optimizing the investment they already have.

As Brennan noted:

“Many enterprise clients own their buildings and want to get as much out of them as they can. Downsizing is a future decision. Optimizing is the urgent one”.

2026 Outlook: Precision, Purpose, and Integrated Intelligence

2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year in corporate real estate - one defined by smarter systems, higher expectations, and a far deeper integration between people, space, and technology. The experimental era of hybrid work is ending. The era of intentional, intelligence-driven workplaces is beginning.

1. The Pressure to Do More With Less Intensifies

Budget constraints, productivity expectations, and workforce reductions will force CRE teams to extract more value from every square foot and every dollar spent. The mandate for 2026 is precision.

Organizations will be laser-focused on answering:

• Which spaces actually matter?
  Not every space contributes equally to productivity. Leaders need to pinpoint which floors, neighborhoods, and zones truly drive collaboration or focus — and which are draining resources.
  
  
• Which behaviors drive outcomes?
  Understanding not just where people are, but how they work, will be essential in determining whether office time is meaningful.
  
  
• What days generate friction or flow?
  Some buildings will hit congestion midweek, while others remain underutilized. Leaders must anticipate the push and pull of daily behavioral patterns.
  
  
• Where should we invest or divest?
  In a resource-constrained climate, investment must go toward spaces that actively support performance and culture.

This demand for precision is driven in large part by employees themselves. After a year of layoffs and shifting expectations, employees want proof that returning to the office improves their day-to-day experience.

As Brennan shared:

“You’re calling us back to the office… what are you doing to bring back the goodwill?”

2. Integration Will Replace Interpretation

James Wu predicts that 2026 will mark a major shift in how organizations use workplace data. Instead of relying on humans to interpret dashboards and manually adjust operations, buildings will begin to respond automatically.

Workplace data will flow directly into:

• HVAC and lighting systems
  Adjusting airflow and light levels based on real-time demand.
  
  
• Room readiness tools
  Preparing spaces for in-demand collaboration zones based on live usage patterns.
  
  
• Booking platforms
  Automatically releasing ghost meetings, suggesting alternative rooms, or nudging teams toward available spaces.
  
  
• Digital workplace apps
  Guiding employees toward quieter areas or highlighting team hotspots.
  
  
• Access and space management systems
  Dynamically regulating traffic, thresholds, and floor access.

This marks a transformative shift:

“We’re moving from humans reading graphs to buildings responding intelligently.” James Wu

Automation won’t replace CRE teams - it will multiply their effectiveness.

3. People Data Becomes the Heart of Workplace Strategy

While the last decade of CRE focused on headcount and space efficiency, 2026 will shift toward understanding people - their needs, habits, and patterns.

Leaders will focus on granular insights such as:

• How teams actually work
  Some departments thrive in open collaboration zones; others need quiet corners or private rooms.
  
  
• How long employees stay on-site
  “Badge in” is not the same as “productive time on site.”
  
  
• Where collaboration happens
  Not always in conference rooms - often in cafés, hallways, stairwells, and social hubs.
  
  
• Which amenities matter most
  Whiteboards? Collaboration lounges? Focus booths? Amenities must support actual behavior, not theoretical design.
  
  
• Behavior by team, not by department
  The marketing team and the finance team work differently -  even within the same floor.

As Brennan put it:

“Without understanding people, you cannot design a meaningful workplace.

4. CRE Leaders Must Shift Their Mindsets

Both James and Brennan were clear: 2026 will reward boldness.

For years, CRE has been a risk-averse function. But hybrid work, new employee expectations, and automation have changed the game. Leaders can no longer afford slow, incremental steps.

Brennan’s advice:

“Don’t bunt. Swing for the fences." Small adjustments won’t fix systemic issues. Leaders must trust the data and make decisive moves.

James’ advice:

“Real estate leaders have to pull their heads out of the sand… the world has changed around them.”

What worked in 2015 will not work in 2026.

5. A New Era of Intelligent Workspaces

The biggest insight from 2025 and the strongest signal for 2026 is this:

The workplace is no longer a building, it’s a living system. When organizations choose to see how work truly happens, new possibilities emerge.

Intelligent Workspaces will be defined by:

• Clarity - understanding the patterns, needs, and behaviors that shape each space.
  
  
• Evidence - grounding decisions in behavioral data, not assumptions.
  
  
• Integration - connecting systems so buildings adapt in real time.
  
  
• Trust - creating workplaces employees want to be in, not are forced to enter.

InnerSpace Is Leading This New Era

Organizations that design with purpose, integrate people and place, and trust behavior-based insights will define the next decade of workplace strategy. InnerSpace stands ready to support that evolution - with data, intelligence, and empathy at the core.