Office workers still spend much of the workday apart, report finds

A Federal Reserve Bank of New York report suggests that office attendance does not always translate into in-person collaboration. TechRadar’s Craig Hale reports that nearly half (49%) of employees who commute to an office do not have fully in-person meetings.

More than a third (37%) of workers said they had attended at least one fully virtual meeting even when all colleagues were in the office. Nearly half (45%) said their company used a “One Zoom, All Zoom” approach, moving a meeting online if even one attendee was remote.

Workers spent 6.3 hours of a typical workday in the presence of colleagues, down from 7.1 hours before the pandemic, according to the report. For workers in jobs that cannot be done remotely, time spent alone rose from 1.5 to 2.4 hours per day.

The report puts the average expected office attendance at 3.74 days per week, while employees reported actually attending 2.59 days. At one unnamed Fortune 500 company, 63.6% of workers complied with a four-day office policy.

The findings point to a gap between attendance requirements and in-person work. The New York Fed paper does not detail how to address it.