“What do you mean RTO is a success? Whenever I walk the halls, I see tons of vacant desks!” – Skeptical Stakeholder
Return-to-office (RTO) mandates were intended to mark a new chapter in how we work where culture, collaboration, and productivity thrive in a hybrid world. As Amazon CEO Andy Jassy put it in a 2023 open letter, the goal is to be “better set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other and our culture.”
To support these goals, business leaders are increasingly turning to corporate real estate teams to deliver commute-worthy workplaces with spaces that people want to return to. In turn, the pressure is rising to show measurable outcomes through utilization data. But here's the catch: the data might not be telling the whole story.
A behavior known as “coffee badging” is emerging as a quiet disruptor. For those unfamiliar, it refers to employees who check into the office just long enough to be seen before heading back home.
According to the 2024 Owl Labs State of Hybrid Work report, 55% of respondents said they either engage in coffee badging or “would love to try it.” This trend artificially inflates badge-based utilization metrics while contributing little to the collaboration, innovation, and cultural connection that RTO initiatives are designed to foster.
When leadership relies on inflated badge data, space planning decisions such as lease commitments, workplace design investments, or amenity enhancements can be based on faulty assumptions. That disconnect risks not only financial inefficiency but also a missed opportunity to build truly engaging, high-performing workplaces.
As my colleague Tony Josipovic noted in his recent article, Beyond Badge Data: How Utilization Sensors Are Reshaping Portfolio Optimization for Cost Savings & Avoidance, “Badge swipes do not equate to actual occupancy or space usage.”
Badge systems track when someone enters a building, but not how long they stay, or how meaningfully they engage while they're there. This means an office with actual utilization of 60-70% and feels half-empty to a skeptical stakeholder may falsely appear fully utilized when analyzed using badge swipe data. The illustration below shows an hourly view of office utilization where the badge entry data will overstate the utilization and therefore the opportunities for employees to collaborate and engage with colleagues.
This disconnect can erode trust between stakeholders and workplace teams and can mislead organizations into thinking their RTO strategies are working—when the reality is far more nuanced.
Enter IoT-based occupancy sensors, which provide real-time, location-specific data on how and when spaces are used. These tools can reveal granular insights such as hourly occupancy trends (as seen above in Figure 1) and dwell time giving workplace planners the intelligence needed to take targeted action and prove alignment to corporate goals.
Take, for example, an illustrative initiative like Project Magnet; a program designed to enhance the workplace experience and encourage meaningful in-office engagement. By tracking dwell time before and after the project, real estate teams can measure its true impact.
In Figure 2, see how post-implementation data reveals a decrease in short visits (under 2 hours) and an increase in longer, more engaged stays (4–8 hours): a sign that the workplace is becoming a more valuable destination for employees and therefore supporting the intended goals of RTO.
How is your team measuring the success of RTO? Are you using the right tools to detect hidden behaviors like coffee badging? Are your metrics aligned with the real goals of collaboration, connection, and culture?
As workplace strategists and real estate leaders, we must go beyond surface-level data and invest in insights that tell the real story of how people use space. Because if we don’t measure what matters, we risk missing what truly makes the office worth returning to and falling short of RTO goals.
About the Author: Rob Hannigan is a corporate real estate leader with over 10 years of experience aligning portfolio and workplace strategies with enterprise goals. He specializes in using data-driven insights to guide high-impact real estate decisions, drive operational efficiency, and support business transformation. Rob is known for bridging the gap between real estate strategy and executive priorities, helping organizations optimize performance and prepare for the future of work.
