Offices were on average half-full across the UK last week for the first time since Covid-19 gripped the nation.
The milestone, which was reached last Tuesday (18 May), was tracked by smart buildings software platform Metrikus, and provides yet another sign that the economy is gradually recovering.
Occupancy plunged to a weekly median of just 16% in January, but it has been increasing steadily since then as workers trickle back to the office.
Michael Grant, chief operations officer at Metrikus, said: “Data isn’t a crystal ball, but we’re able to show that the appetite for coming back to the office is there and that it has consistently grown as restrictions have lifted. We’d infer from this that public confidence has also grown.
“We’re now working with companies to better understand how their occupancy requirements have been affected by the pandemic, for example helping them understand how to best optimise their spaces for the new mix of hybrid working.”
Metrikus has sensors and software installed on behalf of a variety of owners and occupiers in large office buildings in major cities around the UK.
The data for this study was collected from two sources: people counting sensors in the entrance lobbies of office buildings that give a baseline for the number of people in the building, and motion sensors within offices that give an indication activity by showing which spaces are used, for how long, and at what times of day.
The sensors are not able to discern between individuals, preventing the tracking of employees. Metrikus saw daily entries across the sample of buildings monitored for this study reach an aggregated peak of more than 41,000 in the months before the lockdown.
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