Smith Collection/Gado
- Asian nations are beating out the US in terms of office occupancy and days worked in-person.
- Americans work 1.4 days from home each week on average, compared to 0.4 days in South Korea.
- This disparity may be due to cultural differences, transportation, and government policies.
Companies worldwide are still trying to figure out whether to adopt an in-person, hybrid, or fully-remote environment. But Asia and Europe are doing a lot better at getting people back in the office than the US.
While office occupancy in the Americas sits at 49%, Asia-Pacific office occupancy is 79%, slightly above Europe at 75%, according to data from real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle. It points to how US companies, perhaps more so than those in Asia or Europe, are embracing the freedom to choose what they think works for them. The most recent American Time Use Survey showed over a third of American employees worked from home on an average day in 2022.
American companies have been increasingly trying to get employees back into the office, with many citing in-person work as a key factor in increasing productivity and team cohesiveness.
Meta, which requires employees to work in the office three days a week, has bolstered company swag and happy hours to bring people back. TikTok has cracked down on its return-to-office policy through a tool called myRTO, which monitors in-person office attendance.
Asian companies on the whole were able to transition more efficiently to in-person work, as many Asian countries controlled the pandemic's spread more effectively than the US.
European nations had a range of outcomes, as countries such as France and Greece have much higher rates of in-person work than Germany or the United Kingdom. A handful of European countries including Belgium and Spain have enforced "right to disconnect" policies granting employees rights to not engage electronic communication during non-work hours.
Some American cities such as San Francisco and New York City are expected to see major reductions in office space by 2030, while Shanghai and Tokyo will lose much less, according to a McKinsey Global Institute study.
In fact, research from June shows US workers averaged 1.4 paid work-from-home days a week, in contrast to France at 0.6 days and China at 0.8 days. Japan and South Korea have perhaps figured out return to office the best at 0.5 and 0.4 days respectively.
A June survey by Nikkei and Nikkei Research found over three in five workers in Japan go into the office five or more days a week, though remote work is still popular in the information technology and consultancy sectors. Large Japanese banks have offered more flexible work options than the US, though many companies still use devices like fax machines leading many workers to return to the office. This successful push back to the office in Japan may be due to reliable public transportation and cultural factors, Bloomberg reported.
And in South Korea, where employees work less than two days per month remotely, many workers never stopped going into the office, The New York Times reported.
While Asia and Europe are far ahead of the Americas in terms of global office occupancy, it's still unclear how to solve the remote work dilemma — if it even needs resolving at all.
Are you a worker in Europe or Asia who has recently returned to the office or never worked from home? Reach out to this reporter at nsheidlower@insider.com.