Office attendance jumps as employers firm up hybrid rules

Wellington office workers are spending more days per week in the office than a year ago, signalling a move towards the higher office attendance rates that employers aspire to.

CBRE’s 2026 New Zealand Office Occupier Sentiment Survey shows the capital recording the second-highest uplift in office attendance of the three main centres this year, behind Christchurch and ahead of Auckland.

Wellington office workers now spend an average of 3.4 days in the office per week, compared with 3.0 in 2025.

Nationally, office attendance rose to 3.6 days per week, up from 3.4 in 2025 and 3.3 in 2024 - its biggest increase in three years.

Office attendance is now closer to leadership expectations than at any point in the past four years, said Zoltan Moricz, Head of Research at CBRE.

“Employers have been asking for higher office attendance since this survey began and for three years the average attendance rates moved only marginally. This year’s results show a greater step towards closing the gap between what leadership wants and actual office attendance,” he said.

“Hybrid working is not going away, but it has settled into a form that’s closer to what organisational leaders want and Wellington is a strong contributor to this shift.”

Wellington has the space to absorb increasing office attendance

Rising office attendance is not translating into upcoming capacity pressure in the capital, in contrast to the other main centres.

19% of Wellington occupiers run at 80% office utilisation or higher, against 31% in Auckland and 42% in Christchurch. Office utilisation measures the share of workstations occupied during a typical work week.

Nationally, 32% of occupiers now report utilisation above 80%, up from 24% in 2025 and 18% in 2024.

Matt Hince, Senior Director of office leasing at CBRE Wellington, said many Wellington tenants are likely to be able to absorb rising utilisation rates into the space they already occupy.

“The survey shows that four out of five Wellington occupiers are operating at below 80% office utilisation.

This indicates an opportunity for occupiers wanting to push for higher utilisation to gain more value out of their leased space.”

In the other main centres, this year’s utilisation rates are raising concerns about whether desk allocations and shared amenities can absorb peak-day demand, the report shows.

Organisational expectations on hybrid

76% of employers now set hybrid working requirements at an organisational level, up from 60% in 2025.

Actively enforced guidelines for time spent in the office are the most common tool at 40%. Mandated policies are split evenly between enforced and unenforced at 27% each.

Looking ahead, only 7% of organisations expect to keep using office attendance guidelines they do not enforce.

Kirstin Cooper, Associate Director of Workplace Consulting at CBRE, said organisations have realised that a policy without consequences does not change behaviour.

“The market is moving from asking to expecting when it comes to office attendance. For most organisations, this will mean more active enforcement of guidelines or mandates. Only a small proportion plan to link attendance directly to performance reviews or pay.”

Three days in the office per week remains the most common pattern at 49%. At the same time, five-day attendance has grown while four-day attendance has fallen, she said.

“Most people have settled on three days in the office, however it’s an interesting development this year that an increased number of employees have gone back to spending five days a week in the office. This is likely being driven by firmer organisational guidelines and mandates, while the shift towards higher quality workplace environments may also be encouraging people to spend more time there.”

Importance of building & location features

Seismic performance is the top-ranked building feature for Wellington occupiers in 2026, with 100% of survey respondents rating it as a priority or high priority. This is up from 95% last year.

This is in contrast to Christchurch and Auckland, where seismic performance is in fourth and fifth place respectively on occupiers’ priority lists of building features and amenities.

With Christchurch’s large proportion of newly-built and refurbished buildings, seismic performance is now ‘baked in’ as an expected feature.

In second place on Wellington occupiers’ wish lists is floor configuration, with almost all respondents ranking it as a priority or high priority. Quality common spaces, a premium-grade fitout and end-of-trip facilities round out the top five most important building features for Wellington tenants.

Wellington lags on expansion plans

The survey illustrates the ongoing consolidation pressure in the Government sector, and Wellington is the only main centre where office occupiers are more likely to maintain or reduce their current leased footprint than expand it.

More than half of Christchurch occupiers are looking to expand, while Auckland is balanced between those planning expansion and contraction, said Moricz.

“Government is one of the two most contraction-focused sectors nationally, along with technology, with half the respondents in each planning to reduce space. This weighs on Wellington more than the other main centres, given the concentration of public sector occupiers in the capital.”

However, around one in five Wellington occupiers are still planning to grow the size of their office space over the next two to three years. This is slightly ahead of Auckland’s 18%.

AI not yet impacting real estate strategy

This year’s survey asked occupiers about their AI use for the first time. Responses show that 98% of organisations use AI in some form, making it close to universally adopted in New Zealand offices.

Occupiers expect AI to reshape their workforce skills, tasks and job design before their premises. 64% expect to need upskilling or reskilling, but only 19% expect fewer entry-level or admin roles and just 7% expect a major impact on real estate strategy within three years, said Cooper.

“Almost everyone is using AI, but only 13% have embedded it into their core workflows. Until it moves from a productivity tool to a built-in part of organisational operations, AI isn’t expected to have a material impact on space requirements in the near term.”

As such, AI will change the mix of work before it changes the amount of space organisations require. This suggests workplaces will cater to a similarly sized workforce doing different things, with more collaboration and less transactional processing.

The survey drew responses from 67 organisations representing 283,000sqm of office space, a quarter of them Wellington occupiers.