1. JPMorgan Chase, Amazon and AT&T mandated five-day office returns only to discover critical desk shortages, forcing delayed rollouts and emergency retrofits costing hundreds of millions.
2. For corporate occupiers, this means RTO policy without capacity testing creates preventable disasters where employees arrive to find no desks.
3. With laiout Hub you centralise all locations, generate test-fit scenarios in minutes through your internal team and share plans with employees, validating capacity before announcing policy.
JPMorgan told 317,000 employees to return five days a week, then discovered broken desk systems and insufficient workspace. Amazon delayed its mandate four months across seven cities after space audits revealed 30% desk shortages. AT&T's documents showed only 70-80% capacity in divisions now required full-time. HSBC faces $200M in emergency retrofits for their London HQ. For corporate occupiers, this reveals three critical risks:
- Policy before capacity validation creates public crises. When thousands arrive to find insufficient desks, you generate employee petitions, union organizing and headlines documenting the issues.
- Internal teams get stuck waiting for external teams. Emergency space planning means your workplace team spends weeks tracking down original building architects, waiting for availability and paying premium fees for rush plans. This delays rollouts and makes internal teams look slow when they lack the tools to move independently.
- The desk gap is structural. Office employment rose 5.3% since 2019 while occupied space fell 4.3%, meaning every RTO change now requires instant capacity testing.
- Centralise all locations in laiout Hub, move without external teams: Store every building's floor plans in one digital workspace. When RTO policy changes, your internal workplace team instantly accesses all locations, generates updated layouts across your portfolio and shares scenarios with leadership, avoiding the weeks-long process of tracking down original architects and paying them to produce plans.
- Test every scenario before committing: Generate instant comparisons of 1:1 versus 1.2:1 desk ratios. Model what happens when 250 people move from staggered to simultaneous presence.
- Share plans with employees, not just leadership: Embed interactive laiout floor plans directly into internal webpages, showing teams exactly where they'll be working. Turn RTO announcements from abstract policy into visual reality that employees can explore before day one, reducing anxiety and desk-hunting chaos.
Q1: Our facilities team has desk counts. Why do we need test-fit software?
Static counts miss utilisation patterns. Moving from 60% daily presence to 100% changes capacity completely. laiout generates actual floor plans showing if desks fit your space, not theoretical ratios.
Q2: Can't our internal workplace team handle this without new software?
Without instant test-fit tools, your team waits weeks for external teams to produce plans. laiout gives internal workplace teams the capability to generate regulation-compliant layouts in minutes, test multiple scenarios independently and present options to leadership without external dependencies or premium fees.
Q3: What if testing reveals we lack capacity?
That's when laiout creates maximum value. Generate alternatives showing 1.2:1 desk-sharing, identify which departments phase later, and present costed options before employees arrive with nowhere to sit.
Return-to-office policy and capacity planning must happen simultaneously. When leadership asks "can we bring everyone back," the answer depends on spatial reality. Store your portfolio in laiout Hub, generate scenarios across all locations, and present capacity-tested options before announcement. laiout gives internal teams instant test-fit validation without waiting for external teams, so decisions are based on what your space actually accommodates. Book a demo with laiout today and plan for your RTO policy.
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