EY tracks turnstile data to monitor return-to-work push

There’s been some success—more people were working in offices than entirely from home in the U.K. for the first time since the pandemic, a recruitment agency found in October.

Yet, some employees continue to defy back-to-office mandates, forcing companies to find new ways to keep an eye on who makes their way in and who doesn’t. At accounting giant EY, that’s been by tracking the turnstile entry of its employees, the Financial Times reported Monday.

Anonymized turnstile access data was shared with some partners at EY to show how often people come into the office in the U.K., staffers at the Big-Four firm told FT. Sometimes, data on attendance was even correlated to mid-year performance reviews, one of the sources said.

The big takeaway? At least 50% of the people in some teams were falling short on meeting the return-to-work policy, currently at least two-days a week, a person familiar with the matter told the outlet.

The data illustrates the ongoing struggle for employers with luring people back into the office even as we’re in a post-pandemic world. Hybrid work was hardly the norm prior to lockdowns (although it had been slowly increasing), however, the flexibility and benefits to employee well-being have been significant—and employees want to hold on to them.

The push for more face-time

Bosses argue that there are clear up-sides to having people in offices, so many of them have been firm about advocating for it. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon was early to call working from home an “aberration” in the hybrid work debate. Other banks, including Citibank, have also said they’d monitor employee attendance through their ID card swipes as a proxy for attendance….