RTO battle shifts back in employers’ favor and a quarter of businesses are upping their real estate spending

This year, it looks like those employers are planning to put their money where their mouth is by beefing up their desk space and embracing a hybrid model of work that may end many workers’ dreams of a fully remote future. 

According to a new report by French consulting group Capgemini, a quarter of businesses are planning to increase spending on real estate in 2024 to accommodate the return of their workers.

It marks a steep rise from the start of 2023 when just 4% of businesses told the group they were planning to up real estate investment through the year. 

Rather than indicating a full return to the office five days a week, though, Capgemini’s research suggests it is part of a wider plan among several organizations to shift to a longer-term hybrid working model.

A new ‘equilibrium’

Capgemini, valued at nearly $37 billion, works as a technology and sustainability consultant with some of the world’s biggest companies.

The group’s CEO, Aiman Ezzat, told Fortune that those clients were now starting to find an “equilibrium” through hybrid work between flexibility for workers and the face-to-face interactions demanded by managers.

Ezzat personally embraces a hybrid model by getting his 342,000 Capgemini staff into the office three days a week, an initiative he started in Europe as COVID-19 restrictions wound down. 

He says six months ago the company’s Chicago office was empty on a Wednesday, but now he would struggle to find a seat on the same day of the week.

“People are coming back, the interactions are happening, the intimacy is being rebuilt,” Ezzat said of his own workforce.

“That hybrid model is starting to operate in a more satisfactory way. And people find pleasure in coming to the office to interact…