For HR directors
You own the hybrid policy. You do not own the data that would defend it.
Since 2020 the office has been an HR question: which days, which teams, what happens to the people who stopped coming in. The instruments HR carries — engagement scores, exit interviews, an experience platform — measure how people feel. They do not measure what people need from the place, or which teams a single rule quietly excludes. That gap is where policies get walked back.
What you are measured on, and what the office has to do with it
Three numbers land on an HR director's desk every quarter. Each one has a workplace component that is usually argued about rather than measured.
Voluntary turnover
Exit interviews name the manager or the pay. They rarely name the commute that stopped being worth it, or the open floor a neurodivergent colleague could not work in. Those are measurable before the resignation, not only after it.
Engagement
An engagement score tells you the mood. It does not tell you whether the workplace is helping or hindering the work — which is the part you can change without changing the manager.
The policy holding
A hybrid policy that is announced and then quietly renegotiated team by team costs trust twice. Modelling it against how teams actually work, before it is published, is cheaper than retreating later.
What the other tables are saying
Real estate arrives with a lease date and a target for square metres. Finance arrives with a cost per head. You arrive with an engagement score and a sense of what will and will not land. Three numbers, three definitions, and the meeting ends with the loudest one winning — usually the one with a signature attached.
The way out is not a better argument. It is one dataset the three of you read from: what people need from the workplace, measured team by team, and what each policy option does to space, cost, commute and retention at the same time. When that exists, HR is no longer the function asking the others to trust its instinct.
How it runs, from your seat
The policy is being argued about
Attendance is down, a mandate has landed badly, or the board has asked for a number nobody has. This is where most HR directors are when they first call — and it is early enough.
Prove there is a problem before you are asked to solve it
A quick scan against the benchmark puts your organisation next to comparable ones. A comparative figure ends the is-there-really-a-problem conversation faster than a proposal does.
Measure what people need, not only how they feel
Dynamics replaces the survey you would have written. Working patterns, what people need from the place, and how far it supports the culture you have — reported by team and location, never by individual. This is the point at which you stop defending a questionnaire and start interpreting a result.
Test the policy options before one is announced
Balance runs two days, three days, team-based, anchor days — as many as you like — against your own data, and shows where a single rule breaks: a lab, a call centre and a legal department rarely fit one arrangement. Each option carries its space, cost, commute and retention effect.
Give people something back
Entry Pass returns each participant their own profile: which space suits which task, what conditions they work well in. It is the difference between a policy that was announced and one people act on, and it is why they answer the second time.
Measure again
A policy that has been measured twice is a strategy; one measured once is a report. Booking keeps a live demand signal running underneath, so the evidence does not age between studies.
Where the products touch your work
The same six products every role sees. For HR, four carry the weight and two sit in the background.
Dynamics
The instrument. What people need from the workplace, how far it supports the culture you have, and the cognitive and environmental preferences that decide whether a neurodivergent colleague can work in the office at all. Aggregated by team. Your engagement survey does not do this.
Read moreDecideBalance
The policy, tested before it is announced. Every hybrid option priced against your own workforce data on six factors, per team and per location. The answer is rarely a number of days; it is which teams need which arrangement.
Read moreKeep it trueEntry Pass
What each employee gets back for the data they gave: a personal workplace guide, visible only to them. This is your adoption story, and it is the reason response rates hold up the second year.
Read moreKeep it trueBooking
Desks, rooms and a live demand signal underneath. For HR it is the early warning that a policy has stopped matching behaviour — before the next survey says so.
Read moreMeasureOccupancy
The other half of the argument with real estate. What actually happened in the space, measured to a method that dates to 2001, so 'the office is empty' and 'people need the office' can both be true and both be quantified.
Read moreDecideTaxonomy
Mostly real estate's product — but when the policy leads to a refit, this is where what your people said becomes a brief a supplier can price.
Read moreWhy a works council and a board can both sign it
Aggregation first, by design
The architecture reports patterns, not people. Team, department and location — never an individual. That is a design decision made before the first survey went out, and it is the answer to the first question a works council asks.
Instruments you can look up
7P, the Competing Values Framework, the Big Five via TIPI. Published, taught, and not a questionnaire a vendor wrote last quarter. A procurement team can check them; so can a sceptical psychologist on your own staff.
A benchmark since 2001
More than sixty million datapoints across sectors and countries. Your teams' scores mean something because there are twenty-five years of other organisations to set them against.
Read before the meeting
Which hybrid policy fits us?
The decision this page serves — what it takes to measure, and a scoresheet to take into the room.
Why does the office feel empty?
Utilisation can look healthy while the building feels dead. Two different measurements.
Are our office and hybrid policies supporting talent retention?
A use case: 18% turnover, a 65% response rate, and five pillars showing it was not the pay.
Our science
Where the three instruments come from, and what they do not do.
What HR directors ask first
Can our employer see my individual answers?
Entry Pass is for the individual. There is no manager view of it.
Where a product does report to the organisation, it reports aggregated patterns. If you are evaluating this as a works council, ask for the specific configuration in writing rather than relying on a website: that is what the DPA is for.
Can you measure hybrid and remote work?
We can measure the workplace side of it accurately and the rest by asking. Occupancy describes physical use; Dynamics establishes patterns, preferences and where people work when they are not in the office.
An operating model judged on building data alone is judged on half the picture.
What do employees have to do?
It depends on the product. Dynamics asks them to answer questions once. Occupancy does not involve them, though they should be told it is happening. Entry Pass gives them something back.
Participation should be worth their time, and they should know what is collected, what it is used for and what returns to them.
How does an engagement start?
With the decision you are trying to make, not with a product. We work back from that to what has to be measured, who has to agree, which data already exists and what scope is realistic.
What comes out is a recommendation, which is sometimes smaller than the enquiry.
What is Balance?
Balance models hybrid working policies against your own workforce data. It compares scenarios across six factors: office space, satisfaction, emissions, commute burden, recruitment appeal and cost.
It is a decision aid, not a decision. Leadership still owns the policy, the consultation and the announcement.
Bring the policy you are about to announce
Twenty minutes. We will tell you what it would cost on space, commute and retention, which teams it will not fit, and what it takes to measure before the announcement rather than after the pushback.