Commercial Real Estate Company Releases Study Concluding People Should Go To Offices More

NEW YORK — In what experts are calling "the most predictable research since Big Tobacco funded that lung health study," commercial real estate giant JLL has released its Workforce Preference Barometer 2025, a comprehensive $400,000 survey of 8,700 workers across 31 countries that has scientifically concluded — you'll never guess — that people should probably go to offices more. The offices that JLL, a company with $16.6 billion in annual revenue derived almost entirely from commercial real estate, happens to own and manage.

"We approached this research with complete objectivity," said a JLL spokesperson, straightening papers on a desk inside one of the company's many, many office buildings. "It's pure coincidence that our findings align perfectly with our business model. Science works in mysterious ways."

The report, which took researchers approximately zero seconds to reach its predetermined conclusion, reveals what JLL is calling a "fundamental shift" in workplace dynamics: The Return to Office wars are over, and the Time Wars have begun. Workers, having largely surrendered on the question of "where" they work, are now mounting a desperate insurgency over "when."

"We've detected a troubling trend," the report notes, with the clinical detachment of a company that definitely doesn't have a financial stake in the outcome. "Workers seem to want 'autonomy over their schedules.' This is very concerning for reasons we will not specify but trust us."

Among the report's most shocking discoveries: work-life balance has overtaken salary as the leading priority for office workers globally, cited by 65% of respondents. This represents what economists are calling "the first time in history workers have chosen sanity over a marginal pay increase that doesn't match inflation anyway."

The study also documented the rise of "coffee badging" — the practice of hybrid workers badging into the office just long enough to have a cup of coffee before commuting somewhere else to continue working remotely. JLL researchers expressed dismay at this behavior, which they described as "technically complying with policy while fundamentally undermining its spirit," a description that also applies to most tax law.

"Workers have achieved quantum employment: existing in a superposition of 'present' and 'gone' — observable only when HR checks the badge logs."— Dr. Helena Verschwindung, Institute for Workplace Disappearing Acts

Perhaps most alarming to JLL researchers was the discovery of what they're calling the "flexibility gap": 57% of employees believe flexible working hours would improve their quality of life, yet only 49% currently have access to this benefit. The remaining 8% — trapped in what scientists are calling "the gap" — are statistically likely to be reading this article from a bathroom stall during a meeting that could have been an email.

The report warns that the "psychological contract" between workers and employers is at risk. For those unfamiliar with this term, a "psychological contract" is what HR departments call "basic human dignity" when they need to put it in a spreadsheet. The report notes that workers today want to be "visible, valued, and prepared for the future" — a finding so revolutionary it has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Stating the Obvious.

Enter Suzy Welch, the 66-year-old management guru who spent her formative years at Bain & Co. — a consulting firm synonymous with "helping companies optimize headcount," which is business-speak for "laying people off" — before ascending to Harvard Business Review royalty. In a recent podcast appearance, Welch graciously descended from her ivory tower to explain to baristas with master's degrees why they lack "hope."

"We believed that if you worked hard, you were rewarded for it," Welch observed, speaking from a life in which this was actually true. "And so this is the disconnect." She's right, of course. There is a disconnect. It's the disconnect between people who got rewarded for working hard and people who watched that stop happening.

"Gen Z thinks, 'Yeah, I watched what happened to my parents' career and I watched what happened to my older sister's career and they worked very hard and they still got laid off.'"— Suzy Welch, Management Guru, Former Bain Consultant, Definitely Not Part Of The Problem

The report found that nearly 40% of global office workers report feeling "overwhelmed," and burnout has become a "serious threat to employers' operations." Note the framing: burnout is a threat to operations, not to the humans experiencing it. This is what happens when you let a real estate company write about human psychology — the building's feelings are considered too.

Among employees considering quitting in the next 12 months, 57% report suffering from burnout. This figure rises dramatically among caregivers and what the report chillingly calls "the squeezed middle" — corporate euphemism for the 42% of employees simultaneously raising children, caring for aging parents, and answering Slack messages at 11 PM while being classified as "not quite senior enough for flexibility."

JLL's proposed solution to this crisis? "Tailored flexibility" and "smart lighting." Also "space-booking systems" and "extended access hours." If you're detecting a pattern here — that every solution involves more office infrastructure — congratulations, you've identified the conflict of interest that somehow escaped the study's peer reviewers.

Meanwhile, the same report notes that employers have doubled their surveillance of workers since 2020, with 60% now tracking employee activity. This surveillance increase correlates perfectly with the decline in the "psychological contract" — a coincidence so obvious that even a commercial real estate company accidentally documented it.

The report concludes with an invitation to the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit in Atlanta this May, where executives can pay thousands of dollars to hear other executives explain why workers who can't afford rent seem "disengaged." Continental breakfast is included. Hope is not.

Perhaps the most telling finding in JLL's report is buried near the end: "Around one in three [workers] say they could leave for better career development or reskilling opportunities, while the same proportion is reevaluating the role of work in their lives." Translation: a third of your workforce is planning to leave, and another third is questioning whether capitalism is a viable system. The remaining third is presumably too burned out to respond to surveys.

The report's final recommendation is for companies to abandon "one-size-fits-all" approaches in favor of "tailored flexibility." This is excellent advice that JLL itself has ignored by producing a one-size-fits-all report applicable to 31 countries, treating the burnout crisis in Tokyo the same as in Topeka, and recommending "smart lighting" as a universal solution to the existential dread of late-stage capitalism.

As for the workers themselves — the 8,700 souls across 31 countries who participated in this survey — their message has been received loud and clear. They want time. They want flexibility. They want to feel valued and prepared for the future. They want the promise they were made — that hard work leads to reward — to actually be kept.

JLL's response to this cry for help? More offices. With better lighting.

The Time Wars have begun. And as with most wars waged by corporations against workers, the outcome will be determined by whoever can afford to hold out longer. Workers, exhausted and burned out, may not have the stamina. But they have one advantage: the ability to badge in, grab a coffee, and disappear — existing in a quantum state of presence and absence, a Schrödinger's Employee whose engagement can never be fully measured because they are simultaneously at their desk and absolutely not.

The revolution, it turns out, will be coffee-badged.

JLL's stock rose 2% following the report's release. The irony was not included in the earnings call.