Hybrid working has reshaped the working week for a significant proportion of the workforce – but much of the travel data organisations rely on hasn’t been updated to reflect it. Mode share figures, parking allocations, Travel Plan targets and even site strategy are, in many cases, still built on patterns from a five-day, every-day commute that no longer applies to large parts of the workforce.

This mismatch creates real, practical problems.

Where the mismatch shows up

• Parking and transport contracts sized for a workforce that no longer travels in five days a week, every week
• Peak-day pressure: travel demand concentrated into fewer, specific days (often Tuesday to Thursday), creating congestion, crowding and poor experience on those days, while assets sit underused on others
• Site strategy decisions made on headcount, rather than actual real-time attendance and travel patterns
• ESG and emissions reporting that still assumes commuting frequency patterns from several years ago, overstating or understating genuine impact
• Inequity between hybrid and non-hybrid roles: site-based or frontline staff who travel in every day, while office-based colleagues travel two or three, with little visibility of how that affects experience, cost and retention across different groups

Hybrid working is a travel demand question, not just an HR policy

Most organisations treat hybrid working as a people policy question: how many days, which days, how it’s enforced. Few treat it as a travel demand question – yet it fundamentally changes the shape, scale and concentration of workforce travel.

Understanding this requires current, realistic data: who is travelling, how often, on which days, by which mode, and from where. Without it, organisations are managing site strategy, sustainability reporting and employee experience using a travel pattern that may no longer exist.

Catching up with reality

Workforce travel mapping, refreshed to reflect current hybrid patterns, allows organisations to right-size parking and transport provision, smooth peak-day pressure, evidence genuine emissions impact, and ensure site and hybrid policies are designed around how people actually travel now – not how they travelled in 2019.

Hybrid working isn’t just a policy decision anymore. It’s a live, ongoing travel demand problem – and one that’s solvable, with the right data.