The debate around hybrid working has changed.
A few years ago, the conversation centred on whether remote work could replace the office. Then came return-to-office mandates. Today, most technology employers are asking a different question: what does a hybrid model that actually works look like?
To answer that, Consortia analysed 109,839 UK and EU technology job adverts across Product, UX, Engineering and Data, alongside the hiring conversations we have every week with candidates and employers.
The clearest finding was that the market has largely settled and where employers state an office attendance requirement, three days a week is now the norm.
But the more interesting finding is that the number of days is no longer where most hiring and retention challenges come from.
Three days is the market norm
Across technology adverts with a stated office requirement, three days a week was the most common expectation.
That aligns closely with broader employer research from CIPD, which found three days is also the most common minimum requirement across UK organisations.
The technology market has not returned to five days in the office. Equally, most employers have not settled on fully flexible arrangements.
For hiring leaders, the debate is no longer whether people should attend the office. The more important question is how office attendance is structured and whether it supports access to talent.
The biggest mistake isn't the number of days
One of the strongest themes from our conversations with hiring leaders is that organisations often focus heavily on deciding the number of office days and far less on what happens during them.
A three-day policy only works if the right people are in the office together.
When attendance is left to individual choice, organisations often create attendance without collaboration. Employees commute into the office only to spend the day on Teams calls because the colleagues they need to work with are somewhere else.
The organisations seeing the best results are not simply mandating attendance; they are coordinating it.
They define team-level anchor days, explain why those days matter, and use office time for the all the work that genuinely benefits from being done together: decision-making, problem solving, workshops and cross-functional collaboration.
Employees are far more willing to commute when there is a clear reason for doing so.
The hidden cost of moving from two days to three
One of the most overlooked findings from our candidate conversations is how dramatically commute tolerance changes between two and three office days.
Many candidates will accept a three-day requirement. That doesn't mean they are willing to travel the same distance.
At two days a week, candidates are often prepared to absorb a longer commute for the right opportunity. At three days, the time, cost and disruption involved begin to feel materially different.
This matters because employers often see the change as one additional office day. Candidates experience it as a different weekly commitment.
The result is that organisations can unintentionally reduce the size of their talent pool without realising it.
Hybrid policy isn't just about attendance. It's about access to talent.
One size doesn't fit every team
Another clear pattern emerged from the research: different disciplines have different expectations.
Engineering and Data teams generally retain the greatest flexibility. Many of these functions were already comfortable with distributed working long before the pandemic, particularly where roles involve deep focus work and limited stakeholder interaction.
Product and stakeholder-heavy UX roles often sit at the opposite end of the spectrum. Collaboration, alignment and decision-making form a larger part of the job, making regular in-person interaction more valuable.
The same principle applies to seniority.
Early-career employees often benefit significantly from structured office time because learning happens through observation as much as formal training. Experienced senior professionals, particularly individual contributors, are more likely to be judged on outcomes than visibility.
The most effective hybrid policies recognise these differences rather than applying identical rules to every team.
Hybrid policy is now a talent strategy
Perhaps the most important takeaway from the research is that hybrid policy has become a hiring and retention decision as much as an operational one.
The organisations seeing the strongest outcomes are not asking:
"How many days should everyone be in the office?"
They are asking:
"Where does office time genuinely add value, and where does flexibility improve our ability to attract and retain talent?"
Three days may be the market norm, but successful hybrid working is increasingly defined by implementation rather than attendance.
The employers getting it right are coordinating office time, considering commute realities, recognising different team needs and designing policies around how people actually work.
That's where the competitive advantage now sits.
Want to understand how your hybrid policy compares to the wider market?
At Consortia, we help organisations assess how office attendance requirements affect talent availability, offer acceptance and retention across Product, UX, Data and Engineering. If you'd like an external perspective on your current approach, we'd be happy to share what we're seeing in the market.
This article highlights some of the key findings from our research. For the full analysis of 109,839 UK and EU tech job adverts, along with hiring insights from Product, UX, Engineering and Data, read the full Hybrid Working Statistics 2026 report.
