Why We’re Leaving the Office Earlier but Still Showing Up on Time

New office-building data shows that work patterns have evolved in the postpandemic era.

If you need to leave the office at 4 p.m. to pick up your kid, that’s fine in more workplaces now. If you roll in at 10 a.m., prepare to be stink-eyed.

Why We’re Leaving the Office Earlier but Still Showing Up on Time

In the postpandemic workplace, there is less pressure to be at our desks for eight-plus hours a day. But when we reduce our attendance matters.

So what is it about when we enter and exit the cubicle? We feel less self-conscious about leaving in the afternoon, after we’ve accomplished most of our tasks and had face time with the boss. Many of us log back on from home in the evening, so it is well understood that slipping out before 5 p.m. isn’t a sign of slacking off.

Showing up late is another story. Even if you plan to compensate by staying at the office longer, it can look and feel like you’re lagging behind colleagues who arrived sooner.

This is part of productivity theater, the office drama where visibility is key to playing the role of dedicated employee. Acting methods include scheduling emails to be sent after you’ve called it a day, so it appears you’re still working. There’s also “coffee badging,” the practice of swiping into the office just long enough to get a caffeine hit and an RTO credit.

Tracking departure times

Most of us don’t peace out right after a cup of joe. A new study of when office workers clock in and out helps quantify the performative nature of today’s more flexible work habits.

New Yorkers step away from their desks an average of 13 minutes earlier than they did in 2019, according to commercial real-estate firm JLL. It used anonymized mobile-phone data to track arrival and departure times.

People are leaving earlier by 18 minutes in Dallas and 26 minutes in San Francisco. JLL’s study covered only its own office buildings, but the firm’s scale and range of tenants make the findings a decent proxy for broader trends.

Notably, phone data indicates workers are coming into the office at the same time as ever.

Between social activities and the kids’ extracurriculars, our personal lives tend to be more varied in the afternoon and evening. That partly explains why morning routines are relatively unchanged. Still, perceptions of what a go-getter’s work patterns should look like weigh on our scheduling decisions.

Bosses are often early birds. Naturally the rest of us try to get their attention first thing in the morning.

Some companies have partnered with JLL on more detailed studies of employees’ comings and goings. These include monitoring not only badge swipes but also Wi-Fi data to understand how long people stay at the office and how active they are when there.

More than any corporate policy, “the single biggest predictor of someone’s attendance is their manager’s behavior,” says JLL Vice Chairman Kevin Kelly. “When you think through the optics, that is often the driver of the whole thing.”

Uneasy mornings

Then there’s the voice in your head that scolds you for getting to the office after 9 a.m., even if no one else does.

Ashley White, a marketing director at a software company in Georgia, says she is judged on results and is fortunate to have freedom to flex her hours.

Sometimes she dashes out of the office at 2 p.m.—guilt-free—to be home when her children get off the bus. She’ll take a call in the car during her commute then reopen her laptop when she arrives.

Adjusting her schedule in the morning feels different. White, 38, often begins her workday Zooming with colleagues in Europe as soon as the school bus picks up her kids at 6:52 a.m. Occasionally those meetings delay her drive to the office, and she sheepishly walks in around 10 a.m.

“Even when I know I’ve been working all morning, I still have this sense like it’s weird that I’m getting in now because the day’s already up and running,” she says.

Savvy strategy

When it comes to being seen in the office, all hours aren’t created equal.

Andrea Derler, who leads research at human-resources software maker Visier, recently interviewed 50 managers who said one of their greatest challenges is assessing people’s productivity. Certain roles, like sales, have clear measurables. Many others don’t.

In the absence of a performance rubric, managers tend to fall back on dubious signs of achievement such as the number of hours someone is seen working.

Productivity theater may sound like gaming the system, but optimizing your hours for maximum visibility can be a savvy way of getting credit for contributions that could otherwise go unnoticed.

“It’s not always a bad thing,” Derler says. “We all want to make sure that other people, whether it’s a boss or a peer, know we’re productive.”

That’s especially true if you work in an office where flexibility remains clandestine.

One of JLL’s corporate tenants in Chicago, where people leave the office an average of 22 minutes earlier than they did six years ago, told me the business doesn’t like to advertise the option of ducking out before 5 p.m. The rules haven’t officially loosened, but employees often can work out earlier departures with their managers—with the understanding that they’ll clock in around 8 a.m. or be back online in the evening.

The limits on flexible hours remind us that most employers will give an inch but want to ensure we don’t take a mile.

Write to Callum Borchers at callum.borchers@wsj.com

Why We’re Leaving the Office Earlier but Still Showing Up on Time

Why We’re Leaving the Office Earlier but Still Showing Up on Time

Why We’re Leaving the Office Earlier but Still Showing Up on Time