Data company Wolters Kluwer has said staff must come to the office for a minimum number of days a week from September, in an effort to “improve the balance” between “flexibility for the worker” and “collaboration and strength in innovation”.

The company’s 22,000-strong workforce will have to work at least eight days a month in the office, while senior staff will have to be on site for two days a week.

According to the Financieele Dagblad, the move is illustrative of the way larger firms are struggling to deal with the working from home trend. It questioned 28 companies with large offices and found that only Just Eat Takeaway and law firms Stibbe and Houthoff had introduced compulsory office hours.

“More people are coming to the office now than directly after the coronavirus period, so employers don’t see the need to intervene,” Harold Coenders, who advises companies about hybrid working on behalf of Colliers, told the paper.

Office occupancy has risen from some 30% to 36%, with Tuesdays and Thursdays the busiest, he said. “An office requirement is something for Anglo-American firms,” he said. “If you try to force something in Dutch culture, many people will take up the challenge to work around it.”

Tilburg labour market professor Ton Wilthagen told the paper that staff shortages are also having an impact. “Working from home has become normal for many people,” he said. “If an employer is difficult about it, then they run the risk people will move to another company.”

Other companies, such as insurance groups ASR and NN, said they recommend staff come to the office two days a week. Capgemini said it expected staff to “make the right choices” and ABN Amro advises its workforce to go to the office one day a week.

Stibbe told the FD that it expects lawyers to come to the office three days a week for the “development of colleagues, cohesion and teamwork”.