In September 2026, Potentia surveyed 989 New Zealand technology professionals in its candidate network. The survey asked what office attendance people would accept, what it would take to change their mind and what they have already done about it.

These findings are to help boards, executives and hiring managers make informed return-to-office policy decisions.

The tipping point for talent

Conventional wisdom says each extra office day costs you a few more candidates, a steady slide rather than a cliff. We tested that by asking tech workers for the most office days they'd accept in a role that was otherwise right for them.

Most of the drop happens in one step. Between three days and four, the share of people willing to consider a job falls by half. The reasons are as much about household budgets as preference. Petrol rose 27.5% in the year to June 2026, the single biggest driver of higher living costs. Auckland's bus and train fares also went up again in February. For a candidate, a fourth day means another round trip of fuel, parking or fares every week, paid out of their own pocket.



While household living costs rose 3.2% over the year to June, private sector pay grew only 2.0%, a clear sign that wages haven't kept pace with the cost of living. Compared with last year, many people have less real income to cover the basics. In a climate like this, the commute becomes one of the most visible costs of a job and one of the first people try to cut.



Time is also money. Daycare drop-offs, school pickups and after-school care are usually planned around the days someone is at home, so adding an office day can mean rebuilding a family's whole week. For a lot of candidates, a 4-day role becomes a dealbreaker.

Perhaps the clearest signal is that this is happening in a weak market. With unemployment at 5.6% in the June quarter, an 11-year high, you'd expect people to take what's offered. Yet 42% have walked away from roles over office rules. With around a third of employed New Zealanders already working from home some of the time, most of them have somewhere else to go.

Every one of those refusals has a cost on the hiring side: roles stay open for longer, teams that are already stretched take on extra load and the shortlist is made up of whoever was willing rather than whoever was best. Over a year, that adds up to a slower, more expensive and less competitive hiring process.

The salary premium required for full-time office attendance

On paper, a 20% rise looks like it should cover the extra costs of being in the office. However, in practice it's taxed first and childcare swallows much of what's left. Some families already pay $15,000 to $20,000 a year. OECD data ranks New Zealand among the least affordable countries for childcare. Parents who've shortened childcare days or moved their hours to cope can watch those workarounds disappear with a five-day week. That is before fuel, parking and lunches, which come out of the same pay packet.



A third of respondents went further and said no amount of money would change their mind. Time with family, health, caring responsibilities or simply knowing how they work best: their reasons aren't financial, so a financial offer can't reach them. Many are experienced contractors and senior staff, the people whose specialist knowledge is hardest to replace.



Put a number on it and the premium looks even less attractive. Across a team of 10 on $100,000 it's roughly $200,000 a year, every year, to reach the share of candidates a 3-day policy reaches for free. Salary budgets are tight so flexibility is one of the few things an employer can offer that costs nothing extra. It's also one of the only ways to stand out to contractors and senior people without competing on rate alone.

Role and region: where views diverge

Is 3 days really the safe middle ground? Most employers treat it that way, so we looked at whether different roles and regions see it the same way.

Aucklanders go into the office about as often as people in Wellington and say they're just as willing to commute, yet more of them would say no to 3-day hybrid. Geography explains a lot of it. Rush-hour drivers in Auckland lost 85 hours in 2025, some main roads crawled along at 8 to 9 km/h in this year's morning peak8 and the city has the most tech jobs in the country, so people can afford to be choosy.



Developers are a different story with a similar ending. Hiring for software, cloud and data skills is picking up in 2026. Those are the roles most likely to turn down 3 days. Only 1 in 5 developers sits in the middle, so a single company-wide rule misses most of them. That's why some employers now set office expectations role by role.

Other factors: productivity, preference and commute

Going in, we suspected convenience was doing most of the work. The survey asked for the single biggest reason working from home matters to people and how far they'd travel to get to an office.

That turned out to be only part of the story. One in five said their main reason is that they get more done at home. The evidence suggests they may be right. In a Stanford study of 1,600 workers published in Nature in 2024, two days at home a week made no measurable difference to performance, productivity or promotions over two years. Managers had predicted a 2.6% drop in output and ended up thinking flexibility could lift it by 1%. Hybrid non-managers in that study also quit at a 33% lower rate than colleagues in the office full time.



Because the belief rests on people's own experience, it's hard to shift. Of the group who say they're more productive at home, 94% would turn down a five-day office job. Telling them a mandate is about productivity tends to backfire, since it suggests their experience doesn't count. Being clear about what office days are for usually lands better.

Convenience still matters, just not in a trivial sense. Time saved on the commute goes into focused work, but also into the school run, a medical appointment or getting dinner on the table. When time and money are both under pressure, an hour back each day is worth a lot. People feel it when it's gone.

It helps to remember how normal this has become. Around a third of employed New Zealanders worked from home at some point in the September 2024 quarter. Many tech workers have done their jobs from home since 2020. Asking them to give it up means offering less than what friends, former colleagues and competitors already have.



The commute is one thing employers can change. Two in three people won't travel more than 40 minutes each way, but 80% of those who will would consider a 3-day role. Offices close to good public transport, start times that avoid peak traffic and office days built around workshops and planning rather than video calls all make the trip easier to justify. If a manager can't say why the team needs to be in on a given day, the team probably can't either.



The law matters here too. Every employee in New Zealand can ask for flexible working from their first day. Employers must reply in writing within a month, declining only on set business grounds such as cost, quality or customer demand. And although the Government told public servants in September 2024 that working from home "is not an entitlement", public and private sector respondents in similar roles answered our survey in much the same way.

About this research: method, participants and limitations

The questions we asked

1. How many days a week does your current role require you in an office?
2. For a new role that's right in every other way, at a salary you'd be happy with, what's the most office attendance you'd accept?
3. What's the single biggest reason working from home matters to you?
4. If that role required 5 days a week in the office, how much more would it need to pay?
5. What's the longest one-way commute you'd accept for regular attendance?
6. In the last 12 months, have office attendance requirements changed what you pursued or accepted?