Using workplace utilization data to optimize your workspace (with examples)

There's this weird tension in our industry between efficiency and experience.

On the one hand, there's the need to provide employees with a work environment that helps them feel supported (67% of workers left their last role in search of a better workplace experience; they felt their existing workplace was not optimized for their needs).

On the other hand, you want to reduce office space and amenities that aren't used. 40% of corporate real estate is empty but paid for, and nearly 90% of commercial real estate (CRE) executives are not happy with the current use of space in their working environment.

The way to resolve these conflicting needs is by leveraging space (or workplace) utilization metrics.

Workplace utilization is the engine behind a data-driven workplace that delivers on both experience and efficiency.

Defining workplace utilization for this article

Workplace utilization tells you how many people are in a room compared to how many people it was designed for. This form of workplace data helps you understand if a space is being used in the way it was intended. Science reveals what your employees need — and what they don't — to have a positive workplace experience that leads to success.

There are three core benefits to incorporating workplace utilization in your workplace strategy:

• Reduces costs — Facility managers and executives concerned about reducing square footage need to know what space is underutilized and unnecessary.
• Simplifies space planning — Workplace utilization tools like Density offer deep insight into portfolio management and how every square foot is used.
• Validates needs — Employees are always asking for things, but knowing how they use your space tells facilities managers what they actually need.

Below are several examples of how teams use Density's workplace utilization data to make data-driven space decisions.

Making smarter space management decisions

One of our Fortune 500 customers had recently converted a series of one-person office spaces into shared spaces and allocated them to an emerging labs team.

Even with this added space, the team said it needed more space. Our customer used Density's occupancy data to get an accurate, unbiased view of the issue and learn how they could solve it.

They noticed some spaces being primarily used as intended. The graphic below shows how one meeting room was used by 8+ people the majority of the time:

But our customer noticed other areas - particularly meeting spaces - were severely underused. The graphic below shows how one meeting room space was used by just 1 person nearly half of the time.

Our customer's existing workspace floor plan wasn't working for them.

Based on the data gathered from Density, our customer carved out additional rooms using their existing space. They didn't have to move teams around or explore additional space.

The office space everyone needed was there. It just hadn't been allocated properly.

In another example, one of our customers discovered desk areas on one floor were being underutilized. This created the opportunity for over $50,000 in potential savings, without impacting staff or employees.

With an average of 40 unused desks across three desk areas on one floor at $450 per desk, this company was spending an average of $54,450 on unused desks every month. What’s more? One team was responsible for the majority of the problem: sales.

It turns out, the sales executives were spending most of their time on the road. Even when they were around, they were spending more time hosting clients in a meeting room. The client switched to a 2:1 ratio of desks to salespeople and were able to adopt the policy across their portfolio for additional savings.

Sometimes the number of desks needed does not depend on the number of employees you have, or even the number of people using an office. Rather, it depends on the proportion of time those people physically spend at a desk.

Managing space occupancy of high traffic areas

Historically, facilities managers would set static benchmarks for how many people would show up to high-traffic spaces (like cafes).

That approach delivers incomplete data, which results in food waste, overstaffing, and inefficient scheduling.

It also leads to a terrible employee experience.

A tech company that uses Density breaks up occupancy of their cafe by timeframe. This data alone can help our customer plan their food-service and cleaning needs accordingly.

However, Density also runs predictive algorithms against this historical data to tell our customer what the cafe traffic will be like the following week (see the lefthand graphic in the image below).

Maximizing workplace utilization

One of our clients was asked how to accommodate a 2x growth in engineering headcount at the company’s headquarters. With Density, our client was able to see exactly how many people entered each floor for any given timeframe. Our data revealed that the 1st Floor was visited more than the 2nd Floor. The one day with no visits?

Thanksgiving.

Our client was able to prove that the 1st floor had four times more traffic than the 2nd floor. This insight made it clear that the 2nd floor had the capacity to accommodate the growing number of engineers for their upcoming hiring spree.

By effectively identifying the best and worst-performing spaces, you can effectively determine how to better utilize under-performing areas. Conference rooms, for example, can go completely unused on a given day or at a given time. That's valuable space that can be capitalized on for additional functions, or repurposed into a different kind of space.

Workplace utilization sensors are modernizing the archaic way of calculating office space utilization

When you think about workplace utilization, what comes to mind is usually people walking around with clipboards measuring how each space is used (or not). A slight improvement from that is analyzing patterns in badge swipe data.

Neither of these methods suffice.

Density's occupancy sensors give facilities managers the flexibility to see how their space is used granularly (say, an individual room) and holistically (their entire real estate portfolio).

By measuring the actual utilization of space vs booked workspaces you gain a true view of usage.

The key benefits of utilization sensors

Density’s sensor technology comes with numerous core benefits that cannot be achieved through traditional spatial analytics. Your view of space capacity is in real-time, allowing you to see how workspaces are utilized at any given time. This data creates the opportunity for fast decisions on the repurposing of underutilized spaces, allowing you to create adaptable workspaces based on your current work patterns.

Your HR, Corporate Real Estate, Finance, IT, and Facility Management departments can all problem-solve swiftly through evidence-based decisions.

Workplace utilization sensors deliver real-time, historical, and predictive data — that's consumable and actionable — to help drive science-backed space management decisions. They provide a complete view of your space utilization, allowing you to make informed decisions when it comes to your real estate portfolio.

Space challenges become opportunities when you have real-time data from sensors, revealing actionable insights that can be transformed into tangible, data-driven outcomes.