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On September 12th, VergeSense hosted it's first Occupancy Intelligence Summit where Michael Advani of BCG and Melissa Ogden of Airbnb shared the strategies they've put into place to answer two major space optimization questions we're all facing:
Watch the recording to hear their stories - and read on to see how VergeSense enables their strategies.
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Workplace leaders are increasingly being told by employees that they are running out of meeting rooms. There are two potential causes of this problem, depending on whether the need for more meeting rooms is a perceived problem or an actual problem.
While there are many aspects that contribute to efficient, collaborative, and productive space use, this journey all starts with a deep understanding of the contributing employee behaviors that can make it feel like these spaces are running out even when they are not. These behaviors include:
Ghosted meetings account for 37% of all meetings worldwide, resulting in unused spaces. This leads to wasted time and a poor employee experience, as other employees have to search for available rooms. It can also skew occupancy data, leading to incorrect conclusions about planning and design-related factors.
Employees often leave items like backpacks, computers, or jackets behind in collaboration spaces when moving throughout the workplace during the day as a way of unofficially reserving it for when they return. This leads to confusion and frustration for employees looking to actively use these spaces.
Employees generally do not move between floors throughout their days which means that if they cannot find an open meeting room on that particular floor, it can feel as though the whole building has run out of space.
The VergeSense Occupancy Intelligence Platform captures and analyzes the behaviors that lead to meeting room inefficiencies so you can apply the right strategy to ensure spaces are available, your teams are productive, and their experience in the office is worth the commute - all without investing in more space.
One of the Big Three consulting firms was consistently hearing from employees that they were running out of meeting spaces. VergeSense captured and analyzed actual meeting room usage data during the times of these recurring meetings and found 40% of meetings were ghosted across 10,400 hours of room bookings because attendees were more likely to be on the road than in the office. By automatically releasing these unused spaces, this customer realized an estimated cost avoidance of $50,000/month.
The shift towards flexible work models has accelerated a move towards a broader set of space preferences and demands among employees, essentially redefining the idea of what constitutes workplace amenities. Leaders in the workplace are actively focused on curating spaces that address these evolving needs and expectations, fostering workplaces that are versatile, user-friendly, technology-enabled, and tailored to individual and team work styles.
This can lead to the other side of the previous problem: you are actually running out of space because your current layout is no longer meeting your employees’ needs. A few root causes of this newfound lack of space could be attributed to:
Extended room use, known as "camping," is common in smaller meeting spaces lacking booking software. This occurs because there are no defined time limits for space usage. Due to the comfort of home offices, employees prefer the privacy of meeting rooms over open desks. Additionally, concerns about disrupting coworkers during hybrid meetings drive demand for private workspaces.
Historically, meeting rooms needed to be large to accommodate whole teams. However, since hybrid work became the new norm, many workplaces are finding a shortage of phone booths and small meeting rooms designated for four or fewer people, so individuals and small groups are forced to use larger meeting spaces to find more private spaces to work together.
If amenities are not meeting your employees’ needs they may avoid using certain spaces. Uncomfortable furniture, missing or outdated technology, acoustical challenges, and privacy challenges are just a few common examples of what poor amenities may look like.
The VergeSense Occupancy Intelligence Platform analyzes the exact capacity usage of each space along with how often each space is being used, so you can create more of the spaces that employees want, while reevaluating the ones that aren't as popular.
By supercharging your space booking applications with occupancy intelligence, any booked meetings that are ghosted or end early will be automatically released, signaling to other employees that they can use the space..png?width=875&height=450&name=Kiosk_lite-min%20(2).png)
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With the Usage Map, you can also identify which spaces people spend the most time in and begin to understand the reasons why. Then, you can find ways to repurpose existing spaces to create more space types like this and apply it to the next spaces you’re creating. You can help ensure that the most popular spaces have proper availability for all, creating a stronger employee experience marked by productivity and inspiration..png?width=875&height=692&name=time_usage-min%20(1).png)