Today’s workplace strategists wear many hats: behavioral analyst, creative problem-solver, data interpreter. They’re tasked with designing flexible, high-performing spaces while juggling vague feedback from team leaders and living deep in the data. Spotting patterns, chasing anomalies, and making space decisions without a crystal ball.
At the 7th Occupancy Intelligence Summit, Gary Gaughan, Workplace Data and Planning Manager at Indeed, pulled back the curtain on how he’s steered Indeed’s global workplace strategy through massive shifts—from the upheaval of 2020 to the realities of achieving an effective hybrid work strategy today.
Here are seven lessons packed with anecdotes, insights, and examples that every workplace leader can learn from Indeed’s approach.
1. Always Start with the “Why”
Gary’s driving force is clear: always understand the why—why you’re measuring, why you’re making decisions, and why a space is seeing certain employee behaviors. “When you understand the why,” he said, “you really know what you're trying to solve for.”
Indeed doesn’t gather data for its own sake. Every initiative—from retrofits to installing new space types—is driven by a specific question. For example, when sensor data revealed underused furniture and room types during a pilot on the fourth floor of their Austin headquarters, the team didn’t rush into costly redesigns. Instead, they paused to investigate: Was the layout unintuitive? Was the booking process getting in the way? Were employees aware of how the space was intended to be used?
Only after answering these questions and uncovering the underlying friction did they adjust layouts and launch targeted communication campaigns. The fix wasn’t new furniture or removable walls. It was clarity and context.
2. Design for Diversity: Roles, Regions, and Rhythms
Indeed doesn’t force uniformity across its nearly 1.8 million square feet of real estate. Instead, they embrace the complexities of global scale and cultural nuance. Employees across the world belong to one of four workplace designations:
- In Office: 5 days/week
- Flex Scheduled: Mandated (e.g., Tues/Wed)
- Flex Unscheduled: Flexible based on manager agreement
- Remote: No in-office requirement
These personas form the foundation of Indeed’s planning inputs. But as Gary was quick to point out, designations alone don’t tell the full story. Local dynamics—cultural, logistical, even psychological—shape how each location behaves.
Take Dublin, for instance. The office serves as the EMEA headquarters and attracts a large number of international employees. “For a lot of folks here,” Gary explained, “the office is their social circle.” That shows up in the data: employees not only come in consistently, they stick around. In-office presence extends into the evenings, especially on Wednesdays when many teams plan social events.
London, however, tells a different story. “Don’t put a happy hour on a Friday,” Gary said, half-joking. “No one will go.” Local commuters prioritize their time differently, and in his experience, Thursday remains the cultural sweet spot for in-office engagement.
Even within similar time zones, operational realities differ. In Amsterdam and parts of Germany, local school schedules impact when employees come in. “We actually see spikes in Monday usage because some parents need to front-load their week,” Gary noted. That insight has led to adjusted service schedules—everything from catering to janitorial support—to better match how people actually use the space.
“Everyone’s talking about flexibility,” Gary said, “but you can’t copy-paste the same workplace model across the globe and expect it to work the same.”
3. You Can’t Optimize What You Can’t Measure
Indeed has been on an occupancy intelligence journey for over six years—refining how they collect, interpret, and apply space data at scale. Their approach underscores a core belief: real intelligence starts with real visibility.
Their path has evolved:
A key lesson? Partial data is dangerous. “If you're only looking at half a floor or a cordon of an area,” Gary cautioned, “you're only seeing a partial picture.” Teams might make sweeping decisions based on anomalies or friction points—missing the broader behavioral patterns that only full-floor occupancy measurement reveals.
That’s where VergeSense comes in. The VergeSense Occupancy Intelligence platform enables insight that scales—across cities, teams, and use cases. It gives workplace teams the confidence to not just react, but anticipate.
The impact goes beyond internal planning. As Gary noted, it transforms stakeholder conversations. “Data-driven decisions are not just a buzzword,” he said. “When you're spending millions retrofitting or expanding, you want to feel secure you're making the best-informed decision.”
4. Retrofit Strategically—But Start with Behavior
Retrofits are another example where occupancy measurement can help you understand the best, cost-effective path forward to meet your goals. n. “Retrofits are expensive,” Gary said. “What else can we do?”
Take a common scenario: employees were reporting difficulty finding space for private calls. The easy answer might have been to build more phone booths. But the team took a closer look.
They pulled sensor data, dug into booking behaviors, and talked to employees. What they discovered was layered:
- Some employees were using 4-to-5-person meeting rooms for solo video calls.
- Phone booths existed but were underutilized at certain times of day, while facing bottlenecks during peak hours or specific days of the week.
- In certain sales neighborhoods, team members had stopped taking calls at their desks, despite that being the pre-pandemic norm.
The fix wasn’t about adding space. In some cases, it was about encouraging a return to collaborative desk norms—especially in sales teams where junior employees benefit from overhearing calls. In others, it meant reconfiguring underused rooms to support both heads-down focus and video conferencing. And where needed, the team adjusted booking policies or clarified which rooms were best for which types of work.
The point wasn’t to react. It was to respond with precision.
At Indeed, this behavior-first approach has driven a range of changes:
- Swapping underused furniture for modular layouts
- Resizing or repurposing existing rooms
- Introducing mobile partitions to flex space types on the fly
And when physical changes weren’t needed, they looked for lighter-lift options:
- Behavioral nudges and signage
- Booking policy updates
- Real-time scheduling improvements
“Changing behavior doesn’t happen overnight,” Gary cautioned. “But it can pay dividends—and it doesn’t cost as much.”
5. Measure What Breaks, Not Just What’s Used
Indeed keeps a close eye on bottlenecks and breakpoints——the exact moment when a space stops working as intended. Rather than simply looking at average utilization, they focus on when and why a space becomes unusable.
“How are we out of space at 30% attendance?” Gary posed, reflecting on common executive questions. The answer: imbalance.
Indeed looks at:
- Capacity assumptions: Many pre-COVID rooms are functionally oversized.
- Simultaneous demand: Not just average use, but concurrency and time-based tension.
- Passive use: Backpacks and laptops occupying empty rooms.
- Ghosted bookings: Scheduled rooms that sit unused.
That’s exactly where VergeSense’s Breakpoint Analyzer makes a difference. It helps teams move from generic averages to precise planning. By predicting which room types will fill up first—and where space is going to waste—it gives strategists the clarity to rebalance layouts, right-size rooms, and optimize the space mix.
6. Rethink Capacity: Context Is Everything
Gary raised a simple but important question: what does “capacity” really mean in 2025?
He pointed to a 5-person meeting room he was sitting in: “Technically it seats five, but with two screens in front of me, if I sit at the end chair, I can’t be seen. That’s not effective capacity.”
With hybrid work and smaller in-person meetings, the definition of room size needs to adapt. Indeed is:
- Redefining usable capacity based on visibility and equipment layout
- Right-sizing standards to better reflect solo or duo usage
- Designing for real behaviors, not idealized use cases
This mindset helps avoid costly overbuilding and ensures space is actually usable, not just technically compliant.
7. Share the Data—and the Story
Gary drove home a critical point: data isn't just for analysts. “Everyone wants the data, and they want it yesterday,” he joked. Indeed responded by embedding transparency into daily workflows, ensuring that insights become fuel—not friction—for change.
They’ve built a culture where:
- Dashboards are accessible to all teams, not just central strategy or leadership.
- Local workplace managers are trained and empowered to interpret data, own solutions, and lead small-scale pilots.
- Communication style is tailored to the audience: some stakeholders want a deep dive into hours-of-occupancy charts; others prefer a crisp two-sentence summary and a clear decision point.
And most importantly—each metric is tethered to a story. As Gary said,
“Numbers mean nothing if you can’t explain what they mean for your people.”
Final Thought: Informed Iteration Over Perfection
Gary’s closing note was both humble and actionable: “You're not going to get everything right. But whatever data you start collecting today will immensely help you going forward.”
His parting challenge? Be inquisitive—not just internally, but externally. Ask peers why they made decisions. Share frameworks. “We’re only going to move forward together,” he said.
Indeed’s workplace playbook isn’t perfect—but it’s real, tactical, and replicable. And for any workplace strategist looking to modernize, it’s an inspiring roadmap.
Interested in learning more about preventing space shortages with data-driven decisions? Set up a time to talk with a VergeSense specialist about your workplace goals.