This metric will provide you with an understanding of which types of spaces employees are seeking out in the workplace, and will enable you to make informed decisions about new space investments. 

It’s also important to understand the utilization of conference rooms, breakout rooms, individual cubicles and other types of spaces to be able to optimize the corporate office design

In the workplace, the cost of failure is significant because the investment is long term and the expense high.  

To reduce the risk of losing money, you should test your experiment in a smaller part of the office before rolling it out on a larger scale. The size of your experiments should depend on the size of your portfolio.

This is another opportunity to “close out” floors and only keep a few open to employees. However, which spaces you decide to close from a workplace design perspective depends on how current employees are using each space.

It’s a best practice to consolidate specific areas depending on the results from your office space utilization data. If, for instance, the huddle rooms are getting higher space utilization than the conference rooms, you can consider evolving your space design strategy to include a different ratio of huddle rooms to conference rooms. Finding the right ratio of huddle rooms to conference rooms to individual private spaces is an ongoing initiative for all companies managing commercial real estate spaces post-pandemic. 

If it’s becoming evident that collaborative spaces are fostering increased occupancy, you can make your office’s space design more collaborative and agile.

The intention of this experiment is to increase the utilization of space on these two floors by densifying your occupancy. This can result in an increase in utilization on these two floors from 20% to 60%.

A common target for overall utilization is somewhere between 70-80% depending on the design of the space to promote a good “vibe” of activity on the floor.

Calculate your employee-to-seat ratio to understand how many desks you need for your workplace, especially with an increasingly hybrid workforce. Here’s how to calculate your ideal office space employee to seat ratio.