Good measure
The rise in flexible working means businesses need to understand the efficiency of their office space and what their staff require from it.
In particular, many companies have introduced new tools, policies, and furniture to their offices and are now grappling to find a way of measuring the effect it has had on space efficiency and its value for staff and the business.
According to JLL's 2021 Global Flex Space Report, 41% of office tenants expect to increase their use of flexible space. Real estate managers have historically been more concerned about costs and maximising the efficiency of their space, but with the rise of remote working post-Covid, employee satisfaction has become a bigger priority. Sense checking what has happened, what changes have been made, and pointing to what is working and what is not, can be done in a way that is both easily understandable and compelling to top decision makers in HR, IT, finance, and at board level.
Occupiers and landlords can understand what is happening in the workplace through an occupancy study, conducted over as little as 2-3 weeks consisting of quantitative data gathered through utilisation studies and occupancy sensors, and qualitative employee surveys, interviews, and workshops.
There are a few methods to obtain the hard data on what is happening in the workplace:
Time & space utilisation surveys
The data from utilisation surveys can inform space design and will give you the hard facts as to how often a space is being used and by how many people. It is often used with other hard data sets such as badge-in data, environmental sensor data (e.g. temperature, CO2, lighting levels), headcount forecasts, and space booking. For example, we frequently find that large meeting rooms designed for eight or more people are used 30-40% of the time during an average working week, but of that usage 80% of the time, it is only one or two people utilising the meeting room. This indicates an inefficient use of space and indicates the need for smaller meeting rooms.
Measuring how people move through spaces
As the office becomes more of a place for collaboration, you additionally need to know how people move through the space and when and where they congregate. A combination of how many people are using a space at any given moment and how they move through the space can be anonymously captured by sensors placed under tables, or on furniture or in the ceiling and integrated into security cameras, or even by live observers.
Improving workplace design and portfolio decisions
Live utilisation data informs your workplace design strategies and guides decisions to acquire properties or downsize your portfolio with greater accuracy. AI-driven "digital twinning" models can also provide a clearer picture of how, when, and where people use the workplace. A digital twin is a live 3D digital model of your space that can be used to make real time predictions of behaviour during a fire or just who will be coming in on a Tuesday and how crowded it will be.
Measuring satisfaction
Because attraction and retention of staff is more important now than just space efficiency, it is vital to understand what employees expect and desire from their workplace. User surveys can gauge user sentiment with regards to different spaces in the office and ways of working, while staff workshops help explain the reasons behind their preferences. Surveys, combined with workshops, enable you to understand how the workplace is under performing or the perceived success of certain aspects of it.
We can assist landlords and tenants to collect this data and translate the data into a series of recommendations that will in most cases not only save space that can be either repurposed or released but result in employees being happier and utilising the facilities provided more often. Bottomline, get the facts but listen to the feelings: allowing employees to have a voice and be consulted with will improve the value of your real estate.
Jemima Scott