Office space utilization is only half the story

What data workplaces really need

I’ve spent the last few years traveling around the world meeting people responsible for their workplaces. I can guess what most workplaces think they need in terms of data. These are the typical questions they want the answers to:

1. What’s my current rate of Meeting Room Utilization?
2. What’s my current rate of Desk Utilization?
3. How many people come into my workplace every day?

The good news, these are pretty easy to answer.

Particularly if you have Cisco Meraki, DNA Spaces, and a room scheduling system. We can cross-reference scheduled events with the user’s location.

Is this data meaningful?

But if I (or some dashboard) told you that your meeting rooms are 35% utilized, does that give you any actionable insights? What’s a good percentage anyway? 100? What are we actually benchmarking against?

I spend a good part of my day pondering these questions at PlaceOS. What is missing is the soft data that makes the hard utilization data insightful.

You can tell by some of my previous articles that I am not a fan of Apps. In a similar way, I’m not a fan of dashboards. A dashboard makes you focus on the data it collects. This means you might miss trends and insights. And a dashboard can rarely separate correlation or causation.

What are the questions I should be asking?

Instead of ‘What is the Current Rate of Meeting Room Utilization?’

1. What value do my meeting rooms provide?
2. Do we have too many meetings or too few rooms?
3. How do we know if our meetings are effective?
4. If rooms are underutilized, are they still providing tangible value?

Instead of ‘What is the Current Rate of Desk Utilization?’

1. Are people avoiding the office now that we have hot desking?
2. Would there be more people here at any given time if we had the right type of space?
3. Are people worried they will not get a desk?
4. How do we lower our desk to people ratio without affecting productivity or employee happiness?
5. Why are some zones more popular than others?

Instead of ‘How Many People Come into my Workplace Every Day?’

1. Are visitors new or returning?
2. How many more visitors does the workplace welcome when there’s been an update to the physical space?

‍

The best analogy on utilisation not equaling value I can think of is car ownership. I live in Coogee and work in Alexandria (Sydney). This is a 30 min drive each way in traffic. For the rest of the day- the car sits in a car park or my garage.

On average, that’s a little less than 5% utilization. But the value is still worth it for me- to avoid the terrible public transport of Sydney and get around in my own time.

The best analogy on utilization not equaling value I can think of is car ownership.

It’s all about context

All of these points start with hard data, but they add in something really important - context.

The best analogy on utilization not equaling value I can think of is car ownership. I live in Coogee and work in Alexandria (Sydney). This is a 30 min drive each way in traffic. For the rest of the day- the car sits in a car park or my garage.

On average, that’s a little less than 5% utilization. But the value is still worth it for me- to avoid the terrible public transport of Sydney and get around in my own time.

You might have a space that is not used frequently, but has a high output in terms of value. Perhaps it’s the only space that can host a workshop that brings in a lot of money. Or has ‘wow factor’ that helps land a client.

If you don’t cross reference your room usage percentages with context like this- you might give up space that has value. Or the other way around- if the room is used all day long but there are no results from these meetings- the space is not providing value.

The value created by space can be in many forms. It might make your employees happy and engaged. It might impress a client; it might help attract and keep talent. If we can start quantifying some of these elements, we can start to paint a better picture of your space and work out how to make it better.