Izzy Cannell, Workplace Insights and Advisory Co-Lead, VergeSense and Brad Golden, Workplace Insights and Advisory Co-Lead, say Data-driven workplace strategies can reduce costs, boost productivity, and delight employees. But is it the cure-all your company has been searching for?
The last several years were some of the most innovative and groundbreaking for the workplace as organizations changed their policies and structures to support new ways of working. This year, space design needs to catch up.
We’ve seen a notable shift in workplace expectations leading to this moment as the office evolves into a different type of collaboration hub – encompassing virtual, hybrid, and in-person. According to the Occupancy Intelligence Index, collaboration spaces (21.1%) and conference rooms (21.7%) are getting used more heavily than desk spaces (14.8%), providing organizations with an opportunity to adjust space design to better align with employees’ needs, behaviors, and preferences. At the same time, many organizations find themselves burdened with excess square footage, underutilized spaces, and rising facility costs.
As organizations strategize for 2025, refining space programming should be a top priority to meet utilization targets and reduce costs.
Competing with the home office
As companies adjust in-office policies and reconsider the employee experience, it’s important to understand that employees now compare their in-office experience with their ideal home office setups. What can employers do to ensure the office environment delivers what employees need to be productive?
The answer isn’t one thing and isn’t the same for every organization. There is a newfound intentionality in how workplace leaders are thinking about space, and we are seeing an openness to considering new possibilities. There’s a lot of creativity in how people use the space they have, whether through improving amenities, redistributing neighborhoods, dynamic stacking, or redesigning spaces to enhance the employee experience.
The misalignment of space mix and office policies
In nearly every sector and geographic region, we see tension in the misalignment between physical space and working styles and policies. As Workplace Insights consultants, we meet with customers trying to manage spaces that were built or designed pre-pandemic and often see usage data that clearly indicates a mismatch between space and employee work patterns. For example, having a floor largely dedicated to private offices or workstations and a policy that allows employees to work from home part of the week often translates into the dual challenge of extremes; low usage days where single use space is largely unused, as well as peak usage events where there are tensions around high demand for enclosed and collaborative space while unenclosed individual space offers opportunities for reallocation of use.
Many organizations are willing to shift policies and patterns to avoid wasted space or spending that doesn’t benefit productivity or profitability. In many cases, that means refining what the office is used for and when employees need to be there.
The right approach for optimizing
What’s the right approach for your people and your space? The answer requires leaders to get clear on what a successful employee experience means and their cost-cutting goals. Naturally, organizations want to provide employees with what they need to do their jobs and be productive. But how far are you willing to go? This exercise requires organizations to define their parameters.
Is your ultimate goal to enable teams to find space for collaboration easily at any time? Build neighborhoods that align with each team's working style? Meet a target for reduced real estate spend while providing a positive experience? Communication is critical so employees understand the intent and the changes and can adjust their expectations appropriately for the experience they’re going to have. If you come in on Mondays, there will be more space than you could imagine, but if you come on Wednesdays, you might have trouble finding certain space types.
Data for better decisions
We use data to help organizations make sense of areas of tension or misalignment in their workspaces. With focused questions or challenges, customers follow the data to pivotal insights on their space.
For example, if you have a shortage of conference rooms and an excess of workstation areas, several options could solve that. We can look to data to inform which options avoid a big spend and align to employee needs, such as adding moveable wall panels or rearranging furniture to create more collaboration space.
Adjusting space to meet employee needs streamlines the office experience, leading to happier employees who feel heard and valued and an increased opportunity for productivity across the organization.
Sometimes, the data suggests options that the customer had never considered. One of our life sciences customers used data-driven insights to turn a lifeless lobby into a bustling workspace. They leveraged space utilization data to confirm observations about low conference room usage, then made size and ratio adjustments to open up more usable work space in the lobby.
A lot of the magic happens when we start looking at multiple data sources alongside each other, such as employee feedback, WiFi data, or badge data. Often, the answers can be more specific and more complete.
Of course, embracing data for workspace decision-making reflects an organization’s personality and culture. We see some organizations acting as pioneers, willing to experiment with space based on the data. Others use data to confirm that their existing workspace plans are on the right track or to make large investment decisions with confidence. It's always helpful to learn from other companies by comparing strategies and tactics.
2025 trends
We’re excited about a few of the trends we’re seeing related to space optimization.
Stability: Following a year with many operational changes, look for 2025 to be marked by greater stability. With the “where” and “how much” problems more stabilized, organizations are more likely to invest in their facilities, realigning space, or moving into new leases to better accommodate their needs. We’re seeing customers feel more confident in decisions as budget dollars become more predictable, enabling cost avoidance and enhancing efficiency across the board.
Creativity: As organizations use new data from sensors and other sources to gain more insight into how employees use their existing spaces, they can consider more creative solutions. This latest innovative spirit may reflect post-pandemic optimism or be a side effect of having greater stability.
Work style: Organizations seem less interested in following others, particularly when determining which work patterns, policies, and norms they embrace. Instead, we’re seeing greater authenticity around culture and work style, which translates into very tailored workspace improvements that meet unique workforce needs.
The new year provides a new opportunity to align design with team needs and behaviors, offering unique, enriching experiences in the office and avoiding wasted costs in a budget-constrained environment. In 2025, let's make workplaces smarter and more joyful.