Kanav Dhir, vice president of product, VergeSense asks how does your office compare to these workspace trends?
Are you thinking about space design for your workplace? It’s been nearly three years since the world returned to work, and many organizations are looking to make changes that better meet their evolving needs. If you own, lease, or manage workspace, data from the Occupancy Intelligence Index will help make sure your next steps meet the new working patterns and needs of employees.
The third edition of the Occupancy Intelligence Index is focused on space design. Trends show that the utilization rates for offices continue to increase steadily, although the average company has still not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Employers hope that creating inviting, productive spaces will entice employees to come back to the office in larger numbers. Yet, we’re hearing that there isn’t enough space to accommodate new preferences for working, impacting employee productivity. Are you seeing this trend? What are you planning to do about it?
The Index offers insights and direction based on an analysis of 110 million square feet across 115 thousand spaces, and more than 200 global enterprises. Here are just three of the takeaways.
Traditional layouts
We analyzed commonly used design element types across organizations in 2023 and ranked the results:
- Desks (81,724)
- Conference Rooms (13,193)
- Open Collaboration Space (8,607)
- Collaboration Room (6,283)
- Office (5,030)
- Phone Booth (467)
If you think about your office space, these results probably aren’t surprising—they reflect traditional office configurations.
What is surprising is how much time employees spend in each space. Although there are more desks than all collaboration spaces combined, collaboration spaces have a combined active time usage of 20.6%, while desks only have an active time usage of 8.4%.
This insight is helpful for those looking to reconfigure their office layout. Knowing that desks are being used as a home base and that collaboration is a priority could allow desk space to be repurposed for collaboration, team neighborhoods, or private space for video calls.
Industry Space
The Index found that space mix varies greatly by industry. While desks remain the most widely used element, other spaces may reflect core activities aligned to the industry and type of work.
Healthcare (20.99%) and Industrial & Logistics (17.96%) have more than 2x as many collaboration rooms than any other industry.
Infrastructure & Public Enterprise space mix is about half focus and half collaboration space, with 56.37% focus space (offices and desks) and 43.63% collaboration space.
Industrial & Logistics has the highest amount of phone booths in its space mix (4.82%), while Infrastructure & Public Enterprise has none.
Energy, Oil, & Gas has the highest percentage of desks (85.99%) in their space mix.
The takeaway here is that the perfect space mix has everything to do with the objectives of your workplace strategy and the type of work your employees do in the office.
See you Tuesday
Throughout 2023, the Index shows capacity usage increased, meaning more people came into the office. This reflects an increased urgency around return-to-office strategies and the growing need for in-person collaboration.
What is your hybrid policy? If you’re like those surveyed:
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday have become the “standard in-office days” for most hybrid work policies, as confirmed by capacity data.
The Index capacity usage data found Tuesday, specifically, had the highest average capacity usage (11% worldwide) in 2023.
Data-driven insights, like those from the Index, can help you consider new strategies for your workspace. However, nothing beats using your own occupancy data to make workplace design decisions that support your current operations.