Low risk, high reward workplace

Experiments for office space planning

How has office space planning changed post pandemic?

Before the pandemic, office space planning was based on a supply and demand model where the supply in question was physical space for employees, and the demand was centered around headcount.

Post-pandemic, office space planning is integral to return-to-office strategies and for enabling team collaboration with teams that work in increasingly hybrid environments.

Because of the changes to a more hybrid workforce, office space planners can work with the company’s existing real estate portfolio and envision redesigned spaces that can work for years to come, instead of having to expand space every time headcount is set to grow. These flexible workplace strategies allow for companies to ensure on-site, remote, and hybrid employees are all actively engaged.

As the occupancy rate of the workplace increases, the cost per occupant decreases and the ROI of your workplace improves. This means that as more employees come into the office, the original space won’t need to be expanded as many employees will be hired remotely, or will only come in occasionally.

A full understanding of true office space utilization is key to understanding the best way to plan workplaces.

How is low office occupancy impacting office space planning strategies?

Low occupancy creates the false impression that you have enough space to accommodate the needs of your employees.

Because fewer people are in the office, there are fewer demands. Office space, desks, chairs and other amenities are available in surplus, creating the sense that everything’s fine.

This is far from the reality, and results in overspending on real estate and low employee satisfaction in some locations due to insufficient space availability.

What is an office space planning strategy?

To plan your office spaces effectively, you must conduct demand planning and respond to space requests and headcount growth with data-driven plans.

A common challenge when planning office spaces is the inability to reconcile what employees and department managers say they want, versus what they actually need. This leads to spaces that don't actually serve the needs of the occupants and are underutilized.

A sound office space forecasting model and understanding how your users actually use space allows you to increase space usage while providing an improved employee experience.

Start your experiment now

Four experiments you can start doing now to improve your office space planning strategy.

Click each experiment to expand.

1. Consolidate your spaces to increase office space utilization

2. Consolidate your office space to reduce operational costs

3. Experiment with various office seating arrangements

4. Consolidate space across your portfolio

The Low Risk, High Reward Workplace

Download a free template to design your experiments

Download a PDF version of the guide to running experiments in a low occupancy world to walk you through experiment design and how to produce a business case.

It includes a template to run your own experiment.

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