Your lack of space utilization data is holding you hostage. Your workplace remains at a standstill, unable to move forward with any changes to the office that will be needed during and after the return to office (RTO) period.

You need good data to guide key workplace decisions. But without a critical mass of employees coming back to the office, traditional data sources aren’t that useful anymore. The kind of space utilization data you need today can’t be captured by those pre-pandemic methods: employee surveys, desk booking, security access badge data, etc. Even historical data, benchmarking data, and other baseline data has become irrelevant for guiding fundamental changes in the workplace going forward.

Workplace change is on the horizon—restrictions that kept us at home are relaxing, and everyone wants to get on with life. But work life is going to look very different in 2022 in comparison to 2019. Why and where people go to the office will be driven by new factors, like managing personal health and well-being.

We all know change can be an expensive proposition—but it doesn’t have to be, if we can dig in and really understand exactly what changes are necessary, and why.

What is Space Utilization Data?

To get a grasp on where to go from here, we have to pin down the concept of space utilization.

In Corporate Real Estate (CRE), space utilization data measures how efficiently office space is used by employees. So, what do we mean by “space”? Is it the building, the floor, an area, a room, a specific seat? Depending on what you’re interested in measuring, it could mean any of these—and the way you capture and calculate it will vary, too. While some companies are interested in building or floor-level occupancy, which they can get from security access data, others are interested in areas, rooms, or even seat-level occupancy. This requires other methods for capturing the data to deliver the insights.

Before sensor technology was available, building (and floor) level occupancy was captured by security badge data. The terms “occupancy” and “space utilization” both meant the total occupants divided by total seat count. So, if you had 600 seats and 450 occupants, you’d have 75% space utilization.

If companies wanted to go deeper and get at area, room, or even seat-level occupancy, they needed a site observation study which involved taking manual attendance at regular intervals per day, usually over 2 or 3 weeks. Then, it’d be analyzed to produce a snapshot of how different spaces on the floors were being used over time. Space utilization data derived this way wasn’t totally accurate, but it was the best we could do at the time.

Sensors changed all that. The definition of occupancy didn’t change, but “space utilization” now means measuring how much time people spend in particular spaces. The badge data still provides information on attendance counts and the distribution of people among floors, and sensors enable further analysis, by providing more details about where people go when they’re on the floor.

Understanding space utilization at this level is a more reliable measure—sensors can capture how many people are in the spaces at precisely the same time.. Knowing all this provides a level of insight you need to begin to inform potential changes.

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Starting Strong: Learning Occupants’ Behaviours

To understand what needs to change in the office, we first need to understand our employees’ behaviours. With this, we can start to make decisions that best align the office design (and furniture) with how people prefer to work. This way, we can provide more of what works, and reduce or eliminate what doesn’t.

To start, how do we know where to focus first? We can all agree it’s far too early to use this data to decide on things like getting rid of square footage or re-designing the entire workplace. Space optimization and square foot reduction strategies that yield huge cost savings are important—but aren’t the right place to start. The priority now is to use the data we have to encourage, support, and understand employee preferences as full-on RTO activities get underway.

The first underlying goal is to understand what sort of spaces work best, so we can work into our plans changes that might provide more spaces like it, and change spaces that are no longer necessary or preferred.

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Out with the Old, in with the New: Sensors and People Counting

Early baselining and trending will be key in identifying what people want and what changes you may need to make. For example, you may want to understand what the new capacity planning requirements are, or what design changes and/or furniture changes are on the horizon. Doing this without the right data can be costly and disastrous.

Sensors and people-counting technologies are your best option for accessing early “micro” signals that illustrate the changes in how people are using the office since the pandemic started. This holds true, even if the data comes from just those few people who do return in the early days of RTO. Data captured from Relogix sensor technology can give you a granularity of detail that you can’t get from traditional data sources.

It’s also worth noting that one sensor technology can’t do it all, either. Different space types may require different sensor types to best capture the utilization of the space.

Ultimately, sensor data is the way forward. You need access to good data, and fast, to understand where people go when they’re in the office. There’s no better time than now to enable this kind of learning and get accurate insights in real time.

In the example below, we’ve extracted some micro-data from our own database of clients to show the value of sensor technology in making decisions about the workplace.

In this Weekly Occupancy Trending graph, we can see the output generated from sensors in a sampling of meeting rooms and open collaboration spaces. It shows us that the demand for meeting rooms has stayed fairly constant since the beginning of February, while demand for open collaboration spaces seems to be on the rise. Even though this graph only shows five weeks of space utilization data, we can already start to think of reasons for these trends. For example, people might have a preference for open collaboration spaces to have better control over their personal space, to maintain proper physical distancing.

The emerging trend here doesn’t necessarily mean that the meetings that are happening are less structured, i.e. more spontaneous than scheduled ones (although an integration with your room booking and calendar data can surely validate this!). Instead, these early trending insights serve to kick-start your design process. This behavioural data can help you qualify and quantify what parts of meeting and collaboration spaces might need changing, re-purposing, or re-designing, so your workplace can better align with what people need.

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Getting into the Nitty Gritty: Using Sensor Data to its Fullest

Space utilization trending data can be easily extracted using the right sensor CRE technology tool. It’s important to remember that data observations over short periods of time are highly volatile—when data is aggregated to a weekly or monthly view instead, you can start to see steadier, more reliable trending directions. Extremely granular data may not be enough to action anything right now, but it can still give us an idea of where we’re starting, and where the workplace might need to go in the future.

In the graph below, we’ve used the same data shown in the previous graph, but have expanded the month of February, to see what’s happening day-to-day. As you can see, it’s harder to see a trending direction for these two isolated space types.

But this data still provides immense value. For example, the daily view shown above tells us just how much the demand for space swings from one day to the next. We can see that meeting room space use has generally trended higher on a daily basis, when compared to open collaboration spaces. We can even see peak use occurrences for both space types, which gets lost in the rolled-up monthly aggregate view shown previously.

Seeing the same trends, but at this granular level, might change the way you approach your space planning objectives. More importantly, it highlights potential challenges you may have in effectively managing space availability and capacity, if space reduction is the ultimate goal.

Showing up at the office during the RTO period and not having a space to work that feels safe won’t go over well—but this granular data can help you dial-up your space availability to support demand, to make for a positive employee experience during this crucial time.

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Using What You Have—Now

Having the right sensor technologies in place will give you access to the detailed data you need now to see new and emerging space use demands. Trending has been a confidence-builder in the past, and it’s no different now. The sooner you start trending the RTO activities, the easier it will be to determine where to focus your attention. Get ahead of what’s changing, how those changes are shifting workspace demands, and what this means compared to your current supply—after which you can start to plan adjustments accordingly.

Understanding this early on will guide key planning approaches that will eventually support factual decision making. Decisions based on reliable and factual data are more readily accepted and met with less resistance by those they effect. Now is the perfect time to use sensor data to inform and implement changes that are ultimately in the best interests of those using the workspace.

Level Up Your Data with Conexus

In the world of work today, we’re living with a whole host of variables that complicate the landscape: uncertainty surrounding today’s world, data siloes and out-of-date data, the absence of a single source of truth, and the evolving needs and desires of employees, and more. In this turbulent environment, organisations are continuing to deliberate over what to do next.

Above all, data-driven decision making is crucial. The problem isn’t the amount of workplace data that exists now or will exist in the future—the problem is ensuring the transparency of the data, to the right people, at the right time, in the right way. No person managing space has the time and mental bandwidth to number crunch and analyse multiple data sources, using resource-heavy and cumbersome tools. They want and need trusted answers and genuine insights, ready and waiting.

This is where Conexus fits in.

The Conexus platform ingests and integrates multiple data sets, layering information to produce dynamic, trusted, and fast-to-the-finger data. Sources could include:

• Occupancy sensors
• Space booking systems
• IWMS
• HRIS
• Badging
• Surveys
• WIFI

Make Your Data Work For You: Space Booking Systems

Here at Relogix, we often talk about the importance of understanding the data on employees’ intended behaviour versus their actual behaviours. To give some insight into the power of this kind of data integration, let’s talk a bit more specifically about how this plays out with a commonly used workplace technology: space booking systems.

Space booking systems are often necessary, insightful, and easy to use. But the data they provide is only as reliable as the people who use them—and as it turns out, there’s lots of room for error. Without occupancy sensors, space booking systems only show what people intend to do—not their actual behaviour. If we took some time to reflect and be honest with ourselves, we know right down to the individual level that our intentions don’t always turn into reality.

Many employees these days wake up in the morning with choices: where are they going to work? How are they going to work? And with whom? This leaves far too many variables to be able to rely on their stated intentions from when they booked spaces a week ago.

However, combine occupancy sensors with desk booking software using Conexus, and you can capture how people intended to behave—layered with what they actually did. This allows organizations to understand the how people adopt and experience workplace technologies. With regards to space booking, it captures space squatting percentages and no-shows, and identifies opportunities to improve the supply and demand of spaces and the workplace experience.

Automations That Improve The Employee Experience

Another key point where data integration makes all the difference is with automating check-ins. Space booking systems rely on some form of manual user check-in. If this doesn’t happen—say, the employee just forgets—this could result in the space being released for another person to book. With integrated occupancy sensors, we can now automate the check-in only when the space is actually occupied. This seamless use of technology only improves the workplace experience—no more showing up to your booked seat to find it’s already taken.

And, crucial to the Workplace Manager, this same functionality can auto-release the space in the event of a no-show. This avoids the frustrating situation of being unable to book a meeting room or seat when, with just a glance around, we can see that many spaces are actually free. This is just another example of Conexus assisting in the management of the supply and demand of spaces and powering the workplace experience of its users. The days of arriving at a workplace looking for somewhere to sit should never have existed, but they are now certainly a thing of the past.

Where Do We Go From Here?

There is space in the future of the employee experience for the physical workspace, but it must be a destination that people want to go to—there has to be seamless technology and spaces to collaborate, connect and be curious, all with a focus on sustainability. To achieve this, we need data-driven decision making, using trusted answers and genuine insights, all live, ready, and waiting for you when you need them. This is where Conexus fits in to your Workplace Technology stack.

Contact me today to discuss how data integrations within Conexus can facilitate certainty in an uncertain world.

The employee behaviors that informed and shaped the workplaces of yesterday are evolving. Why people go to the office continues to be in flux as we learn to adapt and live with the new consequences of being in the workplace together. How much time we spend at the office, what we do there, and what spaces we need to be productive is a moving target and will continue to be, for some time.

And since employee behavior is what should ideally shape the workplace itself, this makes workplace planning extra challenging. Organizations need some reliable way to understand what’s changing, and whether those changes are temporary or here to stay. To do this, we need reliable data that shows us the nuances of what’s happening in the workplace.

The need for this data is at an all-time high right now. Important decisions need to be made—like how much space do we need, how do we go about occupancy planning, what needs to change in our workplace design and how do we support employees working at the office. Pre-pandemic data collection often referenced a static moment in time. Today, with constantly changing protocols impacting employee behaviors, timely access to data is key.

Expected Behaviours and Workplace Design

Workplace design is integral to the smooth functioning of an organization. As such, the goal to “get it right” from the start means having access to current, relevant, and telling data, to guide and inform.

To design a workspace, planners and designers need to understand how people use and interact with the spaces available in the office.  Static data from sources like surveys, utilization studies, workshops, or interviews with employees, as well as calendar data and desk and room reservation data are often referenced for insights.   However, the insights are limited and mostly about user intent, preferences, and overall satisfaction.

All this data is collected, analyzed, and then transformed into a workplace program that becomes the workplace design plan, which goes on to inform the requirements for construction, furniture and fixturing. Once there’s a design, the workplace program becomes the workplace standard that is input into an IWMS tool—the system of record for the design and functionality of a workplace and its workspaces.

Therefore, when we look at data that comes from an IWMS module, we can baseline the current design intent. The current space allocation, sharing ratios, space types, and sizes tell us how we planned for employees to use the spaces provisioned. For example, an organization might be able to pull the following information out of their IWMS module, which shows that they expected people would work individually 60% of the time, in ancillary spaces 20% of the time, and in collaboration 20% of the time.

Specific data points can also highlight what mattered most to the company at the time the design was approved. For example:

• If a high percentage of space is allocated to meeting rooms, it means that in-person collaboration is highly valued
• If there are more people than seats, it means that some level of remote work was already occurring and/or was expected
• If there is mostly open space, it means the organization supports open collaboration. If the spaces are mostly closed off, it indicates more structure and hierarchy

You can tell a lot about what the organization values by just looking at IWMS data and how much and what types of spaces are allocated. It’s worth noting too that IWMS only changes if there’s a change to the physical space or there is a re-organization and/or a space re-allocation. On its own, IWMS data is not enough to support planning and design changes. The usefulness of IWMS data is greatly enhanced when it is combined with the right source of actual space use data that originates from space-level sensors.

When Behavior Data Guides Change

How do we actually keep up with evolving employee needs? How do organizations determine what needs to be changed in a space?

The key is combining static IWMS data with real-time data. By blending these two data sets, we can stay ahead of the evolving workplace changes continuously so that we can be more proactive in our planning and design efforts.

Static data alone simply isn’t enough—knowing all about seat allocation at the time the design was made can show us what the designers intended for the space, using data from a specific moment in time, which may no longer apply to support the changing use of that same space. Without sensors, you can’t see what space types are being used or how they’re being used, which usually differs from what was planned—people are going to improvise to suit their needs.

Space-level sensors track metrics like occupancy, utilization, dwell time, and churn, which tell you about the actual use of each individual space. When you look at this usage data in aggregate, you can compare it to what was planned, and determine where changes need to be made. Comparing intended behavior with actual behavior removes the assumptions made at the design stage that were based only on manual data sources.

Combining these two data types, an organization might see that in reality, their spaces are being used differently than was anticipated.

As another example, IWMS might indicate a person-to-seat ratio of 1:1 for Finance, and 2:1 for Sales. Through collecting sensor data based on actual behaviors, we might be able to see that the required ratios are 1:5 for Finance and 3:1 for Sales.  What appears to be a slight change in sharing ratio can have a significant impact on the total seats and overall square footage required to support new demand for workspace.

In addition, a particularly useful metric that only sensors can capture is dwell time. Dwell time refers to the total uninterrupted use of a seat—for example, an employee was at their desk from 9AM to 10AM, 10:30 AM to 12:30PM, and then 2PM to 5PM. This shows us the desk churned 2.67 times, a new and much more accurate “go-to” metric for that improves occupancy planning.

If you’re thinking that there isn’t enough data yet because use of space is so low, good data is not as much about volume as it is about quality.  You don’t need a lot of data to identify clues to potential design changes that correlate with new behaviors. Those who venture back into the office will leave a trail of “data crumbs” —it’s minimal data, but still enough to see a picture of what’s changed about how people interact with the space. Even if only 15 or 20% of your workforce is back at the office, you’ll be able to spot where potential changes can be made.

Especially during this return-to-work period and as the pandemic continues on, updating workspaces based on static and dynamic data are an excellent way to improve employees’ experiences at work. Adapting the workspace to changing needs will give stronger feelings of psychological safety, which is just as important to employee satisfaction as actual safety. It’s just one of the barriers to enticing workers back to the office, but a difficult one to surmount without the right type of data.

The workplace and how employees use it isn’t static. It never was. But now, more than ever before, office use is changing and evolving. With so much uncertainty still looming thanks to the new Omicron variant, no one knows what the future holds. That being said, there is no time like the present to learn about how the employees who want to come back to the office are behaving so you can understand their needs. This allows us to inform improved workplace designs to better suit the new and emerging ways of working in your organization. The success of your office is dependent on how well you understand your employees’ actual needs. And to do that well, sensor data that reflects your organization’s new reality is the key.

Returning to the office after the pandemic will throw a ton of new challenges at most companies, especially when it comes to managing the use of their office space. Obviously, things will have to change to ensure everyone’s safety and health but managing density in the workplace is a necessity.

Before the pandemic, when growth or an acquisition meant lots of new hires, companies usually increased workplace density. This meant giving each employee less desk space and squeezing in as many people as possible. The main concern here was to save money, and this strategy was only limited by building or fire codes.

If your company chose this route, you might now be having trouble with return-to-office plans. Unsurprisingly, high-density office spaces aren’t looking very attractive to returning employees. After a year of keeping our distance, physical and psychological health are at the top of everyone’s minds.

For many organizations, the idea of retrofitting the workplace can feel overwhelming—the pandemic isn’t over, and we know new strains of the virus are bound to emerge. In some countries, companies have a “duty of care” towards their employees to protect their health, so doing nothing isn’t an option.

The good news: sensor technology can help you reduce density to avoid the immediate need for a complete retrofit. Which approach to take just depends on your organization’s goals and resources.

Workplace density can be a tricky concept. There’s a mathematical measurement: how many desks are in how much space? But more importantly, density is measured through employees’ perceptions. How small is the desk? How close are the desks to each other? An office can feel pretty bleak when the desks are too far apart. It’s hard to say whether the ‘office buzz’ that once was will be perceived as good or bad by office occupants moving forward and if a lower key office with less buzz and more purposeful use will be the permanent way forward.

The biggest hurdle for returning to the office is making sure employees feel like they’re able to stay safe and healthy at work. If the pandemic had been shorter, bringing people back to the office might have been a whole lot easier. Even with HR teams deciding which jobs could be done from home, it will be tough to convince employees that are expected to return that their jobs must be done in the office. As the pandemic stretched on, people adapted to getting their work done from home. They also got used to their new habits and routines, like avoiding public transit, no long commutes, and conducting much of their interactions with colleagues, customers, vendors, and partners, online. Safety in the office is about minimizing density, and making sure each person perceives available spaces as safe.

Controlling and managing density with data-driven software will help leaders decide how many people are dependent on physical space, and compare and validate actual behaviours against a solid return-to-office plan.

To control density, there are a few easy steps you can take:

1. Accommodate preferences. Continue to support and encourage employees to work outside the office, if they can and want to, all while ramping up return-to-office plans.
2. Limit occupancy. Limit the number of desk seats available per floor and/or how many people are allowed to be inside the building, on a floor, or in a space at one time. Use technology to do this effectively—take a look at desk booking solutions and health check surveys. Both can give you insight into employees’ intentions and preferences.
3. Restrict use of space. Remove desks and seats, or otherwise make some spaces unavailable. If you’re using a desk booking tool, spaces can be limited to a set maximum per day. They can also help space employees out, to help with physical distancing.
4. Repurpose/re-design spaces. Turn cramped cubicles into open, soft seating that makes it easier for people to maintain safe physical distancing.

Setting occupancy limits is easy. Actively managing and maintaining those limits to control office density is not—at least, without the use of sensors. Sensor technology is essential if you want to make sure employees build resilience and feel safe at work. Don’t overlook it!

If managing your office density is important to you, you need access to timely data.

To begin to understand how an office space was meant to be used, just look at its design. If you see mostly individual work areas, you can assume it was meant for mostly heads-down work. If there are more meeting and ancillary spaces, the office was meant for more face-to-face interactions to support a collaborative, meeting-centric culture.

Sensor data can help you identify when the actual use of a space is different from its original purpose. As we know, space use guidelines are just suggestions; people end up using space as they see fit. Sensor data allows you to compare design intent with employee intent and hone in on misalignments which can inform the necessary workspace design changes.

We’re at a point where the use of office space is continually evolving, which means historical pre-pandemic data isn’t helpful anymore for future planning. For longer-term initiatives, you’ll need “as-it-happens” data—data that shows you how employees are currently interacting with the space to identify what has changed.

For example, before the pandemic, people might have come to the office to work at their desk, the data would have shown a higher demand for desks. Today, people might be coming to the office but the data might show the demand for desk space is significantly lower. Instead there is an increasing demand for meeting spaces, open collaboration spaces, lounges, cafes, and even private spaces like offices. Current data shows you the difference between the original intended use versus actual use and points out clear, actionable insights, even when occupancy levels are below 30%.

When people do come back to the office, the way they use space is likely to be much different than it was pre-pandemic. “Dwell time”, particularly, is a piece of data that’s becoming more and more important.

Dwell time captures the time someone continuously occupies a space. Knowing dwell time is important because it translates into a proper sharing ratio for each and every seat. Unlike utilization that looks at the average use of space over the number of hours the seat was available, dwell time is much more accurate in determining the total required seats to support demand.

What makes dwell time more meaningful is the idle time between dwells or the “in-between” time: the time that people are away from their desk. Idle time surfaces key insights about availability. For example, a desk that has 15 minutes of idle time between dwells will most likely not be time that can be used by someone else. However, if the idle time is 1 or more hours, it indicates that the desk could be used by someone else who might be looking for a place to sit for a shorter period of time when they are in the office.

In a flexible and hybrid work environment, people are likely to be much more mobile in the office than ever before. Gone are the days of an employee coming in and spending most of their day at their desk. Instead, the office will see more employees who need to meet with colleagues, vendors, partners, clients, etc., which they can’t do at home. The desk might turn into an “in-between” meeting space, which is not at all how most office spaces were originally intended to be used.

Don’t forget that most office spaces are made up of about 30% structured in-person meeting spaces. Coming back, it won’t be as simple as upping the availability of this space based on workplace analytics data. Instead, take the time to observe and learn how people actually interact with the space. Armed with this knowledge, you can be much more strategic about repurposing existing areas to better suit employee needs to ensure an optimal employee experience.

After such a long hiatus, employees will need time to get reacquainted with the workplace. They’ll need to regain a sense of confidence in going back to the office, so it’s essential that return-to-office policies put the health and well-being of every employee above all else. To win that confidence, companies will have to prove that they’re well aware of the changes that employees need, and show that they’re prepared to put them in place. This goes way beyond acrylic screens, hazard tape, and signage.

Still uncertain about where to begin with your return-to-office plans, or how to interpret the data you have to support your planning? Let our data and insight experts at Relogix show you the way.

As companies return to the office, how can real estate owners ensure their assets are safe for office occupants?

How can organizations ensure the health and safety of their talent in our new normal?

For many organizations returning to cramped rows of cubicles and open-plan spaces, offices and shared areas will look very different from what they did prior to leaving. With the return to office and subsequent future planning, a focus on health, safety, risk and compliance will be key to successfully managing office spaces in a COVID-19 world.

As we emerge beyond the crisis management phase and enter the return to office phase, we need to develop new processes that require strategic thinking and planning. These new processes – for now and into the future – are being developed without precedent.

How do you develop a plan for something that neither you or your peers have encountered before?

Returning To Work Around The Globe

Cushman and Wakefield’s “Safe Six” protocol compiled thinking and practices of over 53,000 professionals from across the globe. In summary, re-opening workspaces needs to be carefully planned and address key aspects such as the preparation of office buildings and workforces, concrete physical distancing plans, and cleaning of touch points. These will be crucial to employee and building occupant safety.

Companies can mitigate potential risks to employee health and safety through comprehensive planning that begins with a phased transition back to the office and a controlled return to office. There are steps that can be taken to demonstrate action toward mitigating risk.

Data stories combine workspace data analytics and insights with in-depth, explanatory views to inform your day-to-day activities, reporting and CRE strategy. Data stories help you reveal intelligence and insights across your portfolio to elevate your CRE analytics.

Planning For The Future With Data Stories

Around the world, some offices are sitting half-empty where others have already returned to work. In some cases, these offices were half-empty long before COVID. Before COVID, your data told a story about how your workplace was used and how it could be improved.

Now, these data stories are essential to returning to work. Part of planning for our new normal includes using the right tools and data to inform new practices and protocols for our workplaces. Weaving a data story allows you to:

• Eliminate guesswork when making strategic decisions
• Obtain more answers, faster
• Get insights across lines of business
• Establish a single source of truth
• Get standard real estate portfolio metrics
• See where your portfolio has been, where it is now and where it is going

Data Story #1: The Core Data World

In our current return to office scenario, workspace occupancy and utilization data supports health and safety efforts, particularly on floors with high occupancy, in real time. This data, collected through sensor infrastructure, allows for fast action and communication to ensure people are maintaining proper distancing on individual floors and throughout buildings.

In addition, with future phases, the data gathered can contribute to the development of portfolio rationalization strategies that best align with the behaviors that will become our new normal.

Workspace occupancy and utilization data collected through sensor infrastructure includes:

• Floor level occupancy
• Room level occupancy
• Seat level occupancy (e.g. desks, offices that are either shared or assigned)

How do you ensure proper physical distancing protocols are complied with? You can effectively monitor workspaces to see where people are clustering by using spacing and density management technology.

Employees that are too close together will put their health and the health of the organization at risk. This technology helps companies ensure spaces are used according to new physical distancing protocols. The data captured also demonstrates that your organization took every precaution to protect all office occupants, should it ever be required to do so.

The sudden and widespread shift to working from home as a response to COVID-19 has disrupted the traditional workplace like never before. Pre-COVID-19 many companies held hard stances, for various reasons, against work from home and flex work, but all of those objections and rationalizations quickly evaporated as organizations were forced to find ways to make it work – or suffer the consequences.

This new normal will inevitably influence the future of workplaces and office spaces in lasting and meaningful ways, and as business leaders we need to start preparing for what the workplace experience will become. Before we can start the conversation about bringing anyone back into the office, we need to take a closer look at the emerging health and safety implications in the workplace, including addressing comfort and security, which are necessary for rebuilding employee confidence in a post-COVID-19 world.

Knowing what data is available and how it can help you align with emerging best practices on how to effectively manage your office space will be key to an effective and informed return to work strategy.

Employees, understandably, will be nervous about returning to work, whether they have assigned or unassigned workspaces. Regardless of industry or location, the onus will be on employers around the world to ensure return to work is conducted safely.

Luckily, many of the metrics traditionally used to measure and evaluate the efficient use of your workspace can also be used here. Observing key metrics like occupancy, space utilization, dwell times, and seat sharing ratios through a health and safety lens, quickly reveals the necessary insights to support responsible return to work plans.

Communication will be key as you develop your plans, policies and new measures for returning to work. Letting your workforce know that you will be using this data to help keep them safe, healthy, and productive is step one. Let them know you will be collecting real-time data to help monitor compliance with safety measures and identify risk, so everyone stays safe and healthy.

Communicate early and often; look at this time as an opportunity to build trust with employees and open a dialogue about how this data will be used moving forward.

Before you start looking at your workspace data, revisit your work from home and flexible hours policies. Any changes here may dramatically impact how your workspace is used moving forward, and employee expectations have likely changed since you originally drafted those policies. Organizations may meet extreme resistance if they try to fall back to previous, restrictive policies, now that team members have had the opportunity to work from home or have been required to work flexibly – even if it wasn’t by choice.

Once you have updated your policies on how and when employees are expected to be at the office, you can start looking at how you can better (and safely) use that office space while being mindful of social distancing best practices and the risks of shared surfaces.

Next, consider if your workspace and collaboration seating and desk layouts should change at all. Once you start moving back into the office, leverage data on occupancy, density, and desk utilization in the short-term to actively adjust and manage logistics.

With the recent trends toward open offices and agile workspaces, organizations need to be attentive to keeping density low, adjusting workstation size or availability, and actively prioritizing cleaning routines. Desk utilization data can be used to inform employees where ‘safe seats’ are located and to inform cleaning teams on areas to focus on for disinfection. If you don’t have a cleaning policy or schedule in place to ensure shared or common spaces are disinfected regularly before returning to work, now is the time to implement one. As you return to work, update your schedule and policy as you collect more data and learn more precisely how the space is being used.

While the short-term focus will be dominated by decisions around health, safety, and compliance, the unprecedented move to include work from home as an alternative and acceptable work setting will change the long-term expectations of traditional office workspaces. Data collection on changing behaviours throughout the return to work phase will provide insights to help inform an effective long-term strategy. A shift to include alternative workplaces outside of the office can have significant implications for office space and workspace design requirements.

A successful long-term transition back to work should focus on proactively adjusting office space utilization as you learn more about how employees will use the space going forward.

Flexibility will be key as you go through the next adjustment phase. Allow your organization time to settle into the new normal and to establish new behaviours and routines. The first little while may be a bit chaotic, but we do anticipate many employees will push to work from home at least some of the time and may even push for more flexible work schedules overall.

As expectations around what the office represents to employees shifts, the allocation and defined use of space will need to account for a new normal. Insights and trends that you may have incorporated throughout your workplace strategy before the pandemic may no longer be priorities, or event relevant. This might mean potential changes to seating allocations in the office, for example, which in some instances may lead to significant square foot and cost reductions, which can help to off-set other costs.

Changes to expectations and behaviours mean you need to be prepared for several phases of change before you settle into a long-term workplace design and set up.

Even while reviewing the mechanics of returning to work through a post-pandemic lens, it’s important to remember your long-term organizational needs. You don’t want to have to overhaul your workspace multiple times or have to revisit any new policies that are implemented, so be sure to consider the new normal that will take effect immediately as well as in the future.

Remember that although we’ve seen unprecedented change and upheaval in the last few months, employees are generally pretty resistant to change, and they’ll be looking to assert and regain some control as things return to business as usual. Expect resistance and challenges from your team and use your data to help back up your decisions.

Communicate that data and your reasons for your decisions to provide context, make sure the “why” is clear for every policy, desk, space, and schedule change. An example might be:

“With more employees working from home or on flexible schedules, we now have an average occupancy rate of 42%, meaning only 42% of our desks are being used at any given time. We are leveraging the reduction in desk use to help maintain physical distancing and are using data to manage the 6-foot space between each seating area ask that for training, coaching, and collaborative work you use a boardroom instead of pulling chairs into a single workspace and continue to maintain distance.

Each boardroom has been stocked with hand sanitizer, facial tissue, and disinfectant wipes for your use after touching door handles and before touching shared tables and chairs. Please notify the facility manager if any of these supplies run low.

Additionally, we have observed that the kitchen at peak times (lunchtime) is very busy. With the size of the kitchen, it is impossible to maintain a safe 6-foot distance with that many employees, so we are requesting individuals, teams, and managers proactively shift and stagger their regular lunch times.

If we do not see a decrease in concentration in the kitchen, we may have to consider more strict policies around breaks and lunches. Our ideal goal is no more than eight employees in the kitchen at any one time, which would allow safe physical distancing as needed.”

Your employees will value transparency and candidness in handling their health and safety. By harnessing your workplace data, paired with medically informed best practices, your decisions will have positive outcomes in employee wellness, satisfaction, and security as you navigate the future of work.

Behavioural changes related to when and where employees work will likely mean less daily dependency on office space. The meaning and purpose of the office will be redefined in the next while, and there will also be significant cost savings opportunities driven by the changes we are all about to experience.

As workplace efficiency and optimization strategies pick up momentum, consider the enablers and the inhibitors to employee engagement and productivity, so you can re-invest some of the savings into programs, technology tools, and infrastructure to allow your business and employees to thrive.

To learn more about how you can effectively plan for the return to work, sign up to attend a webinar hosted by Relogix, Ask-Me-Anything: What Will The Workplace Be Like After COVID-19. You can get more details on managing your portfolio during the COVID-19 crisis here.

When it comes to assessing workspace utilization, there are many approaches that could be taken to generate data for analysis.  Whether the data is generated using employee surveys, observation studies, security badge data or even sensor data, each source of data provides the initial validation necessary to ensure that your workplace strategy is directionally correct.  However, the use of utilization data, although foundational, is only one piece of a very complex puzzle.

The best workspace related insights come from data observed at the lowest level of detail.  Where many equate this to the identity level of the person using space, the reality is the actual identity of the person is irrelevant.  What does matter though is the attributes associated with the person, which is then analyzed in aggregate, to identify unique patterns and trends.

A critical success factor in working with data sources is data sharing between Corporate Real Estate (CRE), HR and IT. In fact, a successful Workplace Strategy cannot be implemented without an in-depth understanding of key data that is owned and/or managed by these three teams in an organization.

This blog will help you understand the different kinds of data sources available, the various challenges that often arise when working with multiple sources, and how to collaborate with other departments to successfully blend that data together.

5 Common Types Of Data Sources

First, let’s review the five main buckets of data often used to develop a proper Workplace Strategy:

#1: Existing Data Sources To Support Physical Workspace Assessment

This type of data includes Integrated Workplace Management Systems (IWMS), seating plans, floor plans, workplace standards and guidelines, leasing data and lease abstract information, owned-location information, financial data, and real estate-related capital projects/spend.
Also, workplace survey data, executive visioning session outcomes, employee focus groups, workplace observation study data, are additional data sources most often captured at the onset of a workplace strategy initiative.

This data type is managed by the Finance and/or Corporate Real Estate function in your organization.

#2: Complementary Existing Data Sources That Are Re-Purposed To Further Support An Assessment Of The Physical Workspace

These data sources most often include security badge swipe data and/or Wi-Fi data, and is typically managed by the Security and/or IT function in your organization.

#3: Complementary Existing Data Sources About The People Who Use The Space

These sources provide information about employee-related attributes such as headcount and headcount forecasts, status (active or on-leave), type (full-time, part-time, contract, seasonal), job title/function, business area/division, age group, tenure group, reporting hierarchy, assigned building location, commuting distance, times and commute methods.

This data typically managed by the Human Resources function in your organization.

#4: External Data Collection Initiatives To Complement A Physical Workspace Assessment

Such initiatives may include people counters or collecting data from varying sensor types, to provide insights about specified locations in your building like a meeting room, workstation, private office, lunchroom or lounge.

This type of data is acquired through a sensor-as-a-service provider such as Relogix. When installed, sensors capture data in real-time and record occupancy, utilization and dwell time. The end result is a clear understanding of the amount of time that various workspaces and rooms in the building are occupied and in use.

#5: External, Publicly Available Data To Enable Additional Insights And Segmentation

This kind of data is publicly accessible and can help support current and future location decisions. It may include collaboration patterns (facilitated by IT) to illustrate adjacency requirements more accurately. Another option may be census (facilitated by HR) or market-related data (facilitated by CRE), which can provide indicators related to viability of growth in existing markets; or present opportunities by illustrating trends related to the labor market, market rent and other data.

Purpose Of Individual Data Sets

Each data set on its own serves a very specific purpose in your organization. For example:

• Your leasing team might use leasing data to manage rent payments or lease renewals, or to provide the required notice of intent to vacate for leases they don’t plan to renew.
• Your security team might use security badge swipe data to ensure authorized employees access authorized buildings and spaces within those buildings for security audit purposes. They may also be looking for odd, potentially fraudulent behaviors, like duplicate badge ID numbers assigned to different users who might be accessing separate locations in different parts of the country on the same day.
• Your HR team might use data about its employees to perform workforce planning strategies. They may be performing people analytics; observing trends and patterns related to the make-up of the organization such as gender, age, and tenure, education level, skills or compensation; or might be using the data to identify gaps so they can adjust their hiring strategies to better plan for the future.

Your CRE team may already be accessing some of this data, like the security badge swipe data, to illustrate building and/or floor occupancy, as well as information from HR like business area for example, which enables grouping of the data to to provide a bit of context about who those users might be.

Blending Data Sources To Reveal Amazing Insights

Being able to blend multiple data sources effectively provides instant value by providing the necessary level of detail which significantly improves the context to your analysis.

Rather than just reporting the percentage of time employees in a particular business unit are in a building or on a floor, or even at their desk, with blended data you could then answer questions like:

• Does employee age or tenure impact space utilization?
• Does utilization vary by job function/title or even job level?
• Is there an existing or emerging preference related to spaces used by varying demographics?

You might also be able to associate other pieces of information about your employees that enable you to perform commuting patterns, which would further allow you to answer questions like:

• Do employees who live closer to the office utilize space more or less than those who live further away?
• Do employees access office locations closer to their home rather than the location to which they are assigned and if they do, how often?

Observing data at the appropriate level of detail allows you to validate the many theories you may have read about in published research papers or studies.

That said, it is always more effective to plan space based on the reality of your organization because your planning efforts are tailored to be culturally relevant to your business.

For example, a summary statement in your analysis might initially look something like:

Building ABC located in New York City has an assigned population of 5,000 employees. It’s occupied on average 65% of the time (~ 3,250 employees). 

When augmented with complementary information the statement above will start to look something like the following:

15% of those with presence detected at Building X are Boomers, 40% are Gen X, 35% are Millennials, and 10% are Gen Z. On average, Boomers and Gen X combined come to the office just as frequently as Millennials and Gen Z.  Gen X and Gen Z live within 20 Km of the office. However, Gen Z comes to the office 90% of the time.  100% of Gen Z have been with the company less than 1 year. In all instances, employees who have been with the company for less than two years come to the office 80% of the time vs. other groups who come to the office significantly less frequently.

As you can see, when a few, many or all data sources about both your workspace and your people are successfully combined, amazing insights begin to emerge. This enables you to:

• Qualify and quantify Real Estate, HR, IT and Finance-related opportunities
• Develop informed strategies
• Demonstrate the potential impact a transformation can have in your organization

However, data blending is not an easy feat. Despite all the amazing insights you can garner from using multiple data sources, bringing them all together will elevate several issues.

Challenge #1: Working With Different Formats 

Not only are you trying to blend disparate data points: you also must consider the formats in which they are available (e.g., Excel, text, PDF, PowerPoint, CSV, JSON, and many more).

In most organizations, the first attempt at data blending is usually tackled using Excel. Key data is lifted from non-tabular data sources and put into a tabular format so that the data becomes usable.

Challenge #2: Dealing With Different Levels Of Detail

One of the first challenges you will likely encounter as the data begins to come together, is the inconsistent levels of detail that each data set contains—creating gaps in data.

For example, consider trying to assess workspace utilization with the following three data sets:

• Your security badge data may be provided at the individual level, or it may be provided at the building level.
• Your leasing data may be at the building level and the floor level (and there may be different lease expiry dates for different floors in one building).
• Your employee data may be shared at the building level only, so you may not be able to know precisely the makeup of each floor.

While challenging, blending data with different levels of detail can be achieved and meaningful insights can still be extracted to yield the best possible outcomes. However, this requires a vision and careful planning once you know what data you can use. Understanding this is a critical first step, since it identifies how deep your analysis can go.

Challenge #3: Overcoming Data Privacy And Security Concerns

In order to work with all the data you intend to bring together, you will need to speak with your IT and/or security team.

If you are storing or sharing the data electronically or on the cloud, IT will most definitely need to be involved to assess any risks to the business related to the data. This will likely involve intense scrutiny by IT, not to mention HR, who will have concerns related to the potential risks associated with data security and privacy. While necessary, any data security concerns raised may stall your project before it even begins.

Some organizations have a Privacy and Security by Design process in place, which is a good practice for any organization.

Challenge #4: Respecting Employees’ Rights To Privacy

Data collection in the workplace is not new, but it is evolving. Depending on your corporate culture, employees may react negatively to knowing that they are being tracked or monitored—and may even express feeling like “Big Brother is watching.”

Proactively communicating the following details to employees is a vital requirement that often gets overlooked. However, employees should absolutely know:

• What data is/will be collected
• Why it’s being collected
• Who will have access to the data
• How it will be used

It is also important to emphasize that the significance of the insights extracted from this data is not at the individual level but rather at the organizational level, to enable you to provide the tools and technologies that best support the needs of employees. Certainly, the analysis happens at the most granular level; however, the reporting should not, unless there is a specifically authorized business reason to do so.

Taking Your Data Sources To The Next Level

Now that you understand the basics of the data sources that may be available to you, you may be wondering what to do with this newfound knowledge.

In future blog posts, we will look at the “how-to” of blending data and overcoming all the technological and organizational challenges that often come with it—including how to extract the information you need to build a sound business case for your Workplace Strategy initiative, and which your senior leadership team won’t be able to ignore.