Why are companies measuring office occupancy? There are 3 key reasons.
How many people are actually coming to the office? How do employees use the space? Companies can rarely answer these questions with confidence. The ultimate question ends up being: how can we expect to create a great workplace for employees and overall company success without underlying metrics?
Making use of occupancy monitoring sensors
To solve this challenge, a new generation of offices are being equipped with
occupancy sensors installed in meeting rooms and desks. These sensors give workplace decision-makers common ground and empirical data to
answer a wide range of questions about their office spaces. Here are the top three reasons companies are turning to occupancy monitoring to improve their workplaces.
1. Occupancy monitoring to create a smoother workday
Occupancy monitoring can help improve the experience of employees at the office. By equipping relevant stakeholders, like human resource specialists, workplace managers, and facility managers, companies have great metrics to understand the frustrations of employees using the workplace. For example, one powerful metric is actual usage of rooms vs. room bookings. Are your meeting rooms appearing booked, when in reality they are empty?
Not only is occupancy monitoring a great way for companies to diagnose workplace inefficiencies, occupancy monitoring can also be used to offer more effective room and desk booking. That is because occupancy monitoring can sense when a room is in use, and when it is available again. Of course, with that information, your booking system becomes much, much smoother.
2. Occupancy monitoring to optimize your portfolio value
Stakeholders responsible for the cost-efficiency of the facility, such as facility managers and corporate real estate managers, also benefit greatly from accurate occupancy data. Occupancy, utilization, and attendance trends tell facility managers exactly how efficient their space is.
Today, hybrid and flexible work makes employers more attractive and can increase productivity. But as a result, many companies are unsure about the number of people coming to their office. They are also unsure which spaces people use, what times they are at the office, and how occupancy changes from month to month.
Occupancy monitoring in true real time gives companies precise answers to all of this.
3. Occupancy monitoring to empower teamwork
A workplace also needs to provide the right resources, in the right quantities. Occupancy monitoring can help here too. Stakeholders that are responsible for resource availability, such as IT specialists, workplace managers, and facility managers can plan more effectively with office occupancy monitoring insights.
For instance, it’s much easier to plan resource availability when you have an understanding of office attendance. When are employees typically at the office? How many? Where do they work? Providing adequate spaces, rooms, equipment, and technical infrastructure is simple when you have data about long-term trends. Pair this with office access bookings, and you can get an even more accurate idea of future attendance.
The value of office occupancy insights
With the right kind of space utilization metrics, a wide range of stakeholders can collaborate more effectively in their quest not only to make the office more cost-efficient, but to add new value to the company through the office. Office managers, facility managers, corporate real estate managers, IT managers, and human resources all benefit from having a common understanding of occupancy and office space utilization, to align the workforce size, work processes, workplace strategies, and employee preferences with the office space.
