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 is: how can we expect to create a great workplace for employees and overall company success without underlying metrics?
Making use of occupancy monitoring sensors
What are the benefits of measuring space occupancy?
Occupancy monitoring helps create a smoother workday by giving workplace managers insights into how rooms and desks are actually used, making booking systems more efficient. It also optimizes real estate portfolio value by providing real-time data on exactly how efficient the building and office space are. Finally, occupancy measurement empowers teamwork by helping managers plan resources, rooms, and equipment based on long-term usage patterns.1.
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 resources 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. Do your meeting rooms appear 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’s because occupancy monitoring can sense when a room is in use and when it becomes available again. Of course, with that information, your booking system becomes much smoother.
2. Occupancy monitoring to optimize your portfolio value
Stakeholders responsible for facility cost-efficiency, 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, when 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 in 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 workplace 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 workforce size, work processes, workplace strategies, and employee preferences with office space.
