Creating more effective workplaces with less space is an ongoing challenge, but optimization doesn’t have to be completed all at once. Small incremental changes can make a difference and provide valuable insights for bigger projects and portfolio-level decisions down the line.
Having the lights on in half-empty buildings is not an effective workplace in 2024. And square footage alone may not be the only reason why the office is sparse.
Real estate is one of a company’s biggest expenditures, and the new hybrid reality can make mitigating the cost of underutilized space tricky—especially when the office is a ghost town on Mondays and at full capacity on Tuesdays.
Now that employees aren’t in five days a week, and probably won’t be any time soon, you may simply have surplus space. But equally, it might be that heading to the office isn’t worth the commute (or the loss in productivity) for your employees.
Simply put, mitigating real estate costs is no longer as clear-cut as reducing space. The future of workplace design and strategy is for hybrid teams. To maximize ROI, companies need to adapt and design offices that accommodate this new way of working.
Large corporations are already going ahead with portfolio optimization, according to research by CBRE Institute, with an aim to use less space but enhance the experience.
So, whether you’re looking at office consolidation or strategic space planning, a return on experience (ROX) is going to be one of your top priorities.
Returning to the office the right way
The Return to Office (RTO) mandates have been largely ineffective, with a new trend seeing employees show up just long enough to grab a coffee, have their presence noticed, and then head home again.
Instead, encouraging employees to give up their WFH comforts a few days a week is more about the carrot than the stick. Entice them with an intentional workplace that allows them to do the activities that are best done in person, like team socials and brainstorming, rather than fighting for quiet areas to concentrate.
Start with the end in mind: How to improve workplace experience
What’s your objective? Over the next few years, reducing space is likely on the cards for many organizations. Perhaps you, too, need to slice your real estate footprint.
That said, along with cutting expenses, a hybrid workplace strategy will also impact the bottom line, and this doesn’t have to be done all at once. You might first target the low-hanging fruit, such as trading that row of deserted desks for a collaboration space that’s sorely needed.
Whatever the case may be, by making incremental changes, and studying how much they shift the needle on employee productivity, engagement, and happiness, workplace teams can tune their mindset to accommodate hybrid working.
Not every alteration to the built environment needs to be a massive capital project. By making small adjustments, the workplace can leverage richer data points to guide them on larger projects and provide them with an iterative methodology. So, reimagining the office could start as small as changing a fixed wall for a flexible partition.
Using workplace data: How to optimize office space
Having the right space, amenities, and layout that attracts employees into the office on a regular basis might seem like a costly shot in the dark, but it’s fairly straightforward and painless when you have the right data. Especially if you’ve already experimented with incremental spatial changes.
Data is the key to unlocking your ROI, and many companies are still using data and understandings from pre-Covid times, which are no longer relevant. To optimize office space for a new way of working, workplace teams need to elevate their understanding of how spaces are being used by leveraging real-time, current data.
Your workplace strategy should have two main ingredients:
- Data on how your office is currently being used. Quantitative data, like badge swipes or sensors, help you understand how the office is currently utilized. How often are people coming in, and when? How often are meeting rooms used? Are they used to capacity? Do employees use a particular row of desks? While this data is a stepping stone to understanding, it lacks context and the crucial employee perception of these spaces.
- Employee feedback. Contextual, qualitative data from employee feedback adds color for a fuller picture. Maximizing the office experience isn’t all about beverages on tap and pool tables. A badge swipe might tell you that a certain meeting room is underutilized, but it won’t tell you how it’s affecting productivity and why. And listening isn’t a “one and done” project. Continually gathering employee feedback creates a circular feedback loop that informs your optimization decisions going forward.
By collecting a variety of data, you can make informed decisions. In Saltmine’s centralized platform, your floorplans and data are all in one place for real-time data visualization. So it’s easier to target those inefficiencies and iterate spaces to cement that return in employee happiness, productivity, and engagement.
Consider all your options: Innovative space design
When it comes to workplace decision making, optimizing the experience will include spaces for employees to get the most from the office. That means creating opportunities to socialize, collaborate, and dedicate time to learning and professional development.
More companies are considering a flexible office space as an agile solution that can meet the demands of a hybrid future. For example, moveable furniture and adaptable spaces may address the quieter bookends of the week and the varying needs of teams.
While the “Big Stay” has taken over the new “Great Resignation,” the power dynamic may shift back into workers’ favor again in the future. You can’t make everyone happy 100% of the time, but you can reduce any friction in the employee experience. Once you have a plethora of data and insights from multiple spatial iterations, you could go further with bigger projects and offer things like convenient on-site amenities, subsidized lunches, and a location with a glorious park across the street.
With Saltmine’s software, you can compare all your options easily, looking at the rich datasets side by side along with immersive 3D walkthroughs, so you can make confident decisions on incremental changes as well as larger capital projects. That way, you can assess which space or layout will give you the best ROI.
Real estate needs are always evolving
Every company has its own unique culture and requirements. Whatever your strategy, the right data and a centralized process will give you the roadmap to create an optimized hybrid workplace your employees will love.
As workplaces evolve, so should occupancy planning methods. For a modern approach, and why this is vital, we’ve outlined practices that will benefit employees and workplace teams in our previous blog post.
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