It is no secret that office space is one of the largest expenses for businesses. It also plays a significant role in both employee satisfaction and productivity. Because of its significance, optimising office usage is more important now than ever. This guide will provide insights to ensure you can optimise your office space. You will learn with practical steps, reinforced by workplace data, to decrease costs and improve your work environment.
Office space optimisation means designing workplaces to maximise efficiency and costs while meeting employee needs. It’s about reconfiguring your office layout, workstations, meeting rooms and shared spaces to match how your team does their work daily. This process reflects identifying spaces not being used by employees, removing wasted space, and reconfiguring areas to meet current work styles.
Optimisation is about making space flexible. Many offices were designed for full-time, in-person work. Today, people are working in ways that are hybrid, remote, they have flexible hours. The design of the offices needs to reflect how work has evolved.
The expense of office space ranks as a company’s second highest cost next to salaries. When office space isn’t utilised properly, you lose money. When optimised correctly, an office space can:
Cost savings. Organisations can gain up to 30% of real estate costs by eliminating wasted space or keeping from space inflation.
Better collaboration. The right space allows teams to meet and work more effectively, especially in hybrid work situations.
Increased productivity. A good work environment with better-planned spaces and less distraction makes good focused work easier.
Improved employee satisfaction. A good office environment can lift morale and encourage staff to feel more inclined to be in the office.
Before deciding on your office’s layout or the size, you need to understand how the space is used. This is an important step. It shows you what is working, what is not, and where the gaps are.
If you don’t have information, you are guessing – this could result in wasted money or worse outcomes.
To start, track areas in your office space to see how people use their space. Look for areas where people spend the most time:
You can benchmark these metrics against your existing total area to determine how to optimise office space. For example, if you have 50% regularly used desks, you probably have too many dedicated workstations. Or, you might have associated meeting rooms booked all day but often empty.
Utilisation rates will reveal:
Even small changes, like turning an underutilised corner area into a quiet office booth,can have significant implications.
There are many ways to collect data on the usage of your office. Some methods are easy and inexpensive, while others use more sophisticated technologies. Here are four common methods:
Desk and room booking systems:
These systems allow employees to reserve desks or meeting rooms. You can analyse how frequently they are reserved, how long they are used for, and which spots are most in demand. You can also analyse when rooms are reserved but left vacant, a common issue with no value.
Occupancy sensors
These are placed on desks, ceilings, or in rooms. They provide real-time occupancy and actual usage patterns. This will help you to understand not only if a space is reserved but also how much it is actually utilised.
Manual walkthroughs or audits
A low-tech option that still could be quite effective. Walk your office at different intervals of the day. You can also ask or assign this task to your facilities team. Jot down how many people use certain spaces and where the foot traffic is low and high.
Staff surveys
Ask your staff where and how they prefer to work. Are they having trouble accessing available desks? Do they actively avoid certain meeting rooms? Surveys provide useful details about user experience data that will not be revealed from data alone.
After going through the evaluation of the current use of your space, the next step is right-sizing. Right-sizing is adjusting your office space according to your actual requirements—now and in the future.
In most cases, right-sizing doesn’t mean down-sizing – it can mean entirely new ways of using your existing and optimising office space. The goal should be to not pay for space you no longer need while still giving your team the environment to be productive and grow.
One of the first questions you will need to ask yourself when developing an office plan is this: how much office space is required per person?
A common benchmark is 7 to 12 square meters per person. However, the right number for you will depend on:
Your industry: For example, private offices for a law firm; whereas a call center might function well with a denser desk/layout.
Work style: do employees work at the same desk every day? Or do they move about and work from different spots?
Hybrid work policies. If many employees only work part of the time, you may not need a desk for everyone.
Right-sizing is about your requirements today and planning for the future. For example, you have a hybrid team currently with 2 days a week in the office. You will probably need less desks. However, when you scale for team meetings, company events, and future hires, you still want the flexibility to fit them if they need to come into the office.
That is where flexible workspaces can assist. Instead of having a fixed desk for everyone, you can include shared workstations or touchdown areas that anyone can use when they come in. Also, you can create spaces that can easily shift, such as modular furniture or movable walls.
This way, you can grow (or shrink) the size of your office with little or no renovation and expense.
Now that you’ve established the space you need and have not undermined your occupancy requirements through design or future plans, you can decide on space.
1. Reduce Physical Size
Some organisations decide to downsize to a smaller office. Down-sizing can produce useful savings, especially in high-rent areas. It is most beneficial to downsize after moving to hybrid work and have reduced the need for formal, assigned desks.
2. Reuse and Reallocate Space
Other organisations maintain total office area but decide to optimise office space. This is often the right choice if you have a longer lease and do not want to incur moving costs. You can:
A well-crafted office design directly impacts how people do their best work. It can create time to focus, inspire collaboration and reduce stress. It can also create noise, confusion, and discomfort.
There are too many variables to have one correct answer. Each layout supports different work styles. Here are three examples of office layouts:
Open-plan: Works for collaboration but noisy
Private offices: Works for a lot of focus but occupies more space
Activity-Based Working (ABW): Divides people based on where to do their tasks.
No matter what layout you choose, you should create your office with functional zones. Each zone should have a specific role so employees can easily find the appropriate space for their work.
Here are a few common zones you should consider:
Focus zones: These are quiet temporary work areas—individual desks, pods, or booths that allow for concentration with few distractions.
Collaboration zones: These are areas for teamwork – open meeting tables, collaborative whiteboard walls, or lounge-style collaboration areas.
Meeting and huddle rooms: These are more formal spaces for standing meetings. Huddle rooms are typically smaller and informal and most appropriate for check-ins, as needed.
Phone and video call booths: These are soundproof booths for employees to make phone calls or participate in virtual meetings free of disturbance.
Break areas: These give employees a space to take a break, eat, and space to recharge their minds and socialise informally. They can also facilitate casual conversations and creative thinking.
Reception or visitor areas: These are welcoming spaces for guest and client engagement. Ideally, these should be delineated spaces from your working area.
A good layout is not only related to what’s in your office but also how people move through your space. A poor traffic flow can create bottlenecks, noise, and frustrations. Good traffic flow accommodates smooth movements between spaces and a minimum of distractions. Proper layout is one of the most crucial methods to optimise office space.
The influence of furniture on the efficiency of the office space may be greater than most realise. The kind of furniture you have and how you arrange it can impact how well your space is used (efficiency), how adaptable your space is (flexibility), and how comfortable your employees feel (comfort). Using the right furniture first helps you accommodate change and reduce wasted space, but secondarily improves the overall working experience.
Modular furniture is adaptable furniture. It consists of parts that can be displaced, re-ordered, rearranged or assembled in alternate combinations. This is an intelligent option for offices that are required to support numerous kinds of work.
Rather than designating all your rooms as one-use spaces, create flexible environments that can take on multiple activities. This will lessen the wasted space and enhance the efficiency of your office.
Here are some examples of flexible environments:
The comfort of employees must not be sacrificed when optimising your office space. While it might be possible to fit another desk or create multi-purpose spaces, don’t allow the productivity and quality of the work environment to suffer.
The function of ergonomic furniture is to support health, posture, and comfort for long work periods. Poor ergonomics can lead to fatigue, pain, or injury, which can lead to subpar productivity.
Optimising office space isn’t only about using space on floors and desks more effectively. You’ll also save money and lessen your environmental footprint. A smarter office is often a greener office – and a cheaper one, too.
When you design with sustainability considered, you use less materials, waste less, and contribute to a healthier planet. At the same time, you reduce operational costs while making your workplace more efficient.
Office buildings consume a large amount of energy. Lighting, heating, cooling, and electronics are all significant budget items. However, you can use less energy with some space optimisation in your office.
A productive office is a waste reducer in multiple ways anyway. When you stop overbuilding or over-furnishing, you save on resources, the drayage, and the work you paid for but didn’t need. And here’s an extra benefit: it can help your brand strength. Many companies are judged by their social impact and their environmental impact. A greener, more productive office is a sign that you are thinking ahead and are responsible.
Real estate is an enormous expense for many companies. Rent, utilities, maintenance, taxes, etc., all add up quickly, particularly in large cities. This is why optimising your space can provide incredible financial rewards.
Tech is a major contributor to how office space is optimised today. Technology gives you accurate data, eliminating guessing the use of your space. You can now use facts rather than basing decisions on assumptions to save space, reduce expenses, and enhance productivity.
Occupancy sensors reveal which desks, rooms, or areas are used—and how often. These sensors monitor presence and send that data to your system in real-time. They can be placed under desks, on ceilings, or near doors.
Benefits:
A workplace management platform—combining space booking tools, space-usage tracking, and analytics—brings a whole system of tools together. These platforms are valuable for hybrid offices that seeks to optimise office space and in which occupancy fluctuates every day.
Some features that these platforms provide:
Desk booking tools – employees can reserve desks when they are going to use them.
Meeting room scheduling to avoid double booking.
Real-time dashboards – to view space usage trend data.
Reports and insight to help inform long-range planning.
These tools are helping the workspace manager make better decisions. They can see which were underutilised and which were overcrowded. They can also automate some booking rules; for instance, if someone doesn’t check in to a desk within 30 minutes of booking it, the desk returns to availability.
You can also integrate your workplace resource scheduling with HR and IT systems for the greatest efficiency and utilisation of your spaces. This allows you to correlate available space with real-time staff attendance.
You can also interface with IT systems to capture the use of devices, including monitors, projectors or shared tech rooms. If particular devices are not used at all or very rarely, those could be relocated or possibly removed to open up additional space.
Don’t feel compelled to install every tool on the first day. Start small; try one or two of the following:
Once you have your evidence, you can look for more sophisticated platforms or integrations with your existing system.
Optimising office space isn’t a one-time arrangement – it’s a continuous process. Your office must keep pace as teams change size, workstyles, and technology changes. Therefore, it is helpful to periodically review your space to determine what is working, what is not working, and what needs to be changed.
Tracking the appropriate metrics will allow you to track progress and make informed decisions. Conclude the monitoring of both space efficiency and employee experience.
Helpful KPIs for office space:
Desk utilisation rate – the rate of desks being used daily.
Meeting room occupancy – meeting rooms booked by employees and actually being utilised.
Cost per square meter – rent, utilities and maintenance costs.
Employee satisfaction – is the workplace living up to expectations, and are people happy here?
Quantitative data is important—but so is employee input. People who work in the space every day can have insights that data can overlook.
Over time, feedback can assist in identifying minor irritations before they snowball into larger issues. For example, employees may find a quiet zone too close to a loud meeting area, something that sensors alone may not have caught.
Workplace needs are ever-changing. Teams form and re-form. Tools change. People change. That’s why flexibility is an important consideration of your long-term strategy. You want something that supports your activity today but can evolve to support tomorrow’s activities.
Optimising office space is about working smarter – not harder. With data, the right tools for your space, and the right way of thinking, there are opportunities to save money and enhance the workplace experience.
From here, start by measuring the usage of your space, then think about how you can redesign your space, take flexibility into account, and finally invest in smart tools. Make sure you keep measuring your progress and keep challenging how you currently do things.
A well-optimised office will support your business strategy, people, and bank account.
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