Workplace capacity is a hot topic in office planning today. With hybrid work becoming the norm, many offices do not see full capacity on a daily basis. However, offices still need to support flexible schedules, team collaboration, and efficient use of space. Knowing your office capacity and being accountable for it will help you reduce congestion, decrease wasted space, and create a more efficient work environment.
What Is Workplace Capacity?
Workplace capacity refers to the maximum number of employees your office can accommodate at a single point in time. This applies to all spaces that can be used for desks, meeting rooms and common spaces.
However, it is not just about the total number of employees you have in the company. It’s about how many people your office can physically and realistically accommodate on a day-to-day basis. You need to consider the size of the space, furniture placement, pedestrian flow, and the activities or uses of each space.
Two Types of Workplace Capacity:
1. Total capacity – reflects the number of people that can fit in your office at any given time.
For example, if you set 100 desks next to each other in a large open area, you could likely fit 100 people if there was no comfort or spacing between the desks and the office environment only had a minimum amount of shared space (like a meeting room, break room, or the like).
2. Usable capacity – the realistic capacity in terms of the actual number of people that your office can support at one time.
For example, your usable capacity considers whether there is a safe space for desks between those desks, walking space, access to meeting rooms, and space for the amenities you offer.
The usable capacity is more helpful in designing. It is what allows you to avoid:
- Crowded desks spaces
- Long wait for access to meeting rooms
- Overloaded break rooms
If your office has a total capacity of, say, 80 people but also requires access to meeting rooms, breakout spaces, private call rooms, and a comfortable area for lunch breaks, the usable capacity makes more sense if it is 60 people, which is a more realistic number.
What Affects Workplace Capacity?
There are many things that affect how many people your office can accommodate simultaneously. It’s not only about architecture or square meters but also how space is utilised, how people navigate through it, and how frequently people visit the office. Let’s consider the key factors affecting workplace capacity:
1. Office Layout
The design of your office affects the number of people who can interact meaningfully and productively within it.
Open-plan layouts typically maximise the number of people in a given space. Most desks are arranged in rows or groups in a single large area without walls separating desks. This type of office layout allows you to accommodate a considerable number of employees. However, if the area is too tight, too many people in a small space can lead to distractions.
Private offices and closed meeting rooms allow for greater focus and privacy, but they require more space per person. One private office could take as much space as a minimum of 4 or 5 desks in an open plan space.
Walkways, corners, and collaborative zones also occupy space. If those areas are tight or poorly configured, they could prevent a large number of people from working comfortably in your workspace.
The takeaway: The more adaptable and efficient your space is, the more usable capacity you will have from your available square footage!
2. Workplace Model
The way your teams operate determines space requirements, usage and, eventually, workplace capacity.
Hybrid working (which generally includes office and remote) means that not everyone is in the office every day. You likely need fewer assigned desks but more shared workstations or spaces for team meetings.
Hot desking allows employees to sit at any desk when needed instead of having one fixed desk. This way, you are reducing the number of utilised desks and freeing up space for some other use.
Hoteling or permanent hotelling is a reservation-based model where employees book desks ahead of time rather than claiming them on an ad hoc basis. It provides more structure than hot desking while still reducing the need for dedicated seating.
Activity-based working (ABW) separates the office into zones based on activity types. It may include focused work areas, meeting spaces, phone booths, and team collaboration spaces. It supports productivity on planful thinking of the ideal balance.
Result: The more flexible the model, the more efficient your capacity – with good management.
3. Employee Attendance Patterns Can Affect Workplace Capacity
The frequency at which employees come in and when is significant.
- In most hybrid workplaces, not everyone arrives at the same time.
- Some days (particularly Tuesday and Thursday) are much busier than others.
- Some departments come in all the time; some departments come in only for team or special meetings.
If you know when your busy days are, you can be proactive about planning. You can also minimise the potential of having too many people fighting for space or leaving desks and rooms empty on slower days.
The takeaway: Track the patterns of workplace capacity. Don’t plan based on your employee population – plan based on the number of employees typically occupying the space at any given time.
4. Shared Spaces and Amenities
Office space is not just about desks. Your office also has:
- Meeting rooms
- Phone booths
- Kitchen and dining spaces
- Lounges, quiet zones, regroup zones
These spaces don’t house people all day, but they do occupy space and contribute to making the office comfortable and functional.
You may need fewer desks if people spend time together in a meeting room or in a collaborative work zone. However, if your shared spaces don’t have enough room or are constantly occupied, employees will feel cramped and frustrated.
Key point: Balance is important. Ensure the shared spaces align with how your employees actually use the office.
5. Health and Safety Rules
Although offices are returning to their pre-pandemic state, safety remains an integral part of space planning.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies:
- Brought their desk spaces farther apart
- Limited the number of people in a room
- Updated their ventilation system
- Implemented touchless entry and sanitisation stations
All of these changes created fewer spaces people could occupy in the office, which made things safer and more comfortable and helped manage overall workplace capacity more effectively.
Even though strict distancing guidelines are no longer mandated, businesses continue to enforce strict policies around distancing because their staff members value personal space.
Key takeaway: Health and comfort should always guide your space, even if the policies change.
How to Calculate Workplace Capacity
There is no formula for every office. Your optimum capacity depends on your space, layout, model of work, and how your employees operate in the office. However, there are some good guidance and benchmarks you can use.
1. Begin with Space per Employee
A typical rule of thumb is 10 to 15 square meters of office space per employee. This includes space for not only the desk but also walking space, moving chairs around, and a small amount of shared space.
10 sq. m per employee works for more compact, ‘utilitarian’ alignments, mostly found in open-plan office designs.
15 sq. m per employee is much more comfortable and applies more to offices with some level of privacy or wider pathways between desks.
It is also important to mention that the amount of office space required per person can vary according to local standards and guidelines. Many cities or countries have their own standards for the minimum amount of space for one person. Thus, it’s crucial to identify and meet these standards to ensure optimal workplace capacity and compliance.
2. Identify Desk-to-Staff Ratios
In standard offices, you’d probably have one desk per employee—so the ratio is 1:1.
In hybrid (or flexible) workplaces, this is often far from necessary. Many companies have changed this to:
- 0.8:1 (8 desks for 10 employees)
- Or even 0.5:1 (5 desks for 10 employees) if most of the staff work remotely for part of the week.
To calculate your ideal ratio, you need to consider how frequently staff are in the office. If most of your employees come in 2 – 3 times a week, you can feel fairly comfortable implementing fewer desks.
3. Establish Workplace Capacity Limits for Shared Locations
Meeting spaces, office booths, and collaboration areas should also have designated limits. Shared spaces should have the following:
- A clear limit demonstrating maximum occupancy post (e.g. “Max 6 people”)
- Agreement with how many people normally attend meetings
- Adherence to safety/fire code requirements
Also, consider your occupancy rates. Are the spaces constantly booked? Maybe you need more of these types of spaces, or perhaps you should consider how to configure your space to facilitate team meetings in other ways.
4. Utilise Actual Office Usage Data
What is the best way to measure your actual workplace capacity needs? Measure how your office is used. Utilise information from:
- Desk booking platforms
- Meeting room bookings
- Occupancy sensors
- Identification/badge access logs
This will demonstrate the number of people entering your space, the days of the week they visit, and how the spaces are being utilised. If your office is designed for 100 people, however, on your peak days, you have only 60 people consistently coming into your space; you don’t need as much capacity as you think you do.
The bottom line: Start with guidelines with a ratio for the space you have. Adjust those numbers based on actual usage data. This will provide you with a more data-driven and definitive understanding of how many people your space can comfortably and efficiently support.
Common Workplace Capacity Challenges
When managing office capacity in a hybrid office, challenges can arise in determining how to maintain capacity effectively, even in a thoughtfully planned space. Many factors can contribute to unpredictability in determining the number of people who will come into the office on any given day.
One unpredictability of hybrid work is the variability of patterns among employees. Depending on employee preferences and comfort levels with working in person, employees may not consistently show up at the office from week to week. Some employees may come to the office regularly, while others may never show up in person unless a meeting or event requires their presence with the team. Unless employees’ patterns are tracked, it’s challenging to have an accurate estimate of who and when may come into the office.
Another barrier is overcrowding. Employees may want to come to work on the same days. According to a survey, most employees choose Tuesdays and Thursdays to come to the office. When employees restrict their days to be in the office to just a few days, space during peak days can increase. Meeting rooms may be reserved, and desks may be all occupied. When these spaces are at capacity, it can create stress for employees. At the same time, sections of the office remain completely vacant. This imbalance in space utilisation leads to waste, ultimately reducing the overall value of the workplace.
A lack of real data is also a factor. Without precise data on how the office is used on a day-to-day basis, there is not much you can do. You don’t know which spaces are always full, which are often empty, how many staff members actually attend work, how many desks are available, or how you’re utilising your workplace capacity.
Finally, employee habits and preferences can cause a reluctance to change. Some people have an aversion to shared desks or flexible seating arrangements. They could have a stated desire not to practice daily to weekly desk ‘hotelling’ as a work habit or simply prefer to have a dedicated desk. This discomfort will impact how they utilise the space and the effectiveness of new capacity plans.
How to Optimise Workplace Capacity
You don’t always need a larger space for more people. You can often utilise the space you have more effectively. You can plan around space use and utilise it effectively with the correct data to increase the allowed number of employees in a workplace without compromising their comfort or productivity.
Plan and Zone Your Space
First, you want to zone your space with defined spaces for different types of tasks. For example, you may want to designate a quiet work area, meeting rooms for small group discussions, a collaboration zone for team projects, and social areas such as a lounge or kitchen.
This helps match people to spaces for their tasks, lessening the likelihood of overcrowding any one area and helping to divide the space into manageable size zones.
Use modular furniture such as moving or foldable desks and tables. This allows the office occupier to open up a space and have a meeting room double as a workshop space or a focus zone. This type of planning makes the best use of every square meter.
Use Desk and Room Booking Tools
Desk and meeting room booking tools are essential in hybrid workplaces because they enable employees to book and reserve space in advance. This reduces ambiguity and competition when they arrive at the office and helps manage workplace capacity more efficiently.
These tools provide you with data about how the office is being used: when the busiest days are, which rooms are the most popular, and equally important, where the capacity is being underused in the first place. You can use this data to make informed decisions and implement changes.
When employees see availability in real-time, they can better plan their office visits, reducing peak-time congestion and ensuring the demand is evenly spaced throughout the week.
Analyse Workplace Capacity Data
In order to make good decisions – you need data. Review your desk usage patterns, meeting room bookings, and badge-in data, if available.
Identify when your office is the busiest and what parts of it are underused. Do you have meeting rooms that are always empty? Are desks on Wednesdays full yet half-empty on Mondays?
Use these discoveries to guide your cleaning schedules, your furniture relocation efforts, or even redesign areas of your office. Data allows you to stop guessing and create a workplace that truly meets your team’s needs.
Build Flexibility Into the Office
Workplaces need to evolve, too. That’s why it’s essential to incorporate flexibility into your design.
Moveable walls, adjustable desks, mobile whiteboards, and other mobile displays let you easily change the layout of rooms. This flexibility enables better utilisation of available space and supports dynamic workplace capacity needs. Workstations can be more flexible when they have portable monitors or a wireless setup, allowing employees to change locations with minimal hesitation.
Flexible spaces are especially valuable for companies with growth, project-based work, or teams with sizes that shift from one day to the next. By having a flexible office, you can better anticipate changing capacity demands.
Set Clear Policies
Even with the best tools and arrangements, effective communication remains essential for achieving good outcomes. It is essential to establish clear policy guidelines for the office’s use, including team office hours, instructions on using the desk booking system, and encouraging staff to work in the office during less busy times. Guidelines provide employees with a clearer understanding of what is reasonably expected. Guidelines will also eliminate confusion, reduce scheduling hassle, and provide a more seamless daily experience.
The Role of Technology in Capacity Planning
Technology enables companies to manage their capacity more effectively and meaningfully. The reality today is that it gives companies more control over space utilisation, provides a better platform to support hybrid work, and can contribute to a smarter office and a more flexible work environment. Here is a closer look at how space utilisation equipment impacts office capacity:
Occupancy sensors
Occupancy sensors track the number of people in a room or seated at a desk. Occupancy sensors collect this information without requiring employees to manually check in and provide data in real-time. As time passes and companies gather data, three distinctions will become apparent: overused, underused, and consistently empty spaces, to which companies can make adjustments.
Desk and room booking software
Booking tools enable employees to reserve desks, meeting rooms, and even parking spaces in advance. This reduces the uncertainty of a last-minute overcrowding situation and ensures employees have a place to work. For office managers, this again makes their attendance visible and shows growth patterns in office demand.
Workplace Analytics
These tools aggregate data from sensors and bookings to show you typical trends (i.e., which days are busiest) and how many desks are occupied, as well as whether certain rooms are booked consistently. This data helps you make informed decisions on how to allocate space, manage workplace capacity, create effective cleaning schedules, or adjust office layouts.
Interactive floor plans
Interactive floor plans show employees directions to offices, rooms , and places to sit. They can see which desks or meeting rooms are available, a feature that allows them to book straight from the workplace mapping. This is all the more helpful in a large office or where someone is visiting a different floor or building.
Integrated systems
When these systems and tools are all working together (sensors sending data to analytics, booking systems being connected to floor plans), you are on your way to having a connected system that is in real-time. All of this makes planning ahead (and reuse of space), as well as responding to changes in employee behaviour or business needs, much easier.
Managing workplace capacity is more than simply counting desks—it’s about ensuring your office supports how people work in today’s world.
When you have the correct data, tools, and planning, you can avoid waste, ease stress, and create a workplace that works better—for everyone.
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