Every aspect of business - from the workplace, to the technology we use, to the way we manage staff, to the sales & marketing process - is being optimised through the use of data. By analysing historical data we’re able to see what worked and what didn’t. And do more of the former and less of the latter. Organisations’ physical office space is often its second largest investment after staff. If you want to maximise the value of that investment, you need hard data on how it’s being used. After all, as they say, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.
Previously, gathering workplace data was a mostly qualitative process, involving surveying staff and gathering first-hand insights. When occupancy sensors were used, they were a temporary, specialist solution bought in by outside consultants and removed at the end of the project. Ricoh have made occupancy sensors easy to install without any prior training. The units are small, unobtrusive and can be fixed to most surfaces using peel-and-apply sticky pads. The data is then pulled into live dashboards for easy interpretation. What used to be a costly, specialist service is now accessible to almost all organisations. With that in mind, here are four key workplace metrics to track and improve using occupancy sensors.
This is the most common one - and for good reason. Remote and flexible working may be on the rise but face-to-face meetings are still the best way to solve problems and tackle creative challenges. It’s crucial for businesses to create spaces which facilitate these tasks. Analysing meeting room occupancy can tell you, objectively, whether the number of meeting rooms you have is enough for your workforce. But it can also tell you which of those meeting rooms are the busiest. And, by association, which meeting rooms need some attention. If your occupancy rate is typically +70%, but one of your meeting rooms is languishing around 35%, clearly there are issues with that space that need to be resolved.
The combination of hot-desking and remote working have made the concept of desk occupancy more fluid. Some days the office will be busy, some days less so. It’s important to track desk occupancy and understand the rhythm of remote and in-office working. After all, no one wants to come into the office only to find out that all the desks are full and they’d have been better off at home.
As I’ve already said, just because a meeting has been booked, doesn’t mean it’s definitely going to happen. Things change. That’s just a fact-of-life.
In an ideal world, the room booking will be cancelled and the room freed up for someone else. But it doesn’t always happen that way. Tracking no-shows allows you to track wasted meeting room time. It can also highlight repeat offenders who may need a friendly reminder to cancel their bookings when they cancel their meetings, and improve overall etiquette of space. It’s also important to track the length of time that has been booked compared with the actual length of the meeting. If people are in the habit of booking 30-minute or one-hour meetings and only sticking around for 10 minutes, that’s an issue.
Finally, keeping track of your peak times can help you manage staff expectations and encourage teams to schedule your meetings for less busy periods where possible.
The ideal is to spread your meetings out to create a solid baseline of occupancy across the week, instead of peak periods which then drop away to nothing.
