New hybrid working trends have brought challenges in understanding how employees utilise office spaces — many expensive offices have been built only to lie unused, haemorrhaging money, emitting carbon and stifling productivity.

In order to address these challenges, it is crucial for organisations to make sure the space requirements of their office users are fully understood. Through data-driven decisions, organisations can design offices that efficiently meet their employees’ requirements and expectations, thus ensuring the office is an attractive — and productive — proposition for their staff.

Below, we provide a complete guide on to how to comprehensively understand your office user needs, and to then use this information to design an efficient and effective office space. Read on to start your office design journey!

If you’re still considering whether a new office or redesign is worth it, you can use this savings calculator tool to estimate how much a right-sized office could save you, both in cash and carbon emissions.

How to Strategise

Often overlooked, the Strategise step refers to the process of collecting information about your user requirements and expectations. This crucial step enables you to make confident, data-driven decisions when it comes to designing your office. Without it, you are just guessing what your users need, and are unlikely to end up with an efficient or effective office.

The strategy step can be broken down into two main phases:

1. Understand user needs
2. Calculate space demand

By the end of this process, you’ll understand:

• Exactly how much space your office needs
• The types of space your office needs, and in what proportions

Step 1. Understand User Needs Define Company Structure

First, you’ll need a complete list of employees (including remote workers). Ideally, you’ll enrich this with metadata such as department, managers, roles, and any other salient information — this will enable you to aggregate requirements across varying subsections of your organisation, which will inform your space calculations (see below). You can use any spreadsheet tool for this task.

Gather User Needs Data

Next, you need to understand the requirements of your users. You will use this information to calculate how much space you need in the next step. Your output should be a wide range of quantitative data which reflects your user needs.

You should collect information such as:

• How often do employees use the office? Does this vary across teams, seniority or departments?
• When they are not using the office, why not? Do they feel they work better at home, or do they feel some facilities are lacking?
• Are there certain work activities they prefer to do at home/in the office?
• On which days does each employee come into the office? When they come in, do they stay for the full day?
• What type of work do they do, in what kind of room, and for how long? E.g. a company in which most employees prioritise focussed work in quiet, individual workspaces will have very different space requirements to one in which group activities are paramount

Step 2. Calculate Space Demand

Now you understand your user requirements, the next step is to use that data to calculate the amount and types of space your office needs. The output should be a list of rooms and square footage which will allow your employees to work effectively whilst keeping overall costs low.

Estimating these figures yourself is cheap, but time-consuming and — due to the complexity of the task — likely to contain inaccuracies. At the end of this section we discuss where to find support if you want faster and more accurate calculations.

Follow the steps below to calculate your space demand. You can use any spreadsheet software to achieve this:

1. Create Company Structure for Space Demand

Decide if you will estimate space requirements by employee, team or department. Create your desired structure in your spreadsheet software (to simplify this, you may want to just focus on team or department level, although this will result in a less accurate prediction than if you estimate space per employee and aggregate up).

2. Compile List of Room Types

Compile a list of room types you wish to see in your new office. For example — different sizes of meeting rooms, different styles of workspaces, kitchens, breakout spaces etc. For each, estimate capacity and square footage required.

3. Create Rules for Assigning Space

Next, take the information you ascertained from surveying your users in step 1, and use this to derive a system for estimating space.

You’ll need basic rules to assign rooms to users — for example, for every 10 employees, you want a small meeting room, 8 full-time workstations and 2 hot-desk workstations.

These will need to be weighted by more complex rules in order to get a workably accurate estimation — for example, if one employee only uses the office on Monday-Wednesday, and another uses it Thursday-Friday, you can allocate 50% space for each of those employees (ignoring this rule could make your office design up to twice as big as it needed to be, illustrating the important of modelling your user requirements accurately!).

The exact rules you make will depend on the information you obtained in step 1, standards for your industry, and what type of space you want to build.

4. Apply Rules to Users to Estimate Space

You can now use the rules you defined in step 3 to assign your employees, departments or teams to rooms. This will tell you how many rooms you need in your new office, and adding the estimated size for all those rooms gives you a target square footage.

Note that this information is static at a single point in time, so if your situation or workforce changes, you will need to complete this exercise again to get up-to-date figures.

Step 3: Getting Support

If the above process seems complex (don’t worry, it is!), another option is to engage expert assistance to help with your office design. This is a good way to get more accurate calculations, save time and — depending on the method used — money as well.

Support Method 1: Consultants

Consultants can assist you in office design. This will not come cheap, as they typically charge between €900-€1,400 per day, with projects usually lasting 3–6 months or more (and often running past the targeted delivery time).

The plans and analysis provided to you by a consultant are a one-off, and will go out of date quickly — if you plan on reorganising or further expanding within the next few years, you will need to budget for further rounds of consulting to make sure your information is current.

You also need to choose your consultant carefully — many (even bigger names) will not undertake adequate user needs analysis, and will instead resort to their own spreadsheet with “best guess” values, resulting in sub-optimal results.

Support Method 2: Automatic Design with spaciv

If you want to avoid high consultancy fees whilst still achieving fast, accurate space calculations, you can try spaciv, our AI-powered workplace strategy tool.

spaciv’s AI has analysed thousands of industry-standard office patterns, user requirements and room types, and uses that information to automatically calculate your ideal office layout.

All you need to do is bulk-upload a list of your employees (or integrate with your HR software to get this information automatically), and within minutes you’ll have an office design tailored to your user needs.

However, if you want to use data more specific to your organisation, it is all fully customisable — from the integrated survey function allowing you to easily collect your own user requirements data, to the types of room the algorithm considers when designing your layouts.

To see a quick demo of how space demand can be calculated in under 3 minutes in spaciv, click here.

One key advantage of using spaciv over a consultant is that your information is always up to date. The specification — of your organisational structure, requirements or desired office type — can be easily altered, and you will see the output within minutes, without having to pay consultancy fees or running over project deadlines. Integrating with your HR tool will completely automate your workplace strategy workflow, enabling you to continuously monitor how well your employees’ space requirements are being met.

Summary — Pros and Cons of Each Method

Below is a comparison of the pros and cons of the various approaches outlined above:

Once you have completed these steps, you will have a good idea of what your space requirements are for your office, both in square footage and the number and types of rooms you require for your employees to work effectively.

If you would like some help with your hybrid office design, visit our Start Now page to speak to an office design expert, or try the application for free!

How to Design a Modern Hybrid Office was originally published in spaciv on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Factors such as occupancy rates (e.g. badge swipes), user preferences (e.g. utilisation rates) and the current state of the corporate real estate portfolio (e.g. lease durations) provide a basic understanding of where and what your users need.

However, there are limitations to relying solely on usage and occupancy metrics. To create user-centric spaces, your focus needs to shift from ‘when’ to ‘how’ space is used.

Three depths of user needs data

With spaciv, you can use three convenient options to integrate user activity data:

Manual modelling

Ideal for high-level projects and broad assessments, manual modelling allows for a data base without direct user involvement. Bear in mind, however, that insights generated by this method may be susceptible to individual bias.

spaciv benchmark data

Leveraging spaciv’s industry-specific benchmark data provides accurate insights quickly and easily. This option allows for scalability without user involvement, making it a fast and reliable choice.

spaciv crowd-modelling

Crowd modelling provides a quick and direct route to user involvement, allowing users to contribute their needs directly. This approach not only improves the quality of your data base, but has also been proven to increase acceptance and buy-in for the final results.

It’s also important to systematise what you learn from this process. This means moving away from the most traditional space calculation ratios, such as sqm per workstation, and instead developing a strategy that revolves around your users’ needs. To do this, we recommend using a standardised space module catalogue and evolving space rules.

Space modules are a comprehensive catalogue of easily sourced furniture or space configurations. These could be different sizes of meeting rooms, combinations of individual workstation sizes or specialised modules such as laboratory setups.

Linking these space modules to your user needs is the job of space rules. They define for which specific activities and under what circumstances modules are used.

The combination of these three key aspects will drive your transformation and inform your decision-making. spaciv can help you combine these aspects and easily calculate your ideal space — from team space to an entire portfolio, today and tomorrow. Always ensuring that your space is user-centric and cost-effective.

That’s why we’ve made it easy and accessible to import and customise your organisation’s space modules and rules to support even more accurate calculations.

By embracing this fluidity, you can continuously adapt your office spaces to remain aligned with the evolving requirements of your users. And by that, ensuring long-term relevance and effectiveness of your spaces. Furthermore, by analysing your crowd-modelling over time, you can identify patterns and trends that can inform proactive decisions around your future workplace strategy.

Leveraging advanced analytics for future-proofing

Utilising advanced analytics involves leveraging your user activity data to identify opportunities based on real-world evidence and inform decision-making that will lead to a more efficient and effective office space. Your defined strategy and collected data can help you in projecting your space demand into the future.

With spaciv, we’ve integrated simple workflows for you to calculate detailed scenarios such as:

• How will space demand evolve with different growth ratios?
• How will changing utilisation affect my ideal space?
• How will trigger events (e.g. acquisitions) affect my demand?
• How will changing user needs (e.g. new units) affect space demand?
• When is my existing space unable to accommodate user needs?

By calculating one or a combination of these scenarios, you can inform future-proof planning to ensure that your space is equipped to meet user needs both today and tomorrow.

AI-powered space planning

AI-powered space planning takes your project development to new heights by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence. With spaciv, you can effortlessly generate layouts for your target space or even optimise existing layouts quickly and accurately.

By leveraging your standardised space module catalogue, space rules and incorporating scenario modelling calculations, you can efficiently use AI to ensure your space meets your needs, while highlighting constraints and opportunities.

In addition, when optimising existing spaces, an instant gap analysis can identify areas where optimisation can have the greatest impact on the user experience.

This streamlined approach to design encourages rapid iteration, saving valuable time and resources. Especially with the space module catalogue not only supporting the creation of initial fit-outs, but also enabling procurement-ready space programmes.

Simplifying your workplace transformation

As you navigate the changing landscape of work dynamics, prioritising a user-centric approach is essential to ensure sustainable office transformation.

With spaciv, you gain the tools to fully understand your users’ needs, establish space rules and use a customised space module catalogue. This enables you to create future-proof spaces that are both cost effective and adaptable.

Guiding you through this transformation is the process of challenging your own assumptions and adopting a data-driven approach. This will enable you to make informed decisions based on robust data insights.

Leveraging advanced analytics and AI-powered space planning will streamline implementation, allowing you to project future space needs and align space with evolving requirements.

By adopting this approach, you can navigate office change with ease and efficiency. And by ensuring that spaces remain adaptable and user-centric, you can maximise productivity in the evolving workplace landscape, setting your organisation up for continued success.

Ready to take you Workplace Strategy to the next level? Start now

The importance of understanding your users’ needs was originally published in spaciv on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Unveiling the Power of Feedback for Office Optimisation

Feedback serves as a crucial tool for office optimisation, providing valuable insights into the needs and preferences of your users. However, many organisations struggle to streamline the data-driven feedback process effectively. It’s crucial to ask: Is this a one-time initiative or an ongoing effort towards optimisation?

While a one-time optimisation can improve the user experience in existing spaces and inform workplace strategy for new ones, consistently and systematically gathering user feedback enables a deeper understanding of the evolving needs of the workforce. This approach allows businesses to address issues promptly, ensuring that the workspace remains aligned with the expectations and experiences of its users.

Pinpointing Areas for Enhancement

With the help of spaciv, and by including employees in the feedback process, organisations gain access to a wealth of detailed metrics. Besides the overall space rating, which measures user satisfaction with the office environment, spaciv provides insights into the availability of different spaces, such as meeting rooms or workspaces. This allows them to assess their spatial resources effectively. Another invaluable feature is the assessment of the office’s suitability for specific activities, such as deep focus work or face-to-face meetings.

This detailed analysis is further enhanced by spaciv’s activity-to-space module mapping feature, which provides a clear understanding of how different activities align with available spaces. By leveraging this feature, organisations can identify areas for improvement and make informed decisions to optimise user experience and productivity. The resulting dataset also enables organisations to allocate optimisation efforts to areas that have the most significant impact on user experience.

As an example: spaciv revealed during a recent project that a particular space module designed for dedicated project work was underutilised, prompting our client to reallocate resources and optimise the space preferred by users. This decision freed up office space for alternative uses that were in higher demand. Another instance involved strategically reallocating limited budgets to space modules that significantly impacted daily operations, prioritising areas with substantial part in the user experience over those with less favourable ratings.

Implementing Feedback-Driven Changes

Implementing changes based on feedback requires a strategic approach that considers the diverse needs of employees and the overarching goals of the organisation. Keep these basics in mind when facilitating the process:

1. Prioritise impact
Start by prioritising feedback based on its impact on employee experience and business objectives. Focus on addressing high-priority issues that have the most significant potential to improve the workspace.

2. Test ideas
Consider implementing small-scale changes to test proposed solutions before full implementation. Pilots allow for further user feedback and adjustment before rolling out changes across the entire workspace.

3. Stay flexible
Recognise that office environments are dynamic and evolving. Remain flexible and adaptable to accommodate changing needs and preferences over time. Regularly reassess feedback and make adjustments as necessary to ensure continued improvement. For more information read ‘How a workplace changed over 365 days of evolution’

By remembering these basics and leveraging insights from feedback, you can effectively implement changes that enhance the office environment, support employee well-being, and drive organisational success.

Implementing Feedback-Driven Changes

In summary, harnessing user feedback is vital for turbocharging office optimisation efforts in today’s evolving workplace landscape. By understanding and addressing the needs of your employees, you can create environments that foster productivity, collaboration, and well-being.

spaciv plays a pivotal role in this process by providing detailed metrics and insights, enabling you to identify areas for improvement and make informed decisions. Whether it’s reallocating resources based on user needs data or strategically prioritising optimisation efforts for maximum impact, spaciv empowers you to optimise the office space effectively. And by implementing changes driven by user feedback, your organisations can gain a vital competitive advantage, optimise occupancy, attract top talent and provide an environment for success.

How user feedback will supercharge your office optimisation was originally published in spaciv on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.