Office Occupancy Analysis
Perth

How many people are actually coming into your offices every day?

 

Most likely it’s less than you think. In a standard working office applying a traditional way of working of one person to one desk, it is highly likely your office is below 80% occupied.  This means for every 10 desks, at least 2 desks are not being utilised by the “owner”.  This is commonplace because of holidays, sickness, working from home, working at other locations, training, emergencies etc that prevent employees from coming into their designated workplace.  The paradox is that when asked, the perception of attendance in the office is always higher than the reality.  After 15+ years of studying occupancy rates globally, the data always proves that the actual occupancy is somewhere between 15-20% lower than the perceived rate, in many cases even more.  Ultimately that means your office is being used inefficiently.  After your salary costs, your real estate costs are likely your second largest expenditure.  Empty desks are a waste of money for your organisation.

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Work Future are experts at translating occupancy and headcount data into workplace insights that enable you to make the right decision. We do this primarily across Perth and WA, but it can be achieved elsewhere remotely just as easily. We can use data from multiple sources: desk booking apps, sensors, access card readers, device based tracking, time utilisation studies, and make sense of it.  We will elicit the insights from your data, so you have an accurate picture of how many people are in at any one time.  This can be two weeks to six months.  Ideally the more data the better. We can also strip out holiday periods, lunch times, Fridays etc to make the data as accurate as you need it to be to prove the true occupancy of your workspaces.

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What occupancy analysis answers

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• how many people are actually coming in, and on which days

• how many people you need to plan for

• how many desks you really need

• whether your hybrid working assumptions are supported by evidence

• whether you can absorb growth in your current space or need more

• what planning assumptions leadership should be using

 

In practice that means collecting data from multiple occupancy and headcount sources, analysing it into clear insights and trends, and packaging the findings into a stakeholder presentation that provides the facts to support a decision, especially helpful when considering relocating to new space or adopting desk sharing.

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From data to a decision

 

Data on its own does not decide anything. A swipe-card export or a sensor dump is just a spreadsheet until someone who understands workplace occupancy reads it and tells you what it means. The value is not the collection; it is the interpretation. For a fast first pass, our free Work Space Calculator lets you test whether you need more space, more desks or a different way of working. Where you need the data interpreted properly and quickly, an Occupancy Work Sprint does it in days and hands you planning assumptions you can act on.

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Why occupancy matters more in Perth right now

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Occupancy analysis is what tells you whether to hand back a floor, consolidate, hold your space for growth, or move to desk sharing. It is the evidence underneath a sound workplace strategy, and the thing that stops a property decision being a guess. Perth's CBD will not see any new office buildings being built until after 2030.  This lack of new supply is influencing the market for those considering a move. If there is nothing suitable on the market when you need it then staying where you are and reworking the space you have often delivers the results you need. An office restack, a consolidation, a right-sizing of a footprint that perhaps hybrid working or AI adoption has left partially empty, these are the considerations for many Perth occupiers right now. If you are weighing a move against staying put, that can be supported through our in house developed proprietary tool Work Calc. It starts with your workplace problem and then guides you through how much space you need, especially if you have more people than desks, ways of working considerations, and future fit out costs tailored to your city.  Combined into a report with the relevant options to assist you in making a stay vs go decision. Either way, the starting point is knowing your true occupancy.

 

Why Work Future

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You work directly with Peter Stansfield, who has been actively analysing occupancy data on real projects for over fifteen years, including for a government-owned essential services organisation with several thousand staff across a head office and a regional network. The point of difference is that Work Future has a proprietary system for analysing occupancy data that guarantees the insights you need to support your projects, business cases, and activity based working implementations.

 

Frequently asked questions

 

What is office occupancy analysis?

Office occupancy analysis is the work of analysing how many people actually come into the office, then turning that analysis into insights to support workplace planning decisions. It draws on occupancy and headcount data from a range of sources to answer how many people come in, to support answering the question of how many desks you need, and whether you need more or less space, or a different way of working such as desk sharing.

 

How is occupancy data collected?

From a range of sources, which can include desk booking apps, sensors, access card readers, device based tracking, and time utilisation studies. The more detailed data you have, the more we can derive from the data.

 

How many desks do we need?

That is exactly the question occupancy analysis exists to answer, and it depends on how many people come in, on which days, and how you want to work. Our free Work Space Calculator gives you a quick first pass, and a fuller analysis or Occupancy Work Sprint turns it into a planning assumption you can rely on.

 

Do we need a full study, or something quicker?

It depends on the decision. If you need a defensible planning assumption for a major lease or fit out, a fuller analysis is worth it. If you need a faster view to inform a near-term decision, an Occupancy Work Sprint can interpret what you already have in days.

 

Do you work outside Perth?

Western Australia is our base, but we work with clients across Australia and globally. The discipline is geography-agnostic and occupancy analysis can be done remotely just as easily.

 

Start a conversation

If you have a lease event, a growth question, or a workplace that no longer fits the way you work, the cheapest time to think it through is now, while the options are still open and still on paper.

 

Email hello@workfuture.com.au, call +61 0435 824 305, or use the contact form at the foot of the page.

 

We are based in Perth, Western Australia.