More People Than Desks? Running Out of Space? Could a Space Calculator Help?
- Peter Stansfield
- May 23
- 11 min read
If you've found yourself asking how to deal with the common workplace issue of "more people than desks?" or "are we running out of office space?", a space calculator is usually the fastest way to get from a gut feeling to a structured assessment of the problem. Here's what one is, what to look for, and how it's been used on two real client engagements.
What is a space calculator?
In the context of this blog post, a space calculator is a tool to support workplace and corporate office space pressures.
The most common reasons to seek one out are because you find yourself in one of these situations:
More people than desks (run out of desks)
Running out of space and considering options
Enough space now but planning for future growth
Too much space and need to right-size (perhaps after a restructure or layoffs)
There are many space calculators available online and they vary in terms of their abilities:
The basic, entry-level ones will tell you how much space you have now.
Most will tell you how much space you need by multiplying total people by a sqm / sqft rate, e.g. 100 people x 10 sqm = 1,000 sqm.
Some will try to work out which work settings you need (desks, focus pods, meeting rooms, etc.) and derive a total space calculation from that.
The better calculators will work out your space needs based on your actual space problem (see the 4 points above).
The best will also tell you how much it will cost in your local city to achieve your goals (from a fit out cost perspective).
When you get into the best and most advanced calculators, they need the sophistication to lead you a process of problem identification and solving.
The Work Space Calculator uses this five-step process.
The five-step space calculator process:
Identify the problem and tailor all following steps accordingly.
Play back what the problem actually means, so understanding is agreed at the start.
Select an option from the possible paths available to you (see below for more on this).
Customise and tailor that selected option to match your needs, or to test a few scenarios.
Compare your outcomes.
Steps 1 and 2 are critical. Sometimes you think the problem is "A" when it's really "B". So having that pause moment where your pressure points are played back to you is a useful checkpoint before moving into the available options.
Step 3 - the options are not unknown, nebulous or opaque. Most of the time you have the same set of options available to you.
The five strategic options
Option A: Maintain current way of working AND add desks into current space
Option B: Maintain current way of working AND take more space to accommodate more desks
Option C: Adopt desk sharing, BUT maintain current space
Option D: Adopt desk sharing AND take more space
Option E: Adopt desk sharing AND reduce current footprint
When we discuss ways of working, the best way to think about it from a space perspective is through the lens of desk sharing:
Traditional way of working (1 person to 1 desk) = no desk sharing.
Mixed way of working (mainly traditional but some hot desking has crept in).
Desk sharing, likely operating somewhere between 70-80%. For example, 10 people desk sharing across 8 desks = 80%.
I wouldn't make it any more complicated than that. These three types “ways of working” will cover most, if not all, corporate workplace/office scenarios.
Step 4 is where you get to scenario plan, customise and test how different levers will impact your potential solution. The best calculators will allow you to edit a range of variables/levers.
a) The desk sharing percentage.
Making the percentage lower, e.g. 75% reduced from 100%, will show you the impact that providing more or fewer desks has on your future space requirements.
b) The density metric.
The baseline rule: Historically, workplace density has been measured by dividing total floor area by headcount, such as 1,000 sqm divided by 100 people to get 10 sqm per person. In Australia, this 10 sqm benchmark originates from the National Construction Code (NCC). It is the statutory baseline used to design core building infrastructure like fire escapes, ventilation, and toilets. While other regions handle exact minimum allocations differently, such as the UK using a statutory volume of 11 cubic metres per person, 10 sqm remains a global commercial design standard.
The desk-sharing math problem: This calculation breaks down in an Activity Based Working (ABW) or hot-desking setup. If you implement an 80% desk-sharing percentage, you might point 125 people at those same 100 desks. If you calculate density per person, your metric drops to 8 sqm on paper, which can instantly trigger false alarms about overcrowding or non-compliance.
Measuring by desks instead of people: To get an accurate metric in a modern desk-sharing environment, you must adjust the core calculation from sqm per person to sqm per desk. Because desk capacity physically limits how many employees can work in the office simultaneously, the building's maximum operational occupancy remains capped at 100 people. Switching the calculation to 1,000 sqm divided by 100 desks maintains an accurate, compliant 10 sqm baseline, this approach also works with traditional 1:1 environments.
c) The cost metric.
The elite calculators now take it a step further and are able to put real-time, local-currency, local-city fit-out cost rates per sqm / sqft to your scenarios, also considering macro-economic trends impacting fit-out costs in your city (e.g. the Iran War).
The costs are not a blunt one-size-fits-all. They can be customised across both the type of fit-out (a traditional office layout with more desks, meeting rooms and private offices, vs an Activity Based Working environment with a greater range of settings, fewer desks, more modular collaborative settings) and the quality of the fit-out (low, medium, high).
The costs can be applied to the full space or only to any additional space being considered.
This cost matrix (type of space, quality of finish, size of space, city impact), when applied to your scenarios and options provides a great starting point to understand what it will cost per sqm/sqft to fix your workplace pressure points. Use it as a guide and to sense-check against future QS (Quantity Surveyor) cost estimates to make sure you're in the right ballpark.
Step 5 - compare your scenarios.
When you get to the end of the process you don't only compare your current status quo situation with a future potential option. It's normally more complicated than that. You want to compare where you are today, against the "obvious" option (which is usually just take more space) and a third, often more considered option (which is desk sharing). These are the three lenses to look through to make sure you have made an informed decision.
Case Studies
The development of the Work Space Calculator was driven by real client demands. Here are two case studies that you might find relatable to your current situation.
Case Study 1: We have more people than desks - what should we do?
Whilst engaged for a longer-term workplace strategy assignment, it soon became clear that discussing strategy to be implemented over the next 2-5 years was difficult for the executive to focus on, because they had issues today. Immediate problems around demand outstripping supply. Yes, it can be argued that if the workplace strategy had been implemented 2-5 years earlier then they wouldn't find themselves with this present-day problem, but this is a common occurrence and catches management teams out the world over.
The supply (desks) and demand (people) issue was so acute that they couldn't fill vacancies in the financial year as planned, because they had nowhere to seat them. The following circumstances were creating a perfect storm:
The client was a traditional, conservative-thinking organisation when it came to ways of working, preferring one person to one desk.
There was some working from home, but it was limited and inconsistently applied, so that wasn't an easy go-to solution to fix this pressure point.
In the vacuum of a solution being implemented, teams had taken to impromptu hot desking arrangements, which were non-standardised across the organisation and working with varying degrees of success.
There were actually some spare desks available but not located in the areas occupied by the teams that needed them for growth, and a restack at this early stage was not supported by the business.
After collecting the data, we had the following to work with:
People = 296
Desks = 276
20 desks short today, with projected growth of 10 more people in the short term, taking the figure to 30 desks short.
They occupied a generous 5,153 sqm, which at 276 desks was 18.7 sqm per desk.
From the available options we opted for “Option A - maintain the current way of working (traditional 1:1) and add more desks into the existing space”.
In the short term we didn't feel it was appropriate to spend more money on an additional 560 sqm of space (Option B), especially when we were already running at a generous 18.7 sqm per desk. The business also wasn't culturally ready to adopt desk sharing (Options C and D) at this time, as we knew we needed a longer run-in for that level of change. So, the decision was taken to fit 30 extra desks into the existing space, taking the density to a still above 10 sqm per desk rate of 16.8 sqm per desk.
Not only did this option save money on not taking extra space, but it also avoided fit-out costs. Instead, we were able to retrofit the desks into the existing footprint for considerably less than a full fit-out.
Case Study 2: We want to prepare for anticipated future growth - should we take more space?
In this case study the client was already technically out of space and had implemented a mixed way of working (one person to one desk traditionally, plus, due to having more people than desks, they had reluctantly begun desk sharing in pockets at 85%, so nothing too aggressive). But with one eye to the future, they knew they had an extra 80 people to accommodate.
Their data was as follows:
People = 78
Desks = 66
Desk sharing at 85% (66 desks / 78 people)
Occupying 936 sqm at 14.2 sqm per desk (936 sqm / 66 desks)
Growth projection +80 people = 158 people
If they increased desk sharing to accommodate the extra 80 people, the desk sharing percentage would be 42% (66 desks / 158 people). This was way too aggressive for their needs, so they had to consider more space, but the question was how much more and at what desk sharing percentage?
From the available options we had already discounted Option C (42% desk sharing), which left us with Option B (maintain current way of working at 85% AND take more space to accommodate more desks) and Option D (adopt desk sharing AND take more space).
Option B at 85% would require 1,900 sqm (twice the original footprint) and would have a fit-out cost of between $4.20m and $5.40m (AUD).
After testing a few different percentages, we settled on the achievable 75% for Option D. This would require a total space of 1,440 sqm (an increase of 504 sqm from the original 936 sqm), which would accommodate the required 119 desks for the 158 people at 75% and density of 12.1 sqm per desk. The fit-out cost for Option D came in at $3.40m to $4.40m (AUD). A change in desk sharing from 85% to 75% saved $1m (AUD) on fit-out costs alone.
Summary - what a space calculator does, and where it stops
A good space calculator does one job well: it gets you from a perceived pressure point ("we're running out of space", "we have more people than desks") to a defensible shortlist of strategic options, with the numbers, the density, the desk sharing implications and the fit-out costs all laid out side by side. Fast enough to test three or four scenarios in an afternoon, rigorous enough to take into a board paper.
What it doesn't do is tell you which teams go where. A calculator answers the how space and cost questions. It doesn't answer the who sits where question. That's the next conversation, and it's usually a bigger one than the calculator conversation.
In Case Study 1 the calculator decision supported the business to know which direction to head in for the next stage. The space itself dictated where we could add the new desks, we couldn’t add them directly where the teams needed them. This then triggered an inevitable office restack. Similarly in Case Study 2, the calculator's answer ("Option D at 75% in 1,440 sqm") was the start of a much larger team-allocation exercise into the newly fitted out desk sharing environment.
In both cases that next stage - turning the calculator's strategic answer into a team-by-team, floor-by-floor visual plan - is where the Work Stack block-and-stack tool takes over. The calculator tells you the answer. Work Stack shows you what the answer looks like on each floor of your building. Outputs from Work Stack also proved very useful to the move teams in both case studies, as they mapped all the relevant moves out for them.
If you'd like to run your own numbers, the Work Space Calculator is free at workfuture.com.au/work-space-calculator.
Frequently asked questions
How much office space do I need per person?
There is no universal answer, but most modern Australian offices sit between 9 and 14 sqm per desk, with 10 to 12 being the most common range for a balanced mix of workstations, meeting rooms and breakout space. Below 10 sqm per desk starts to feel tight. Above 14 sqm per desk usually indicates space use inefficiencies, and you may be able to add desks without taking more space. In a desk sharing environment, sqm per desk is the more useful planning metric than sqm per person.
What is a good desk sharing ratio?
The most common starting point is 80% desks-to-people (1.25 people per desk). That ratio tends to work when average attendance is in the 65-75% range, because it leaves headroom for peak days, also many companies are already operating at 80% when holidays, sickness, training, working offsite are factored in making 80% very achievable for the vast majority of office based organisations. Tighter ratios (70% or below) work in higher-mobility environments where attendance is genuinely low and consistent, especially with tightly managed hybrid working and rostered days in the office. The right ratio is the one your occupancy data supports, not the one a benchmark says is industry standard. Design for somewhere between the peak day (generally too high) and the average (generally too low). Work Future provides bespoke Occupancy Data Analysis services here.
Should I add desks or take more space?
If your current density is comfortable (say, 11 sqm per desk or higher) and your growth requirement is small, adding desks into the existing footprint (Option A) is usually the cheaper and faster answer. If your current density is already tight, or your growth is significant, more space is the realistic option. A good calculator runs both scenarios side by side - you shouldn't be choosing one without seeing what the other looks like. Additionally, the third angle is applying a desk sharing consideration to any proposed solution. Desk sharing can reduced the amount of extra space you might need to take.
Do we have to move to desk sharing?
No. Desk sharing is one of five strategic options, not the default. If your work is highly individual, your attendance is consistently high, or your workforce isn't ready for it, traditional 1:1 desks may still be the right answer. The point of a space calculator is to compare the options honestly, not push you toward any single one.
What is the difference between hot desking and desk sharing?
Some would argue nothing - that it's a technicality or semantics - but I'd challenge that.
Hot desking is usually what happens when a traditional 1:1 environment is converted by simply adding more desks, adding more people or reducing the amount of space, all in a bid to save money. None of those moves are paired with any genuine workplace enhancements. All they do is create pressure, and when that pressure builds to the point where it causes a crack or schism, that's when the negativity around hot desking is rightly aired. A workspace that is first come, first served, with desks tightly packed in and few or no other work settings, is a stress-inducing environment. That is hot desking - max packed like battery hens.
Desk sharing is fundamentally different. It needs to live within a workspace that has been carefully considered and designed using evidence-based principles, informed by data on how teams work today and what they'll need in the future. The trade-off is not "how much space can we save?". The trade is this: if we have 1,000 sqm currently providing 100 desks at 10 sqm per desk, and the occupancy data shows we only come in 70% of the time, then we can safely provide 75% of the desks. The question becomes what to do with the remaining 25%. If you reduce the footprint, you're in hot desking territory. If you repurpose that 25% into a range of additional supportive work settings that go hand-in-hand with desk sharing, you've created a true desk sharing workspace.
This blog was written by Work Future Workplace Transformation Consultancy. We specialise in developing workplace tools and leading & delivering workplace strategy and transformation projects in Perth, WA. Contact us at hello@workfuture.com.au or +61 0435 824 305 to discuss your workplace project needs.
