Work Data: Workplace Utilisation Study
Perth
Workplace data collection, validation and analysis. The evidence to support your accommodation decisions.
Work Data by Work Future.
Do you need a workplace utilisation study?
Many organisations grow faster than their workplace was originally planned to support. The need for desks therefore often outstrips supply. The route to a solution is not always clear, and the best place to start is a good handle on your current office and workplace situation:
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What sites do you have?
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how much space?
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how many floors?
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how many desks?
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how many people are coming in every day?
These are the fundamental questions and answering them gives you a sound footing to solve your workspace conundrum.
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Should you take on more space, less space?
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Adopt desk sharing or other new ways of working?
It’s a lot easier to answer a question about the future when you’re confident of where you are today. To get there you collect your workplace data, validate it, understand it, analyse it and draw out the insights that support your decision. This way you can be confident in the next step.
Work Data does exactly that. It's a two stage workplace utilisation study that turns the data you already hold, plus the data you didn't know you had or needed, into a suite of validated workplace data that underpins your conversations with project sponsors, C-suite and executives.
Stage 1: Current data set
We start with what exists:
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Your accommodation database
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Floorplans inc. size
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Lease schedules
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People metrics
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Desk and private office counts
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Occupancy metrics
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Current ways of working
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Non-standard IT equipment audit
Then we validate the data across each floor with a physical walkaround. Any discrepancies are raised and resolved, and the whole lot is consolidated into a single report that gives you (sometimes for the first time) a current status of your workspaces and offices.
Alongside the walkarounds:
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People data by team and location: headcount, FTE, contractors and unfilled vacancies for the year, collected through a structured template so the request on HR/People Services is manageable.
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Occupancy analysis from your security access data (or other source e.g. desk booking app or your sensors), showing occupancy averages, peaks, peak averages, peak days etc.
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Non-standard IT and equipment that would not support potential future desk sharing: fixed PCs, specialist kit, more than two monitors on a desk for example.
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Net lettable area validated per floor and per site
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Lease expiries, breaks and opportunities across the portfolio
The output is a current state baseline report and an initial block and stack visual utilising Work Stack, which shows which teams sit where.
We often find that the data is out there, but in multiple forms and locations and unfortunately has not always been kept up to date. Making a decision from that starting point is difficult and commercially risky. Work Data gives you confidence in your data.
Stage 2: Future state
Now that we understand the current state we can turn our attention to the future state. In the longer term that might be an accommodation / workplace strategy, relocation, more/less space, refurbishment etc, but short term the questions are usually:
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where can we add in more desks?
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how many more desks do we need to fit in?
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how long will this extra capacity last before we run out again?
To answer those questions, we identify the locations in your existing space that can take more desks and the desks that can be reconfigured to fit more in. This tells us where the opportunities are and how many extra desks you can add.
At the same time, we work with you to assess the growth in people numbers across the next 3 to 5 years. The year on year growth in people (the demand) is then cross referenced against your future desk numbers (the supply).
This will give you a sense of how much time you’ve bought yourself before you need to make those longer term decisions we referred to above. The report includes scenario planning with high level cost per sqm rates to support any decision making using our in house tool Work Calc.
What happens after
For some clients the Stage 2 report supports their short term goals e.g. adding in more desks to their existing space and the inevitable office restack (the new desks are unlikely to be added where the teams that need them are currently seated, as it’s space availability driven).
For others it flows naturally into our services beyond Work Data, such as a full workplace strategy, a relocation or a fit out.
The workplace tools we use
Work Data runs on a suite of proprietary workplace tools developed in house at Work Future by Peter Stansfield:
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Work Stack for block and stack planning
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Work Calc for space and cost scenarios
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Work Move for office decants and relocation sequencing
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Our occupancy analysis methodology for turning raw occupancy data (desk booking app, sensor data or access card data) into accurate occupancy insights.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is a workplace utilisation study?
A measured assessment of how your office space is used: how many desks and offices you have, how many people need them and how often people attend. It replaces opinion and perception with evidence. You’ll also see it called an office utilisation study or a space utilisation study; same exercise, different label.
How is occupancy measured?
From your building security access data (or a desk booking app if that is your richer source), typically over three to six months, cleaned (duplicate entries removed) and analysed to show average daily occupancy, peak occupancy, average peak occupancy and attendance by day of week.
What is the difference between occupancy and utilisation?
Occupancy is the raw attendance number: how many people came in and when. Utilisation is what that attendance means against the space you hold, the desks, offices and floors you are paying for. An occupancy report tells you the average, peak and average peak attendance over an agreed period, e.g. 6 months. A workplace utilisation study incorporates occupancy alongside the other key data points to give you a full picture of how your space is performing from a supply and demand perspective, so any decision you make is an informed one.
What is a Time Utilisation Study?
A Time Utilisation Study is a manual, human workspace audit that measures how many people have come into the office and, at a high level, what they are doing and where. Observers conduct regular, physical walkthroughs of your floors using tablets or clipboards to log exactly which desks, meeting rooms and breakout spaces are occupied throughout the day. While this hands on space utilisation survey provides detailed contextual data, it is a labour intensive and costly exercise that has largely been replaced by sensor technology or other source data collection methods, such as access card reader analysis.
Do you need to survey our staff?
No. Work Data is quantitative by design. The data comes from floorplans, physical audit, HR records and access systems, which keeps disruption to your people close to nil.
How long does it take?
Stage 1 depends on portfolio size and how quickly data is supplied, but a multi building CBD portfolio typically runs eight to ten weeks end to end.