The more you know how people use your space, the smarter business decisions you can make. Should you hold on to your current leases or transition to smaller offices? Does your engineering team really need more space? Do you need to rethink your current space allocation strategy?

People counting data takes away the guesswork. It gives you occupancy metrics that help you optimize your space.

But how you get that data matters.

Some companies use video cameras as their preferred people counting system. It’s cost-effective and can deliver useful analytics by tracking employees at their desks, in meeting rooms, and throughout the office.

To some, it sounds a bit invasive, but federal law actually does not prevent video monitoring — even when the employee does not know or consent to being monitored (PRC, 2019).

But while a certain level of corporate surveillance is legal, employees (rightfully) hate it.

75% of employees are not OK with video cameras tracking their personal whereabouts. (PR Newswire, 2018).

Beyond employee concern over being surveilled, camera systems are an ideal target for hacking. Even benign systems that obscure a video stream locally can be compromised and made to do otherwise.

Employees aren’t only concerned about cameras invading their privacy. They’re also weary of companies implementing other personally identifiable monitoring technology, including wearables that track individual movements.

“Although these capabilities have created a lot of excitement, they have also generated anxiety and debate,” says Tiffany Ramirez, Editor of IQPC’s HR Metrics and Analytics Summit. “While the benefits of these capabilities are potentially game-changing, data privacy concerns are rising.”

So much of the debate on privacy focuses on our lives in the consumer world. But Americans spend one-third of their lives in the workplace (Reference.com, 2020) — an environment with scant privacy protections for workers at the federal level.

“There’s nothing more prone to create bad feelings than if [employees] feel like they are being subjected to surveillance.” Eva Sage-Gavin of Accenture (CNBC, 2019).

In the absence of strong legislation at the federal level, companies have an obligation to protect employee privacy and be transparent in their policies. It’s the right thing to do, and it’s necessary for building a high-trust organization.

There’s no longer a tradeoff between technology and privacy

For decades, the popular framing around privacy has presented a zero-sum game: any gain or benefit introduced by technology comes at the expense of privacy. You either agree to Amazon’s terms and get all the benefits of Alexa, or you don’t. You either install face recognition-enabled cameras and feel more secure, or you don’t.

This binary view of the role technology plays is changing, yes through legislation, but also through an emerging class of people counter technologies that are anonymous by design, meaning they provide immense functional value while ensuring the absolute protection of individuals’ privacy.

Providing accurate data while protecting personally identifiable information are cornerstones for our approach at Density.

Density’s GDPR-compliant sensors provide a real-time data set of the number of people in any individual space while maintaining 100% anonymity.

We use a lower-resolution depth-only sensor because it can return extremely accurate results without the capability for facial recognition or other analysis techniques that invade privacy.

Simply put, Density sensors are not cameras, so they don’t create visual images that identify personnel. Below is footage of what a Density sensor sees:

Now compare that to video surveillance footage equipped with tracking analytics:

When tracking occupancy throughout your space, do you really need to know the exact movements of each of your employees?

No.

You’re far more concerned with identifying high-traffic areas (particularly post-COVID), and seeing which spaces are grossly underutilized. Density sensors deliver that data in a singular dashboard:

Density sensors are also more accurate than other people-counting solutions.

Before settling on our lower-resolution depth-only sensor, we looked at (and tried) many existing technologies (infrared break-beams, thermal cameras, CCTV+CV systems). While CCTV proved accurate in many instances, its biggest roadblock is its invasion of privacy. Employees don’t want Big Brother watching.

The other technologies were far too inaccurate for our liking. Even CCTV couldn’t accurately count the number of visitors in certain situations (like when two people entered a space simultaneously).

Cameras also have a handoff problem. When pointing multiple cameras into a room, you have to overlap their fields of view (FOV). If you don’t, or if you’re using multiple cameras, they have to intelligently make sense of the people that disappear in-between the FOVs. This is called the handoff problem and it takes some processing.

Cameras also send large data packets that lag up to 15 minutes, preventing teams from taking immediate precautionary action.

But even if you overcome technical snafus, it can be difficult to get beyond the pilot stage with camera solutions for counting people. Often, employees push back as a system looks to scale.

So we developed a cutting edge sensor with an algorithm based on a machine-learning “human classifier” that delivers 98%+ accuracy levels, and enables real-time alerts with sub-1-second latency so you can take action immediately.

In other words, you don’t have to compromise accuracy for privacy.

There is no standard playbook for how to return millions of people to work. But that doesn’t matter.

2021 is the year of return to work. Companies have no choice but to figure out how to bring their employees back to the office.

Fortunately, companies like Tesla have already invested incredible time and resources into shaping return-to-work playbooks that other companies can use for guidance and a starting point.

While not every approach will apply to you, four key takeaways from Tesla’s playbook can help inform your own return-to-work strategy (create a cross functional crisis team, show employees how you’re keeping them safe, monitor real-time occupancy, and prepare employees for the new normal).

You can download Tesla’s return-to-work playbook here.

Create a cross-functional crisis team

Tesla created a crisis management team early on in the process. This team includes representatives from EHS (Environment, Health, and Safety), Security, Legal, Human Resources, Communications, Tesla Travel, and the company’s Corporate Physician.

The diversity of your cross-functional crisis team ensures more complete problem-solving.

A cross-functional crisis management team gives you diversity — you have representatives from each of your key departments at the table. This diversity serves as an internal checks-and-balances system. EHS may have an idea on employee temperature checks — but what legal hurdles are there?

These decisions should be discussed and made by representatives from all your key departments.

Show employees how you’re keeping them safe

As much as 64% of U.S. workers are anxious about returning to the workplace, according to a survey conducted by The Harris Poll (PR Newswire, 2020).

Reminding employees how you’re keeping them safe will make your return to work more successful.

For Tesla, their playbook itself serves this purpose. Sections like “How We’re Helping to Keep You Safe” give employees an at-a-glance look at every step Tesla has taken to be COVID-compliant:

The company also displays the signs above throughout its campuses, including in their shuttles and vans.

Signage is a significant part of Tesla’s return-to-work policy. They display signs reminding employees not to come to work if they experience COVID symptoms and to use hand sanitizer and to remain socially distant. These signs reinforce healthy practices and help employees feel at ease.

Other companies go one step further and use Density’s Safe display to show any space’s real-time occupancy. This gives employees the confidence to travel anywhere on their work campus, knowing what to expect when they arrive at any space.

Monitor real-time occupancy and traffic

Monitoring how people actually use Tesla’s space helps the leadership team verify compliance and adjust as needed.

Does the restroom cleaning schedule align with actual use? Do employees maintain six-foot distancing at entrances during high-volume times? Do smaller rooms (like meeting and break rooms) have the proper occupancy limit to ensure social distancing?

Companies use Density’s anonymous people counting sensors to answer these questions — without violating employee privacy, such as lowering the occupancy limit of certain spaces and staggering schedules to reduce volume swell.

By monitoring foot traffic and usage patterns captured by Density, companies can also identify whether new restrooms and break rooms are needed — and where they would have the greatest impact.

Prepare employees for the new normal

Daily routines give us a sense of control. When our routines change, we feel like we’ve relinquished control. For many employees, a shift to remote work was a drastic change in routine.

Some employees may welcome a return to work as a return to familiarity — to a portion of their day they can control. But the workplace of 2021 will not look like the workplace of 2019. Changes could impact employees’ sense of comfort and security (such as new one-way foot traffic patterns and closed-off spaces).

The workplace of 2021 will not look like the workplace of 2019.

Sharing a video walkthrough of your workspace will help employees see changes before they arrive (think of it as a virtual tour of the new campus). Tesla employees, for example, must watch a new safety training video, “as part of their preparation on what to expect when they return to work and as Tesla resumes operations.”

The video helps employees understand what work will look like and reminds them how to stay safe (including demonstrations of proper hand-washing and PPE).

Your return-to-work playbook also prepares employees for this new normal. But don’t wait for your playbook to be finalized to communicate with your team. Living through a pandemic is traumatic — it feels like we have no say in what we can do, where we can go, and who we can see. Early and consistent communication is key.

The return-to-work problem is two-fold: cultivating safety in the workplace and cultivating the appearance of safety. Yes, of course you need to protect employees. But you also need them to believe you’re protecting them.

Be unabashedly transparent with your employees while your crisis management team designs your return-to-work policy. This gives employees a sense of responsibility, control, and comfort. Their insight can also help inform your preparation plans.

So much about your workspace has to change when employees return to work post-COVID-19. Open spaces, like your office cafeteria, are not immune.

Closing off your dining area isn’t the ideal solution. Eating together is more than just an office perk. Your office cafeteria keeps employees on campus — reducing time spent away from the office. It encourages social networking — strengthening your workplace culture while improving employee satisfaction and wellness.

But these same benefits of the corporate cafeteria are now seen as liabilities in a post-COVID world.

The benefits of the office cafeteria are now seen as COVID liabilities.

Some options companies are considering include serving boxed lunches, increasing food-service staff (and eliminating self-serve models), and assigning meal times to employees to make it easier to clean and maintain lower space occupancy limits.

While those options vary, one commonality we’ve found is although the pandemic is forcing business owners to rethink their office design — they hope to keep their cafeterias and break rooms open. Many are using real-time occupancy data to make it happen.

Using employee behavior to adjust your food-service strategy

Companies use Density to manage the occupancy levels of their dining areas and to inform future policy changes.

Through Density, they can spot spikes in entrances and occupancy in real-time. They can also enable mobile alerts, so they know immediately if any cafeteria or break room exceeds a safe capacity threshold.

This data then helps them determine the necessary steps to reduce volume swell and maintain social distancing (such as assign lunch-room access by team or department or open up more eating areas).

Monitoring the real-time occupancy of your dining facility can also help you streamline your cleaning schedule.

Tip: Density can email people-count data digests to you, which you can then share with other key stakeholders to quickly assess the effectiveness of policies or programs.

Empower your employees with information

The same real-time data you use to maintain COVID compliance can also give employees more control over their own health and safety at work. This can help them overcome their anxiety over returning to work (PR Newswire, 2020).

Giving employees access to this real-time data also takes the pressure off of workplace and facilities teams — your employees have the tools to self-regulate.

Your employees can access Density’s Live View Dashboard to identify which cafes are getting busier or quieter — then choose when and where they want to go for lunch.

A growing number of companies are also posting Safe displays outside their cafes that let employees know when a space is safe to enter. These displays also serve as a visual cue — reminding employees of the measures you’re taking to keep them safe.

Using historical data to shape new food service policies (use case)

Existing Density customers have access to pre-COVID historical people-count data. They use this data to discover existing employee behavior patterns that inform new policies.

They can identify when their cafes were busiest pre-COVID, even isolating breakfast, lunch, and dinner service times to identify trends.

The example below (from a Density customer) reveals an interesting correlation between breakfast and lunch:

On Monday and Friday, where breakfast entrances spike earlier in the morning, there is a singular large surge in entrances at 12 PM for lunch, indicating a higher likelihood of people clustering (fine pre-COVID, but not okay for your return to work).

On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, the entrances for breakfast spike later in the morning, and there are two smaller surges for lunch, spreading entrances more evenly across the lunch service.

While correlation doesn’t equal causation, this data suggests that when most employees eat in the late morning, their visits for lunch are more evenly spread out through the meal service. These types of signals can help inform your initial food-service strategy as you prepare to return employees back to the office.

For example, extending breakfast and lunch service hours and educating employees about reducing the lunch rush may be sufficient to ease entrance volume.

In more extreme cases, this particular customer may want to reduce the number of employees that enter the cafe at 12 PM and flatten the curve of entrances over the lunch period so that people come at more varied times.

While not every company has access to this historical data, every company can use real-time people counting to make all their open spaces safe.

Read next: How to plan for social distancing in the workplace

Nearly 60% of employees expect to return to work by the end of Q1 2021 (according to data from CREtech). And 74% of facilities managed by CBRE Global Workplace Solutions are either already opened or expect to be by the end of 2020.

That’s long before we expect the widespread distribution of a COVID vaccine. It’s right around the corner.

As employees return to work, there’s a renewed focus on occupancy tracking. Keeping occupancy limits down when most people work from home is manageable. But as building occupancy increases, workspaces can reach reduced COVID occupancy levels — quickly.

Are you prepared to manage an increased volume of employees while maintaining lower than normal occupancy limits?

Managing COVID-related concerns as office density increases

Occupancy management is tricky. Staggered scheduling can limit the volume of workers entering an office at any given time. But what about smaller, more enclosed spaces? For example, Tesla is reducing conference room attendance to 1/3 and shuttle occupancy to 50%. How do you ensure compliance for every space (and corner of your space) your employees interact with?

And that’s just the early stages of this massive return to work. By the middle of 2021, most executives across the world expect all their employees to have access to the office. By the end of 2021, office occupancy levels could be back to pre-COVID numbers.

Companies need to know — in real time — when room’s occupancy nears its reduced capacity limit. And they need to be able to adjust these limits to maximize space while guaranteeing they remain COVID compliant. Below is an example of how managers can use Density to set real-time alerts: 

How counting occupancy can ease employee anxiety

70% of executives are concerned that their employees will be reluctant to return to work.

This reluctance can be traced to employees’ uncertainty about their safety. Social distancing guidelines and signage aren’t enough. Employees want to know how many people are in their space, compared to how many should be.

Help employees know when a space is safe to enter.

You can overcome some of that anxiety through clear communication. Show employees the real-time occupancy of every space — and let them know when a space is nearing its limit. This shows employees and visitors when it’s safe to enter. Below is an example of Density’s Safe Display: 

Adapt to a flexible future by looking at occupancy traffic trend

While office occupancy levels will increase over time, flexible work will transform the look of workplaces. Before the pandemic, most offices featured dedicated seats. 70% of executives anticipate a post-COVID workplace to feature far more free and unassigned seating.

How will a flexible future redefine your space? Do you need to reduce your footprint? Create a network of locations to accommodate an increasingly mobile workforce? Redesign your space into meeting studios?

The answers to these questions depend on how your employees interact with your space post-pandemic. Working from home and avoiding crowded spaces are expected for the short-term. But will that sentiment persist long-term?

Occupancy data will reveal these answers. The metrics you gather will inform your future building plans and workspace designs.

Hot desking has always been controversial. Opponents cite a decline in productivity and morale. Proponents tout the cost-savings and benefits to teamwork.

The pandemic has made hot desking even more controversial. Sharing anything — let alone the same workstation — with people outside our “bubbles” goes against everything we know about the coronavirus. But hot desking is uniquely designed to help workplace managers address the growing demand for a flexible workplace and its impact on office space.

Letting employees work remotely means your workspace won’t reach full capacity most days.

Most office workers want to work from home at least one day a week. More than half of employers anticipate most of their employees will do so even after the pandemic passes.

Letting employees work remotely means your workspace won’t reach full capacity most days. This will have consequences. For example, a PwC survey reveals 30% of executives anticipate reducing their real estate footprint in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

But it’s premature to assume the traditional office is dead.

In that same PwC survey, half of the surveyed executives expect an increase in office space needs.

Employees want to come back to the office. They see the office as the best place to connect, collaborate, and socialize with others. And since no one is sure how long social distancing will last, it’s no wonder why half of employers anticipate having more office space needs in the future, particularly as they adapt to a flexible work environment.

But an employee who only comes into the office once or twice a week doesn’t need their own desk. Hot desking helps maximize space, satisfy employees, and maintain specific occupancy limits. The biggest challenge you might face is convincing employees that hot desking is safe in the post-pandemic world. Employees will want to avoid shared objects.

How do you help them overcome this response? 

The safety of hot desking

It’s not uncommon in the hot-desking workplace for one desk to house as many as eight people throughout the day. While they may never cross paths, every employee leaves germs at that desk, increasing cross-contamination chances.

A personal desk — with one dedicated employee — houses around 10 million bacteria. Logic would lead one to assume that the more people who use a space, the more bacteria there likely is.

But there is an issue with this logic — keyboards, mice, and phones are the key bacterial offenders on a work desk. Many hot deskers bring their own equipment.

As a result, cleaning workstations between uses would not be that time consuming or challenging. In fact, hot desking can be safer in the post-pandemic world than offices with dedicated workstations. So the question isn’t really whether hot desking is safe, but rather is it possible for you to convince your team that it is?

Actual safety vs. perceived safety

Keeping your employees safe and making sure they feel safe are different challenges. Your goal is to address both.

It’s not enough to sanitize desks in between uses, for example. You want your employees to know the desks have been cleaned.

It’s even better if they’ve seen them get cleaned. Visual cues and firsthand experiences will reinforce to your employees the safety measure you’re taking at work.

Social distancing signage

Arrows and six-foot markers on the floor demonstrate your social distancing protocols. Putting a sign on a desk that needs to be cleaned eliminates human error — cleaning crews know where to clean; employees know where to avoid.

Occupancy limits

Digital signage like Safe helps employees know when a space is safe to enter by showcasing real-time occupancy of any room. Plus, Safe alerts workplace managers when a room reaches an unsafe occupancy limit.

Check-in equipment area

This idea comes from a recent experience at the grocery store. When leaving the market, someone takes our carriage and wipes it down. When it’s dried, he brings it over to the entranceway and stores it with the other cleaned carriages for the next shopper. This gives us confidence that the carriage we use next time is sanitized.

Use this same approach with workstation chairs and other non-personal items (landlines, for example). When someone reserves a desk, they check out a sanitized chair and other equipment. When they leave the workstation, they return their equipment to be cleaned.

Environmental control

People feel safe when they’re in control of their environment. It’s why many folks sanitized the mail and groceries when the pandemic first hit.

Some still do.

Give your employees a sense of control by letting them reserve workstations from home. Not only does this prevent unnecessary trips to the office, but it also eliminates the hostile first-come-first-serve work environment that many hot-desking workplaces experience.

For the foreseeable future, it’s also best practice to have employees complete a health questionnaire (e.g., symptoms screening, self-recorded temperature) before reserving a spot in the office.

Use data to make decisions

There is no playbook for how to return millions of employees to work — it’s never been done before. While you should be confident in your initial choices to keep your employees safe, you should also let data drive your decisions.

Desk booking tools tell you when and which desks are reserved. Density’s people counting sensors expand on this by validating any difference between the number of reservations/check-ins and actual on-site occupancy. This real-time data can trigger your booking system to pause reservations or release more availability — keeping you in compliance and maximizing your space.

Monitoring how employees use your space will also show you if and how long desks are being used. You can use this data to rationalize how many workstations you should have vs. how many “non-bookable spaces” (like open soft seating areas).

Transparency and data driven decisions

Many employees are anxious about coming back to work. Creating a hot-desk office environment could amplify this feeling. Be explicit with how you’re keeping your team — and space — safe. Use data to drive future decisions. These steps will give your employees a sense of safety and control over their environment — making them more confident about their return to work.