COVID-19 has made space management even more complicated.

It turns out most employees can do their jobs just fine from home. Now many of them aim to continue to work from home at least a few days a week (1).

When they do come to the office, they expect the workplace to feel and look safe. They don’t want to walk into an overcrowded room, for example.

This has companies rethinking their workplace strategy. If employees can and want to work from home, dedicated desks seem unnecessary. If lower occupancy is the new normal, open floor plans might need some walls.

You’ve heard all this before. There is no shortage of predictions about the return to work. But what these predictions fail to mention is that no one knows what’s going to happen. Not generally speaking, and certainly not specifically for your organization.

Predictions are fun to read. But strategic planning requires real-time, accurate data. That’s why AB testing is the future of space management.

In the digital world, AB testing is when you compare two versions of a webpage or app against each other to determine which one performs better.

This same approach can work with physical space. In fact, we believe it must.

Let behavior dictate design

In an essay for The New Yorker, John Seabrook writes that workspace design is about changing behavior (2).

We disagree.

Employees today don’t have to come to the office unless they want to. Your job is to create a workplace experience that compels them to come.

You do this by observing employee behavior and adapting accordingly. Your office space should match the intent of its inhabitants.

For example, let’s assume you open up to 30% capacity this spring. You use badge data to estimate that the number of people who came through your doors reached that threshold (of course, badge data can’t give you an accurate number of people in your building at any given time).

This indicates employees want to use the office — it doesn’t tell you how they use it.

But how employees use your space is at the core of space management and planning. Engineers working from a desk all day require different space needs than teams reserving conference rooms to collaborate.

As you open your offices, who will show up? What will they do when they get there? You won’t really know until it happens.

Predictions are fun to read. But strategic planning requires data.

Observing how employees use your space will help you adapt to their needs and make smarter space allocation decisions. But to make these adaptations and decisions cost-efficient, you need versatility in your design.

The future is flexible

AB testing is easy in a digital space. It can take minutes to redesign and launch a webpage.

Real estate is more rigid — but it’s not inflexible. While you’re confined to the space you have, that space can be reconfigured in many forms using partitions and furniture.

There are countless modular furniture solutions in the market that make iterative workplace design realistic. Rockwell Unscripted by Knoll is one example (3).

And movable partitions are far from a new concept.

The cubicle design everyone knows — and many loathe — was originally intended to promote versatility through movable hinged partitions.

Inventor Robert Propst (4) envisioned a more dynamic action office, where space design would adapt to different needs and use cases.

Two decades after introducing his concept, Propst’s hinged partitions devolved into inert cubicles, and the rest is history. Don’t blame Propst, though. He abhorred the cubicle design.

“The dark side of this is that not all organizations are intelligent and progressive,” he told an interviewer in 1998. “Lots are run by crass people who can take the same kind of equipment and create hellholes. They make little bitty cubicles and stuff people in them. Barren, rathole places.”

Propst’s action-office concept met the death grip of corporate greed and the bottom line. Today, however, packing people into small spaces won’t fly. In the short-term, social distancing mandates it. In the long-term, employees will.

The pandemic has turned the office into a perk, not a requirement. Companies have no choice but to design their space to meet their employees’ needs.

That could be costly if you design based on assumptions. If, however, you design based on feedback from real-time data, you can create a more efficient space management solution that delivers an unparalleled workspace experience.

When employees return to work, they want to minimize the objects they touch. They want to know that the rooms they spend time in are safe. And they want to know their employers aren’t complacent with safety measures.

Creating a phygital office experience makes all this possible.

The post-COVID “phygital” office

In retail, a phygital experience connects the physical and digital world to enhance the customer experience. Look at it as a formula: digital + physical = enhanced experience.

A prime example is the Amazon Go grocery store. Customers scan a code with their smartphone (digital), go to the grocery store to pick up the products they want (physical), and leave without having to wait in line to check out (enhanced experience).

The post-COVID office can take a page out of this playbook. Even with the persistence of remote work, physical offices still matter. Most employees want to return to the office, at least part of the time.

Creating a phygital office will make them feel safe at work while also enhancing their overall experience. Here’s how.

Fewer touchpoints

Touching a surface infected with the coronavirus is not thought to be the primary cause of the spread of COVID-19. Still, a person could get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object with the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or eyes.

The CDC recommends washing or sanitizing your hands after contacting any commonly touched area like door handles, keypads, and counters. That’s obviously good advice. But minimizing touchpoints overall will give your employees greater peace of mind.

There are several office touchpoints that you can eliminate with touchless technology.

Sign-in screens

Many companies require visitors and employees to sign in to a space using a touchpad. Some companies still use pen and paper. Apps like Envoy make the sign-in experience seamless and touch-free. It allows visitors and employees to sign in with an app or QR code (so they only have to touch their phones).

Going touchless also makes signing in quicker and showcases your brand as forward-thinking to visitors and guests.

Doors handles

Door handles are bacteria hotspots. There are many ways to reduce the need to use these handles. Some offices have automatic doors, but that’s not realistic for all offices or instances.

Some offices already use badges to grant access to spaces. While badges can help minimize cross-contamination, they can be a pain to assign and deliver key cards to employees.

Your employees always carry their phones with them. Tools like Kisi and Openpath simplify the process by turning phones into “badges.” You control access levels. Your employees don’t have to worry about carrying (and losing) their badges.

Point-of-sale screens

When COVID first hit, many retail and foodservice businesses stopped accepting cash. They switched to card payments to minimize cross-contamination. But patrons still had to complete transactions on a point-of-scale screen touched by countless others before them.

There’s a better way to handle purchases in areas like your office cafeteria — contactless credit-card devices. These devices are easy to find. Square and Clover are popular solutions. Employees can pay by tapping their phones, watches, or cards. You can even add contactless technology to vending machines (Ingenico, 2020).

Reduce uncertainty

For the better part of a year, we all lived (and worked) in bubbles. Going to the grocery store was our biggest adventure — and for many, it was a journey met with incredible anxiety.

While you can’t completely remove employees’ return-to-work anxiety, you can arm them with the information they need to make decisions for their own health and safety. Many companies use Density technology to make this happen.

Arm employees with the information they need to make decisions for their own health and safety.

With Density, employees can know how safe a space is before they enter.

Our sensors count people (anonymously) in any space in real-time. Employers can then share that data with their employees in a variety of ways to reduce uncertainty. Below are two examples:

Show whether a space is safe to enter

Employers can install a display (like a monitor, iPad, etc.) outside a space to show the current and maximum occupancy of that space (as counted by our sensors). These displays clearly show whether it’s OK for employees to enter a space or not.

Safe Display is a powerful tool anytime an employee needs to enter a space but can’t see into it first (like bathrooms, lobbies, break rooms, dining halls, and staircases).

See which spaces are safe — from afar

With Safe by Density, you can share a unique URL or QR code with employees (on your website, internal wiki, etc.). Employees click on that URL or scan the QR code to see the occupancy levels of every space in your building or across your real estate portfolio:

This data helps reduce unnecessary trips to the office and removes any uncertainty of space availability. Employees can view the directory to see which rooms, floors, or buildings are safe before going there.

Employees want to know their employers are serious about safety

Adding tools like Envoy for touchless sign-in and Kisi for touchless entry show your commitment to employee safety.

But one of the most effective ways to make clear your commitment is to adapt to changes quickly.

For example, what do you do when your second-floor common area reaches capacity? You’ll earn your employees’ trust and respect if you adjust your procedures to meet the moment.

Companies use Density’s Safe Alerts to know when any space nears its capacity threshold or reaches a certain number of visits (great for streamlining cleaning services based on usage rather than arbitrary schedules).

We’ve had customers see real-time occupancy levels peak mid-day, leading them to send company-wide emails encouraging employees to work from home for the rest of the day.

This timely response to real-time scenarios shows your employees how seriously you take their safety. It also demonstrates you have the technology to maintain safe levels throughout the day.

Your office will change. Your employees’ experience shouldn’t suffer.

The post-COVID office is going to look different. Masks and social distancing may unnerve many employees — they’re a reminder of our new normal.

Technology can help your employees feel (and be) safe while actually enhancing their experience in the office. Rather than sanitize their hands 10 times a day, they can use their phones to enter spaces and pay for lunch. Instead of staying at their desks all day to avoid close encounters, they can see which room and floor are safe to go to — before they make the trip.

Merging the right digital tools inside your physical office will help quell some of your employees’ fears of returning to work. In an era when work-from-home is a realistic alternative, you need to do everything you can to encourage your team to want to come to the office.

Many companies already have a badge system set up to restrict access to spaces. So, they choose to use it to count people as well.

But badge data doesn’t count people the way you need. The data it provides is incomplete (not everyone badges in; badge data doesn’t show you how people interact with your space). Relying on this incomplete data can lead to costly and politicized decisions rooted in assumption rather than reality.

Badge data doesn’t really tell you how many people are in your space

Not everyone badges in — even when they’re supposed to.

One of our Fortune 500 customers knew this. Not all of their warehouse workers badged in when they came to work — tailgating is a common cause:

Our customer dug into their data to see how widespread the behavior was. On any given day, 20% of their workers don’t badge in. That’s more than 10,000 employees across their entire portfolio — every day.

If they relied on badge data alone, it’d be nearly impossible for our customer to optimize current space needs and forecast future needs.

But let’s say you don’t experience tailgating issues. You have a workplace policy that somehow enjoys 100% compliance. Badge data doesn’t tell you how people use your space while inside your building — which is what you really need to know.

Someone badges in. So what?

It doesn’t matter that 50 people badged in at 8:30 a.m. What matters is how these people used your space. Did they go to the cafeteria, a conference room, or a phone booth? Did they use an interior staircase to travel to a different floor for a meeting?

And when did they leave your office?

Knowing this helps you identify current and future space needs.

If most employees gravitate to one or two conference rooms, you may need to assign teams to other areas to balance your population density. If most rooms are empty after noon, it might be time to rethink your lease options.

Badge data doesn’t give you this granularity — unless employees are forced to badge in everywhere.

One of our clients installed a Density sensor at their cafeteria’s entryway to better understand their foodservice needs. Over the course of one week, it was clear that 11 a.m was peak volume. This client adjusted both staffing scheduling and food orders accordingly:

And while historical behavior is useful, knowing how employees will use your space in the future is even more valuable. This same customer used Density to forecast its foodservice needs for the following month:

The way people interact with your space is changing, particularly post-COVID. Badge data does not show you how or why.

Knowing the how and why will help you make smarter space decisions. Do you need more or fewer phone booths? Should offices be converted into small meeting rooms? How can you validate the need for an additional satellite office?

Badge data can’t give you the answers. The data it does provide is typically hard to decipher without a serious time investment. Even if you can afford that investment, you shouldn’t have to.

Below is a Density report that shows the peak and average utilization of an entire portfolio in a single dashboard:

This report shows that while Rooms 209 and 210 are way over capacity, Room 201 is not. Neither are most conference rooms. Our customer pulled this data within seconds of needing it.

Badge data forces you to make assumptions

Badge data doesn’t differentiate between that salesperson who comes in for a 30-minute meeting and the engineer stationed at her desk for 8 straight hours.

But these differentiations are critical to space management. Teams are always asking for more space. You don’t want to be the person to say no, but it’s nice to have clear data to back you up when no is the only answer.

Take, for example, this room-use report (below) showing how meeting space 401 is grossly underused:

Nearly half of the time, one person uses it (although the room is designed for more than 8 people). The team that uses this floor doesn’t need more space — they need to make better use of their existing space

Data proves it.

Most folks know there’s wasted space in their offices. Relying on badge data forces you to assume where. Occupancy and utilization data can pinpoint where that waste actually is. Only occupancy and utilization data can tell you how to load balance people and assets without leasing more space.

And Density does it without invading employee privacy.

If you only need to know how many people enter your building every day, badge swipes may be sufficient (though not foolproof).

But you don’t make space decisions based on incoming traffic. You make decisions based on occupancy and utilization over time.

Badge data can’t provide that.

Not everyone wants to live in a city (Fortune, 2020). COVID-19 showed us all just how possible it is to work from anywhere — even home.

But most employees don’t want to work from home (Gensler, 2020). They value spending time with colleagues. They just don’t want to sit through hour-long traffic to get to the city to do it.

Companies have to adapt.

A hub-and-spoke workplace checks off most boxes. It lets employees work remotely and connect with colleagues when needed or required. It promotes a healthy work/life balance (less commute time) and brings companies closer to where the talent is — in suburbs, rather than dense urban areas.

Many companies were already headed this direction pre-COVID. The pandemic made it abundantly clear that to remain competitive in this new landscape, companies may need to increase the number of suburban regional locations (spokes) in their portfolio.

But for all the benefits of adding suburban spokes to your portfolio, there is one glaring challenge: space management.

Managing offices you rarely visit is hard. And each regional office you add to your portfolio compounds the challenges you face: How do you ensure your existing space is being efficiently used before you expand or move? How can you validate employees’ needs? How do you make objective recommendations regarding efficient space allocation

Managing offices you rarely visit is hard — but not impossible.

And those were just the challenges you faced before the pandemic. Since COVID-19, you have added concerns like maintaining lower-than-usual occupancy limits and social distancing guidelines.

Data is at the heart of all these challenges. The more you know how your space is used, the better decisions you can make about your space(s).

A singular look at all your spaces

We’re seeing more companies rely on sensor data to manage their regional suburban spaces from one central hub (they’re also using occupancy sensors to validate the need for additional spokes).

With Density, for example, you install sensors at each location. Our software then combines each sensor’s data to reveal metrics at the space, floor, building, and portfolio level in a singular dashboard.

This makes it easy to identify which spaces are most popular, which rooms are underused, and which teams use more space than they’re allotted.

Why occupancy sensors?

Sensor data is more complete and accurate than other methods, like badge data. With badge data, you have no idea what happens after someone hard badges into your regional office — not unless you’re there to watch them or you require employees to badge in to every space (neither are realistic).

And many companies that manage multiple locations deploy different badge systems for each building. This means separate data pulls to perform any analysis — an arduous task that often falls to the wayside.

You can’t depend on badge data to tell you the real-time occupancy of every space across your portfolio. As a result, you won’t know if the third floor of your satellite office is approaching capacity (important for the post-COVID workplace).

Occupancy sensors do show real-time occupancy levels. Density’s software does alert you if occupancy is approaching capacity. And, because sensors offer a more complete dataset, you can make better informed space planning decisions based on accurate historical usage.

And unlike video cameras, sensors can anonymously count people as they move through any entry point or open space. Neither our sensors nor our software captures any personally identifiable information (PII). This is what a Density sensor sees:

Our technology is anonymous by design, meaning you don’t have to compromise valuable workplace data to protect employee privacy.

The data these sensors provide help you make objective, non-political decisions on how to use, add, or shed space. Should you hold onto your existing lease? Should you transition to smaller spokes? Can you justify the push toward a hybrid model?

Occupancy sensors can tell you.

Below are example of how current clients who manage multiple regional locations use Density’s sensors and online dashboard to make smarter decisions about their spaces — no matter where those spaces are located.

Identify waste

Take a look at the peak and average utilization percentage of each space. That way you avoid buying unnecessary square footage and instead understand how to spread employees and teams out more efficiently (both at the Neighborhood and Building levels).

You can also instantly see your potential savings if you were to eliminate unused space from your portfolio.

Measure square feet per person at a glance

See how well each space performs against your target capacity benchmark — including at peak density. Identify the buildings, floors, and spaces that have the lowest average density — so you can make informed space allotment decisions.

Quickly share all this critical reporting to key stakeholders for easy buy-in.

Create accurate baselines for future builds or improvements

See which days and times are quiet, busy, or over capacity across your portfolio. This data can be used to stagger schedules where necessary, move people around, or right-size you overall portfolio.

Many companies are looking to expand — or initialize — their hub-and-spoke workplace in response to the demand for flexible work. Sensor data can help you determine if this is your best option and, if so, what steps to take next.

As you add more locations to your portfolio, installing occupancy sensors across each location makes it easy to manage and maximize every space across your entire real estate portfolio.