Workplace evolution with Julia Calabrese, Ford Motor Company

The pandemic served as a catalyst for many companies to evolve their workplace strategies. For Ford, truly evolving its approach to work meant bringing in external experts. 

The workplace team brought in a think tank composed of diverse experts to understand employees’ psychological states and new needs. 

“We knew this was such a big problem in a world that was rapidly changing and that we didn’t have the expertise to solve this question internally,” says Julia Calabrese, Global Design & Brand Manager at Ford Motor Companies. “Out of that, we got nine guiding principles, which really shaped our future of work, our workplace policies, and really how we do business today.” 

The Ford team brought in a think tank composed of diverse experts to understand employees’ psychological states and new needs.

In addition to recognizing when additional expertise is needed, Calabrese and her team also understand that design is iterative. It’s unlikely you’ll get it right the first time. 

She offers three keys to developing a successful, human-first workplace, all rooted in collecting feedback:

  1. Get internal feedback from diverse perspectives before launching changes
  2. Pilot the change in one location and gather utilization data with sensors
  3. Make adjustments based on that data, coupled with employee feedback, before rolling out the updates globally.

Utilization or Critical Mass: How to unlock your workplace ROI

Utilization may not be the right metric to measure how your workplace is performing. But if utilization isn’t the right metric, what is?

“Utilization as a concept is broken and a little bit arbitrary.”

Andrew Farah — Density CEO

That is a question Density CEO Andrew Farah and Head of Product Emre Sonmez explored as they showcased our newest app, Density Atlas, to an audience of global workplace leaders. 

Dig Deeper: Watch the full virtual event here

Creating Critical Mass

While developing Atlas, we asked F500 workplace leaders what their biggest challenges were. Two key themes emerged:

  1. Do we have the right types of spaces?
  2. Do we have the right amount of space?

As we dug deeper into these challenges and analyzed how people use the office when they come in, what we discovered is that the question we all should be asking is, How much space do we need to create the office buzz employees want?”

We call this Critical Mass, the ideal balance of space and human energy that creates a better workplace experience for employees. Atlas was designed to show you if your spaces are achieving it –– and what to do if they’re not. 

How Atlas measures critical mass

“When people come back to physical buildings, the question that is on everybody’s mind is, ‘How do you create a critical mass of people on a floor or in a space?’”

Andrew Farah, Density CEO

Understanding the critical mass of your spaces requires more than just a best guess. And employee surveys don’t provide the level of unbiased specificity needed. 

Atlas provides the insights it takes to make critical decisions:

  • How many square feet you need per person: Reduce your real estate footprint to what’s necessary. Project expansion needs based on future hiring. 
  • Which amenities employees prefer: Provide more of what employees want, and stop wasting money on amenities no one uses.
  • What is the right ratio of “me” to “we” spaces: Give employees the right amounts and types of spaces to improve the employee experience and raise productivity.  
  • Which desk configuration has the highest utilization: Find the best layout for your office so desk space isn’t sitting empty.   
  • Which office floors are underperforming: Create strategies to improve utilization or close those floors and save money on utility and cleaning costs.

The full range of Atlas’ capabilities can help you understand the ROI on real estate costs, and design workplaces that support your RTO goals.

“It’s a very strange time in real estate and [the] workplace, Farah says. “We’re working to build tools that can be fundamentally useful to some of the decisions that you all are going through.”

The accurate, unbiased utilization data provided by Atlas shows you exactly how employees use your space. Do they prefer collaborative areas or focus spaces? Where are the hotspots in your building, and why are they popular? Which days have the lowest occupancy and would benefit from incentivized programs? 

“The reason [Atlas] is important for workplace and real estate teams is because it gives you empirical data to inform strategic decisions about what you invest in, or what you divest yourself of,” Farah says. “Really great, clear data fundamentally changes the outcomes of what you invest in and what you don’t.” 

See more of Atlas and how it empowers F500 companies to unlock their workplace ROI. 

Watch On-Demand Event

Workplace Report: Mondays are the New Fridays

Offices have historically been pretty empty on Fridays. Now, according to an analysis of dozens of Density customers, it appears Mondays are following suit. 

Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays have always enjoyed the highest utilization rates (most folks are familiar with the mid-week mountain effect). According to our data, pre-pandemic offices saw a roughly 40-42% utilization rate during these days. 

Mondays used to see just a slight dip in utilization (39%) compared to their mid-week counterparts.

Today, that dip is much more considerable. 

While Tuesday-Thursday utilization rates hover at around 20-24% in this Return-to-Office era, Mondays are only seeing an average utilization rate of 16%. 

In other words, Mondays are behaving a lot like Fridays.

Utilization has dropped throughout the week — but Monday and Friday stand alone

It’s no surprise that workplace utilization has not reached pre-pandemic levels. Our data shows it’s dropped to 19% — about half what it was in 2020. 

Mondays see a 58% drop in average utilization comparing February 2020 vs September 2022.

But the drop is even more profound for Mondays and Fridays. Mondays have experienced a 58% drop in average utilization (from 38.8% in February 2020 to 16.2% in September 2022). Fridays have experienced a 63% drop (from 30% in February 2020 to 11% in September 2022). 

The takeaway

Workplace leaders are hyper focused on creating workplace experiences that attract employees to the office. 

And while many employees want to (and do) come to the office 1-2 days a week, the data is clear: people like to work from home Mondays and Fridays. What can (and should) workplace leaders do with that insight?

Do you shut down offices on these days to save on operational costs; or create programs designed to bring people in on those days? Answering these questions will be atop the priority lists of workplace leaders in 2023.

Density’s analysis is based on 188 complete floor plans split among 27 major customers, between February 2020 and September 2022. Numbers are based on the average of the “hourly average utilization” at the floor level, between 8 am and 6 pm local time, Monday through Friday.

Dror Poleg: The office of the future is not a place

“How can we bring people back to the office?” has been the question on the minds of workplace teams everywhere. Perhaps it’s a question that reflects an outdated mindset on the built environment and what employees want. 

Instead, think beyond the walls of the office, suggests Dror Poleg, author of Rethinking Real Estate

“The office of the future is not a place,” he says. “It’s a network of locations that enable people to do whatever it is that they need to do at that moment to be productive and happy.”

And what people need can vary greaty. Perhaps it’s to record an interview, or podcast. Perhaps it’s to socialize with colleagues or to work quietly. Perhaps it’s to impress customers. 

“All of these things are not [happening in] a single place,” Poleg says. 

So what do workplace leaders do to offer employees the experiences they need and want? 

Poleg suggests that rather than expanding your company’s real estate footprint to accommodate new needs, look to the community. What resources already exist in the city that employees can take advantage of? 

Try a cafe for employee socializing or a recording studio for podcast production. A coworking space could provide workers with a shorter, more pleasant commute than coming into the office. There are existing spaces in your area that can be incorporated into the “office” to provide a wider range of resources and environments, making your company more attractive to workers. 

“A lot of employers and landlords are saying, ‘’Yes, we’re going to bring hospitality into the office,’” Poleg says. “But instead of adding some little token things that try to make the office more like a restaurant…if your employees want to go and hang out at a restaurant, let them go hang out in the restaurant.”