Flexible Working
In the City of London, a company with 500 employees assigned to 500 workstations and where occupancy is at 40% on any working day is wasting £3 million each year on under-utilized space.
This rapid rise in flexible working - where workers can work from home, on the move or from telecenters - has resulted in a staggering decrease in office utilization. Senior executives may believe that desk occupancy is 100 per cent for their administrative staff and around 60-70 per cent for their managers and professionals. However, in reality, it is more like 40 per cent. With most organizations assigning a desk to each employee, it is not difficult to realise that organizations are tying up huge amounts of money in redundant space. It is not unusual to find companies carrying between 25 and 50 per cent excess property.
Consequently, the potential to reduce office costs by divesting under-utilized space is enormous. For example, a company in the City of London with 500 employees assigned to 500 workstations where occupancy is at 40% on any working day is wasting over £3 million each year on under-utilized space. Combine this cost with the company’s energy bill to heat, light, ventilate and air-condition 60 per cent of the office that lies empty, and the financial waste is astounding.
Shared workspace
The way we work is constantly changing with an increasing number of employees choosing to work more flexibly. This means that the provision of a permanent desk for each member of the workforce is now unnecessary, and it is costing businesses millions of pounds from under-utilization of desks.
In the past, companies have tried to deal with the problem of half-empty offices by simply reducing the number of desks available and asking employees to use whichever desk was free. This concept often proved unpopular with the workforce and was difficult to manage successfully.
In order for desk sharing to be effective, it is important that staff do not feel alienated from their work environment. Even if they are in the office only one or two days per week, each staff member has unique working requirements.
Providing a
booking solution that enables staff profiling and matching desk attributes to their needs (desk size, privacy and certain software packages) will largely assist this transition.