Office space planning is critical for success with a hybrid workforce, even more than it was when everyone worked in the office from 9-5, Monday to Friday

If businesses could get rent rebates for unused office space, they’d be rich. Estimates say that 27% of office space isn’t even being utilized. 

Workplaces must serve specific needs, feature collaborative spaces, offer efficient resources, promote wellness, and inspire a sense of culture and productivity.

Businesses are looking to maximize real estate footprint portfolios to build, manage, and measure a more efficient and strategic workplace. But how?

Making the most of worker performance and productivity means being proactive and strategic about your workplace design.

Companies have been evaluating their real estate footprint as workplaces accommodate hybrid workers. Real estate expansion is increasingly adopting a human-centered approach that prioritizes the needs of employees. Expanding efficiently required tailored, quantitative insights into the client’s operational framework, as senior management prepared to design a new location structured around employee behaviors and preferences. 

Your company has returned to the office at a hybrid capacity but now your office design no longer suit empoyee needs, in particular, meeting rooms. InnerSpace workplace analytics uncovers insights into how its employees had been using individual meeting rooms over the last two months.

The return-to-office plans are now in full swing. How is your reopening plan going? Looking to move to a hybrid workstyle? But how do you start? Find out who, when and why your employees are coming into the office with workplace analytics.

Dwell time is key to understanding how long employees stay in a space, and for what purpose. The insights it generates can promote both employee comfort levels and the efficient use of space in a workplace.

People want to return to the office, but not all the time. Most want to keep the freedom of remote work, yet infuse it with the in-person collaboration, meetings and social interactions that offices bring.

Equipped with the right data, it’s then possible to discern the ideal employee:desk ratio for each department’s unique needs, helping companies grow as occupancy and utilization of their office space changes over time.

The office must serve a purpose. Employees now seek the flexibility to commute to offices on specific days for specific purposes. A wide range of specific needs has to be addressed for each employee, and each department. 

The rise of hybrid workstyles is here. With it comes key questions about how an office can best support employees and adjust to the future of work.

In one particular study, our teams installed the InnerSpace platform in the main office of a global leader in lodging and hospitality. The goal was to understand the behavior patterns of two distinct teams of employees in a space. The client wanted to design the space efficiently, putting resources where they were needed most. 

So you’re looking to design a flexible space to suit a hybrid workforce model. But where to begin? Adapting the design of a space to suit your needs isn’t a one-time, all-or-nothing endeavour. As needs change, workplaces can evolve. For now though, we need a starting point for getting employees back into the building after a very long hiatus for many.

For employees, the emotional fallout from COVID’s impact and uncertainty has taken a major toll on their mental health – and it’s important that companies keep this in mind as they welcome their cohorts back. For guidance, many companies have sought the expertise of organizations that build and design plans for offices

As the return to the workplace sets up to be flex-first for most companies, assigned seating will give away to the need for hot-desking, hoteling, and neighborhood arrangements. With any strategy, the ability for employees to find and reserve a desk is key to productivity and a frictionless experience. 

As the return-to-the-workplace picks up steam, with companies plotting when and how to restart physical operations, we can see that flexible work is here to stay. Nine-to-five is a distant memory. Hybrid models, with employees commuting into the office on specific days for specific purposes only, are quickly becoming a popular return to work strategy for many large organizations.

Companies face the challenge not only of reopening offices, but restructuring them to suit how they expect teams will want to use them. But how can they prepare when there are more questions than answers?  To understand how people use the office, we conducted a study for one of our clients that looked at two different teams.

This new office paradigm demands a thoughtful approach. It is imperative for business owners to consider their commercial real estate space: how it’s used, maintained, and the experience of those working inside it. All answers are ultimately rooted in data. 

What’s your strategy to return to the office? If you’re like most of our clients, you’re likely most focused on the short term goal of simply getting people back to the office. Longer-term decision-making seems like a luxury and yet you’re probably also tasked with rationalizing your portfolio while stepping forward as a workplace transformation leader.

Now more than ever, we all want to visit grocery stores and other essential businesses when they’re not crowded. Before the pandemic, this information helped us to save time and avoid lines.  Now, knowing how busy a place is adds an extra layer of safety and comfort.

Our CEO James Wu shared the stage with an expert panel at the latest Realcomm webinar focused on workplace analytics for the future of work and the hybrid office. It was a timely discussion on how building owners and operators can go beyond occupancy data to facilitate a truly flexible workplace focused on density, efficiency and experience. In case you missed it, here are the highlights.

As companies look to return to the office, flexibility will be a primary focus that transforms meeting spaces. Collaboration, as we recently wrote, will be why offices remain essential to businesses, and the primary driver of why employees visit the workplace. Now as we rethink the role the office plays, meeting spaces will need to evolve to support collaboration, socialization and creativity.

The office isn’t dead. The office as we knew it, is. For many of you this statement comes as no surprise. While we’ve proven that working from home is doable, many have recognized that this dramatic shift was not without its negatives.

As the future of work evolves, so too does the role the office will play and this raises questions critical to its evolution: How much office space is needed? How should it be designed? What is the purpose of the office? How can it help improve culture, communication and productivity? How will it serve my company’s growth?

InnerSpace predicts 2021 tech trends for how the office will transform this year including the critical role of workplace experience managers and fully interconnected office buildings

The honeymoon phase of working from home is officially over. And despite misleading headlines touting that most companies will move to permanent virtual operations, the reality is that we’ve learned something during this pandemic. The office is a desired destination that provides opportunities for greater team cohesion, collaboration, social connection - and yes, even actual work.

We’re now six months into a global pandemic. Spring lockdowns gave way to gradual reopenings, and now the threat of closures loom large again as case numbers in many regions creep upwards. For retail owners, office managers, and campus administrators who are trying to keep people safe and their doors open, there’s never been a more critical time to manage how many people are in a space. Enter: occupancy data.

It’s not long since “digital transformation” first became a business buzzword. In the 90s and 00s, the concept spoke to the opportunity to digitize an organization, to shift from manual input, to bring a business online, to deploy the latest e-solutions.

Three-part series. Companies retuning to the office after Covid-19. Part 1: https://blog.innerspace.io/helping-businesses-come-out-the-other-side-of-covid-19

It’s time we all have a heart-to-heart conversation about meeting rooms. No, really. They are the piece of working in an office that never quite fits the puzzle, the headache that never quite subsides, the element whose coordination always takes longer than it should.

Work life in an office is slowly slipping away from what was once the norm not long ago: 9-5 hours in the office, a couple of mandatory breaks, and a sea of desks adorned with personal effects, drawers of snacks and spare shoes underneath.

At the start of spring this year, InnerSpace announced the close of a $3.2 million seed round led by BDC Capital’s Women in Technology Fund.  Recently, InnerSpace Chief Marketing Officer Cerys Goodall sat down with Anthony Lacavera of GlobalLive in partnership with BDC to discuss how the platform enhances productivity and improves employee well-being. 

From Collision to Queens University and the upcoming DC5G, our CEO James Wu has enlightened audiences across North America about how we’re dramatically changing the way indoor space is used – and the powerful benefits it brings to companies. We caught up with James between travel to get his thoughts on our company’s progress and why indoor location is the way of the future.

Anyone who’s worked in an office can attest to the fact that meetings can sometimes be a waste of time. But as it turns out, trying to find space to even hold a meeting can be wasteful on a far greater level. Client calls that go long and delay the next meeting; three people taking up a 15-seat boardroom; unannounced issues that require private space to chat – the reasons are varied and often frustrating.

Flexible work solutions including hotdesking and hotelling can help save on real estate and enable growth without expanding your foot print. Is it right for you?

Smart buildings drive new digital experiences for employees, while the backend data informs critical operations.

There are three things you need to focus on if you want to create a beneficial workplace experience that improves employee satisfaction and productivity, and supports your bottom line. Check out our latest blog post to find out what they are!

Managing commercial real estate with the power of people analytics, occupancy, time on site, and visitor frequency is critical to leasing structures and providing tenants with awesome service.

Your employees are wasting 45 minutes every day trying to find somewhere to work. Help employees find desks, meeting rooms, collaboration spaces based on their needs.

What are the three things you need to create a great office? The environment, office design and technology can make your office superior. Do your employees love your office space?

Indoor location intelligence can help property owners and managers deliver a better experience - while saving reset costs - for prospective tenants.

When you think about the problem InnerSpace solves - being able to understand how people and things behave within a built space - our feline friends felt like a great way to celebrate a part of our internal culture, but also to communicate with prospective customers how they can use the InnerSpace platform.

Research by the TUC based on ONS data suggests that 4.2 million of us, or 13.7% of the workforce, now regularly work from home and another 1.8 million people would like to do so given the opportunity.