Especially in hybrid setups, optimizing workspace efficiency is crucial. You don’t want your employees to not be able to find a desk or room to work from, but you also want to avoid having tons of unused space.
With teams growing, working schedules that change, and other factors, balancing space capacity and people is not a one and done task.
Monitoring desks occupancy might be beneficial, and in some cases absolutely needed, if you want to have an overview of how your office space is used.
Peak hours, lack of desk availability, work patterns, and more… that’s all stuff you may want to track.
And in this post, we’ll show you how!
Why Monitor Desk Occupancy?
Companies have benefited from smaller offices and remote work, but tracking desk occupancy allows these benefits to continue making sense. Having a sense of your desk occupancy – and even further, having the tools to manage these workspaces — allows you to properly manage limited office space and accommodate remote work arrangements.
Tracking desk occupancy has become an increasingly common and critical task for office managers and administrators, so having efficient methods for it is just as critical.
Two was to Monitor Desk Occupancy
There are fundamentally two ways to track desk occupancy: via sensors installed at each desk, and via software. And we’ll show you why in most cases, software wins.
Note: Technically, smart video systems can also track that, but for a variety of reasons (privacy, implementation, costs, and more) they really aren’t a suitable option for office spaces, so we will not cover it here.
Desk occupancy sensors
At first glance, one might think occupancy sensors are great because they require no effort for the user, and the real-time data is usually quite accurate.
However, there are tons of reasons why this may not be a great option for office spaces.
- Privacy: your employees may not love the idea that there are monitoring sensors lying around. Even if the data collected is anonymous, it might create a sense of unnecessary control.
- The data is anonymous. You don’t know which team or department is using the space more. You don’t know if multiple people use the same desk throughout a day, or if it’s the same person.
- It requires hardware deployment and maintenance. If something doesn’t work, you need to be onsite to fix it. Plus, it can be costly.
- It’s a standalone tracker, you can’t combine that data with visitors data, desk reservations, and so on.
Sensors might work in certain environments (like public spaces), but they are not suitable for an office space or the needs of HR and office managers.
Desk Booking Software
With desk booking software organizations can easily monitor their space usage through visual floor maps and analytics. And that includes desk and meeting room occupancy. You can look at it this way, from the employee perspective there is some kind of action required, either a desk reservation, or a check-in, or both.
These are the common ways to track desk occupancy.
- Desk reservations
- Virtual check-ins
- QR-code check-ins
Desk reservations
When users book a desk to work from, you automatically collect data that can be looked at in relation to the total number of desks. You might occasionally have no shows (users booking a desk but not coming to the office), but for the most part the data will be solid.
Virtual check-ins
You can ask your employees to check-in and check-out on their desk booking app when they are at their desk. This can be a standalone process, where they just show up and check-in or combined with a previous desk reservation.
QR code check-ins
Basically the same processes as the one above, but with users scanning a QR code (that you place at each desk) instead. Similar outcome, different action for the user.
About Archie
Archie’s Desk Booking software offers all 3 methods listed above, and we are soon rolling out a new insights dashboard to make it even easier to track occupancy and other critical workspace metrics.
Why is it that important?
Your workplace is a dynamic environment… and averages lie.
Imagine you have 100 desks, and on average 70 people are working in your office. At first sight everything looks good, but with more accurate desk occupancy tracking you might find out that on Fridays only 30 people are at the office, while on Tuesdays and Wednesdays you have 100, meaning that some people would want to come in, but can’t because you’re at capacity. Or worse, they show up and there is no available desk for them.
Another consideration could be regarding who is using your space, is the marketing team mostly working remotely? Is your finance department often working on site? Knowing this can help you better understand how your organization operates, and make sure the physical space reflects the needs of your team.
Side benefits
If you look at desk occupancy as one of many things your workspace software can do, there might be benefits for your employees too.
For example, with Archie employees can easily look up their colleagues to see if they’re in the office and which workstation they’re working from. This way they feel empowered to easily collaborate and come to the office. Similarly, an interactive map or office floor plan provides employees with a visual representation of the office layout, including available workstations, meeting rooms, and amenities.
With hybrid and remote teams, mobile apps are almost a requirement. With a mobile version of the software, employees have access to the software even when they’re working remotely or on the move, and can make reservations or changes on the go.
Even more, flexible and remote teams work with other tools to collaborate online. Some desk occupancy monitoring software easily integrates with existing apps (like Slack, Teams, or Google Calendar), making it even more convenient. Employees can seamlessly book desks directly from their calendar applications, ensuring that their workspace reservations are synchronized with their other work commitments and schedules.
Ready to Test it?
You can easily test a demo of Archie’s Desk software to see what a modern desk management solution looks like.
