Without actionable workplace analytics, this question is difficult to really answer. You may be thinking to yourself, “What in the world does workplace analytics and COVID-19 have in common?” As of the time of this being written, the World Health Organization has officially declared a global pandemic and several significant social distancing measures have been taken around the world: travel from Europe to the US has been temporarily banned, the NBA has suspended its season, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament is canceled, Italy has shut down all non-essential commerce, major cruise lines canceled all sailings for two months, the stock market has paused trading twice due to sell offs and officially moved into bear market territory, etc. No matter your age, it’s turning out to be one of, if not the most culturally impacting events of a lifetime.
As far as the workplace is concerned, organizations are encouraging or mandating that employees work from home and workplace utilization metrics now required reporting back to executives for tracking. So, what does that leave us with? The answer… a whole lot of empty office space. I would even argue that it leaves organizations with EVEN MORE empty office space. Most respected reporting sources state that office space is utilized around 50% on average anyways. Working from home is not a new trend. For the last decade or so, organizations have been supporting the agile and mobile workforce with concepts like hoteling and remote work, enabling the benefits of work-life balance and performance all while saving millions on their balance sheets with smaller and more efficient spaces redesigned to embrace these concepts. It’s been a win-win methodology for organizations that truly embrace it.
This all brings us to the year 2020 and COVID-19. When business goes back to normal, executives, facilities, and real estate teams must come together and evaluate what the impact truly was of having a largely mobile workforce. Why not take the opportunity right now to evaluate what action to take with your space that was already unused before the coronavirus? This would mean seriously taking a look at workplace analytics technology to get empirical facts on how space is being used. Helpful hint: make sure you choose a solution that can give you past, present, and future data in order to look at utilization pre- and post- COVID-19.
According to the Deloitte Insights 2020 commercial real estate outlook , only 30 percent of organizations are capturing data and actually generating insights for decision making. That means most organizations are staring down the barrel of millions and millions of wasted real estate dollars. For most companies, the most expensive line items on the balance sheet are people and real estate. If people can do the work that is required of them from anywhere, how many millions of dollars are potentially being wasted for business that is being performed elsewhere?
Learn more about the benefits of having a flexible workspace.
