2022 Benchmark Data. Who Is Measuring What?

Hello Friends,

Who ended 2022 where you thought you would? Well, many of our customers did not and some ended the year finding themselves in the middle of surprising new trends. We’d like to share with you some of our 2022 sensor-based Utilization Benchmark Data. If you are curious about any of these key findings, please shoot me an email!

Phone Booths are in very high demand.

The data is clear that Workstations were not popular in 2022 with only 12% average utilization across the year.

In every single case, the Private Room category outperformed Workstations. Some workplaces saw a gap favoring Phone Booths as large as 54% (71% in phone booths vs. 17% at workstations). Collaborative areas follow the same trend wherein enclosed Meeting Rooms (42%) are more popular than open area Collaboration Spaces (27%). Surprisingly, however, both Meeting Rooms and Collaboration Spaces are more popular than they were in 2019.

In order to fully understand the room data, you have to peel back the onion by a few layers. The most important element to analyze in rooms right now is utilization by occupant count. What percentage of time do your rooms or spaces have 1 occupant in them? We are finding the answer to be, alot!

Why are phone booths so popular? Collaboration is happening, but it is occurring across a hybrid of modalities within and across organizations. Accordingly, people are taking video meetings in Phone Booths or small Meeting Rooms because these are the only spaces that offer privacy and noise isolation.

Ultimately, what this means for is your workspaces likely need more quiet, focus spaces and fewer workstations. It also highlights the fact that designing in more “we” space to accommodate the desire to collaborate is a great first step, but your spaces also have to meet the needs of employees taking calls during the non-collaboration hours of the day. You could take it one step further and design the hybrid schedules so that teams are in-person on the same days.

What have we been reading and studying lately?

• CBRE Occupancy Insights Report
• Honeywell Sustainability Index

What have we been posting lately?

• Key distinction of Allocation vs Utilization.
• How to put peak metrics into practice.

You’re doing great. Keep up the good work and let us know how we can help!