Today, office utilization rates have decreased significantly due to a number of factors. Like most businesses, you’re probably looking for ways to enhance your office utilization in order to cut down costs. Before you make any adjustments to your office, you need to determine how efficiently (or not) your office space is holding your staff. You can determine this by measuring your current office utilization.
How to Measure Your Office Utilization
Start by dividing the total size of your office space (in square feet) by the total number of employees the office space is currently holding. If the number of square feet per employee is greater than 200, then there’s a lot of space that is unutilized, thus there’s need to reduce space.
You also need to determine the number of employees that occupy the office at any given time. If you have 100 employees, but only 50 of them may occupy the office at any given time, it would be best to reduce the space to accommodate the constant number.
Office Optimization & Warehouse Optimization Calculators
5 Tips for Optimizing your Office Utilization
Assign Spaces Based on Need
Gone are the days when senior officials were assigned large office spaces, leaving the junior officials crammed up in cubicles. Practically speaking, senior officials rarely spend as much time in their offices like junior staff do. To ensure that your office space is well utilized, it’s best to assign space based on staff need instead of assigning it based on hierarchy.
Adopt Smarter Technologies
You can also optimize your office utilization by ditching old-fashioned equipment that occupy huge spaces, and go for smarter technologies that don’t take up much space. For example, laptops and tablets can efficiently substitute desktop computers, desk phones and file cabinets in terms of space and efficiency.
Encourage Staff to Work Remotely
The same smart technologies you’ll adopt to save space will also enable your staff to work remotely. While employees benefit greatly from working remotely, the business also gets to benefit hugely. Not only does it reduce the amount of office space used, but it also reduces other costs such as electricity and utilities.
Do Away with Unused Spaces
As technology evolves, many things have become obsolete. Libraries and file rooms have been replaced by computer rooms. If you have office spaces that are rarely utilized, it’s best to do away with them.
Through careful analysis and planning, you can reconfigure existing office space to enhance workspace density. While at it, communicate with your employees about any workspace change you intend to make, whether its reduction, redesign or reconfiguration. Their views will be helpful in optimizing your office utilization without negatively impacting their productivity.
Here are a few other CRE Optimization articles to check out:
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