As the COVID-19 pandemic wanes, organizations are planning their future facilities and workplace strategy. With one of the highest vaccination rates globally, Canada is closer than almost anywhere else in the world to welcoming people back to the office. However, Canadians seem reluctant to return on a full-time basis.
In one Leger poll, 40 percent of Canadian employees who have worked from home during the pandemic said they would prefer a mix of office-based days and remote days after the pandemic. A permanent shift to this type of hybrid working model would transform the purpose and function of workplaces, forcing organizations to rethink their approach to facilities management and design completely.
Even so, those responsible for developing new strategies must resist the temptation to adopt new ways of working simply because everyone else is doing it. Right now, the world is awash with buzzwords, trends, and experts who claim they know exactly what the future workplace will look like. But the truth is nobody does because there is no precedent or data to forecast what comes next with any real accuracy.
The devil is in the details
The workplace has become a key recruitment and retention tool in the war for talent over recent years, especially in highly competitive sectors such as technology, demonstrating the risk involved in adopting a future workplace strategy that doesn’t meet employee needs.
Usually, one-size-fits-all solutions are built on guesswork and assumptions, leading to expensive mistakes in the long run. The outlay for many real estate and facilities decisions post-pandemic will be costly, whether that’s investing or divesting in property, redesigning or reconfiguring existing space, introducing new services and amenities, or installing more meeting rooms, focused work pods and video communications technology. So, the insights that inform these important real estate and facilities decisions need to be detailed, accurate and authentic.
That’s where occupancy and space usage data come in. By installing sensors in the workplace, organizations can measure utilization, monitor occupancy and identify trends. They can collect data on the movements of people throughout spaces, monitor where people congregate, identify when space needs to be reset or cleaned, measure how amenities are being used, and even send notifications if space capacity is exceeded.
Sensors produce real-time data that enable facilities managers to make changes to the workplace on the fly, such as reconfiguring space to support what employees need at any given moment or opening up extra workstations to the employee population. Increasingly, organizations want solutions that allow them to be agile and responsive. As workplaces become more modular, real-time occupancy data enables facilities managers to adapt quickly to events and crises.
When used in combination with sophisticated analytics platforms, sensors can help FMs identify historical occupancy and usage patterns, enabling strategic forecasting and planning. By installing occupancy sensors in newly built breakout rooms or huddle space, for example, organizations could analyze their use over time and then make an informed decision on their effectiveness.
Safety first
Despite the high rates of vaccination in Canada, the virus is still a real threat. A continued limit to how many people can congregate in buildings means employers still have a legal responsibility to manage occupancy and physical distancing appropriately. Moreover, it’s impossible to ignore employees’ concerns. As recently as June, a survey by Canada Life found that almost half of Canadians working from home are anxious about the threat of COVID-19 as they return to the office.
Real-time occupancy data can help organizations both manage the risk and allay staff fears. FMs can use sensors to identify when space has exceeded the occupancy limit and reconfigure floor plans and seating arrangements so there is enough distance between employees. Additionally, sensors can alert facilities teams to when a person vacates a workstation, allowing them to manage cleaning and preparing the space for the next user, particularly for flexible or hot-desking areas.
Anonymity is power
Nonetheless, security and privacy concerns represent one of the most significant barriers to the widespread adoption of occupancy sensors. Many organizations are reluctant to use the technology because they fear their employees will accuse them of spying. In 2016, British newspaper The Daily Telegraph was forced to withdraw occupancy monitors that it had installed under desks in its London headquarters after journalists reacted furiously to the move, describing it as “surveillance.”
But these fears are rooted in misunderstandings and bad planning. Many of the organizations that install occupancy sensors fail to do the necessary change management. To achieve buy-in, employees need to know the organization’s plans in advance. They also need to understand why the organization wants to measure occupancy and the collective and individual benefits in the long term.
In addition, many people mistakenly believe that occupancy sensors identify occupants and collect personal information on their movements. With most modern workplace occupancy sensor technology, that is simply not the case. Low-resolution data is processed through the network and converted into totally anonymous information, while all raw data captures are destroyed. People are counted, not tracked.
This anonymity isn’t beneficial just because it ensures privacy; it’s also crucial for capturing and analyzing accurate and authentic data that is free from bias or coercion. Employees should not be forced to work in a certain way or use a specific space to generate new data. The goal is to understand macro trends in how occupants use the workplace to inform smarter facilities management.
Many organizations are using the return to the office as an opportunity to evaluate how to create environments that employees want to come to, including the design, facilities services, amenities and location. Accurate, detailed and authentic workplace data could be the difference between success and failure in the post-pandemic workplace.
Adrian Miller works in enterprise sales (Canada) at iOFFICE.
