Understanding occupancy levels – a core metric for business success

The BCO’s Review of Post-Pandemic UK Office Utilisation was published mid-July. I authored the review with data provided by three different sources of utilisation dataⁱ and input from a host of workplace industry expertsⁱⁱ. A key objective was to advise developers, architects and engineers on how lower occupancy levels and utilisation reduces occupant density such that a building’s infrastructure, based on an assumed higher density, may be over-specified and energy inefficient.

As a workplace strategist I am more interested in how utilisation studies can be used to determine the optimum number of desks and meeting spaces etc., informing the required building size, for occupiers moving to a new office. Since the COVID pandemic, office workers have literally voted with their feet with many not returning to the office full time. Not understanding future occupancy levels can lead to wasted space which both incurs unnecessarily higher property costs and is not sustainable, due to building, heating, servicing empty space. In contrast, it may lead to underestimating the required space, as recently experienced by HSBC with their 7,700 desks shortfall, which clearly impacts the success of any business.

I went to a land down under

I spent the month of March in Australia, and it took me over 45 years to get there. Just before leaving school in 1979, I wrote that I planned to become an electrician and emigrate to Australia (but ended up a psychologist in the UK after a short spell of medical electronics). My trip to Oz was long overdue, and my biggest regret is leaving it so long. Lessoned learned, carpe diem.