Why does the office feel empty?
The building can feel dead at healthy utilisation
This is a complaint that often triggers an attendance mandate. Where people sit and on which days matters as much as how many come in; measure both before choosing a response.
The two measurements to have before you choose
Utilisation is a ratio: how much of the space was used. Density as experienced is something else: how many people were near you.
An organisation at 45% utilisation spread evenly over four floors and one at 45% concentrated on two floors report the same number and feel entirely different.
The second complaint hiding inside this one is coordination. People come to the office for other people. If the colleagues someone needs come in on different days, they may travel in, find the floor quiet, and conclude the office is not worth the commute, which then makes it quieter.
What to try, and how to check it
Zone before you mandate
Closing or repurposing a wing on quiet days concentrates the same population and changes the experience without changing anyone's rights.
Anchor days by team, tested
People tend to come in when the people they need are there. Team anchor days are one way to arrange that; measure occupancy before and after to see whether they work better than an organisation-wide rule in your building.
Find out which it is first
Whether the cause is distribution, coordination, noise, the commute or the space types themselves is measurable, and all five have different fixes.
Get the five-cause diagnostic
Distribution, coordination, noise, the commute and the space types produce the same complaint and need five different fixes. One page of symptoms and remedies, and the five checks to run before you mandate anything.
PDF, in English.
Questions we get asked
Can you measure hybrid and remote work?
The workplace side we measure directly; the rest we find out by asking. Occupancy describes how the building is used. Dynamics establishes patterns, preferences and where people work when they are not in the office.
Judge an operating model on building data alone and you are looking at half the picture.
Can our employer see my individual answers?
Not through Passport. It is for you alone, and there is no manager view of it.
Where a product does report to the organisation, it reports aggregated patterns. If you are assessing this as a works council, ask for the specific configuration in writing rather than relying on a website. That is what the data processing agreement is for.
What happens after the analysis?
The analysis is not the deliverable; the decision is. Depending on scope, what follows is scenarios, a hybrid policy, a space programme, support through design and fit-out, help for employees in the new workplace, and then measuring again on the same method.
That last step turns two snapshots into a trend, and a trend into the next business case.
What answers this
- Dynamics
Analyze: why people stay away, by team and location.
- Occupancy
Analyze: where they actually are when they come in.
- Booking
Coordination: seeing who is in before you travel.
- The office debate is not pointless
What the argument is actually about.
- Return-to-office mandates
What happened when they were imposed at scale.