Workplace Analytics Series Pt. 2: People Teams
It's easy to assume office design comes down to cool furniture, the latest and greatest amenities, and pleasant plants and decorations.
In reality, it's so much more than that. Workplaces come together through a powerful mix of art and science. Sure, it's helpful for an office space to be aesthetically pleasing, but it also needs to be a space that powers real productivity.
That's why data-driven office design is so crucial. In a recent survey report, Robin found that 89% of offices want to change their office layout or design in 2024 to better support evolving employee demands.
With people teams at the helm of employee experience, they need a line of sight into what improvements can be made in the workplace to support those changing demands.
Let's dig into the office analytics for people teams that matter most and discuss how people teams can use those insights to improve their workplace experience.
Why Do Office Analytics Matter to People Teams?
Generally, workplace teams are made up of representatives from HR/People, IT, Operations, and Facilities departments. Each of these groups has its own focus and supports the business goals in different ways.
At a very high level, people teams care about attracting and retaining top talent and supporting employee wellbeing. Especially in the wake of the pandemic where workplace strategies range from fully in-office to fully remote with a variety of hybrid work policies in between, people teams continue to have a vested interest in curating a top-tier employee AND workplace experience.
Offices are a common ground for employees to come together and connect. People teams need a clear line of sight into how well their office space is serving their business, their people, their visitors, and the evolution of the company.
That's where workplace analytics come into play.
The Most Useful Workplace Analytics for People Teams
Since each workplace team has its own goals, they naturally care about different analytics as well. When it comes to tracking the day-to-day insights that help power a peaceful and productive workplace, here are some of the analytics most important to People teams.
Office attendance data
Whether badge data or a roster system with historical data, it's helpful to know who was in the office when. Attendance data can also be used to understand general office occupancy (though that's typically more important to facilities teams!).
Meeting room usage
Meeting room insights are very important to people teams looking to understand how well their meeting spaces are facilitating connectivity between employees and visitors in the office. Especially with the growth in hybrid work policies, making the most of in-person meetings is crucial. For people teams, it's helpful to review room usage by type, average meeting capacity and duration, recaptured room time, and more.
Desk usage
Analytics around desk usage can be very revealing and inform a lot of strategies people teams put in place for their workplaces. Desk usage across floors, buildings, etc can be revealing as well as data around desk booking. When companies are trying out different desking strategies, it's important to collect data around assigned seats vs hot desks vs hotel desks.
Employee feedback
Whether it's a meeting room SNAFU, a request for new workplace services, or a hiccup with a visitor, employee input is another critical piece of data for people teams. Whether collected through workplace surveys or as a feature in an office workflow—like booking a meeting room—People teams need to have a finger on the pulse of what's working and not working in their office.
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How to Take Action with Office Data
Having data around office attendance, meeting room usage, desk booking, and employee feedback helps People teams curate the best employee experience for their workplace. Here's how People teams use that workplace data to take action to improve productivity within their office.
Curate the right spaces and resources
Having the right balance of rooms, resources, amenities, and workspaces available to employees is no small feat. By collecting desk, room, and resource data, people teams identify which desks and rooms are used the most and outfit their space based on employee usage and preference.
Create office policies tailored to your people
Especially as companies iterate on return-to-office mandates, accurate data around attendance and employee feedback is critical. How else can People teams determine which teams should be in the office on which days during the week, without accurate attendance records? Or, how can they create office policies without collecting feedback from employees about the current friction points in the office?
Upleveling with Advanced Analytics
Beyond providing for employees on a daily basis, People teams are also tasked with curating an employee experience for the future of their company. That's where advanced workplace analytics come in. Beyond the core analytics mentioned above, here are the advanced workplace analytics People teams care about most.
Customized dashboards
For the truly data-driven workplace, dashboards customized to your workplace goals help People teams understand how their office is being used today so they can plan for tomorrow. People teams can tailor their dashboards to their unique workplace goals, get a real-time look into what's working and not working during any given date range, and set targets for the future. Not to mention integrations with other common workplace tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Suite and beyond.
Increased granularity
It used to be enough to count how many employees you have and make sure you had enough desks for each of them to sit in. With the rising complexity of workplace strategies, data granularity is proving ever more important. Granular, actionable insights help workplace teams optimize their space, iterate to improve productivity and forecast for the future.
Benchmarking against similar organizations
While every workplace is unique and requires policies tailored to the space and organization, benchmarking office data against similar companies can be helpful. For the truly data-driven workplace team, comparing your workplace data against similar companies can offer inspiration for innovation and improvement.
How to Turn Advanced Office Insights into Action
Customized dashboards, increased granularity and benchmarking add a layer of sophistication and confidence to the workplace data People teams review to improve their office space and policies. When armed with sophisticated data served up in clear visuals, People teams can act as evangelists for their future-facing workplace strategy.
Communicate with stakeholders
Dashboards make it easy to share insights about the workplace with key stakeholders and leadership. Advanced analytics ensures all stakeholders have access to the latest and most accurate information. Dashboards tailored to an organization's specific workplace goals help bring insights to life so stakeholders can better visualize the data and understand trends.
Lead change management efforts
Change management can be tough. Whether it's moving offices or implementing new workplace policies, People teams are often at the helm of successful change management efforts. Having advanced data on hand helps People teams make the best decisions around how to improve employee experience and have answers ready for questions that will inevitably come up in the change management process.
Plan for the future
Speaking of changes, offices are naturally, ever-evolving spaces. While the pandemic forced everyone to rethink their workplace plans, regularly monitoring and reviewing data can highlight inefficiencies, employee preferences or other opportunities for an office space. Having an abundance of data at their fingertips helps people teams prioritize their employee AND workplace experience for the long term.
Leveraging Workplace Analytics to Build Better Offices
When it comes to workplace experience, trendy furniture and decorative plants aren't going to cut it, but spaces and resources that reflect the people who use an office will. As People teams work to make solutions that boost productivity and support employee wellbeing, having access to a breadth and depth of office analytics is key.
