Terms you need to know: Workplace analytics

Contact tracing

Contact Tracing is a way to prevent COVID-19 from spreading by identifying the people and places a sick person recently interacted with. Companies are using usage data from workplace management tools to see when their employees were in the office and who they possibly interacted with to contact trace.

Event duration

By measuring the length of meetings, you can recognize the relationship between spaces and the types of events that take place in them. From that information, you can establish policies to recommend the ideal meeting length for each type of event and customize spaces to best fit the types of meetings being held.

Event fit

Comparing the capacity of a meeting space with the number of attendees helps you understand whether or not your office is functioning at ideal utilization. If you find spaces are being misused or underused, design and resource improvements might be necessary.

Meeting density

The percentage of meeting rooms hosting events at a given time. Monitoring traffic or meeting density in the office helps call out scheduling bottlenecks. This data is calculated by taking the utilization data and breaking it down by the hour throughout the week.

Observational study

An ethnographic approach to understanding how well a workplace supports the employees who work there. This can be completed internally by sending out a survey or by using an external agency specialized in employee satisfaction to understand if employees are interacting with the resources in an office as was intended.

Occupancy

Occupancy data typically includes total building square footage, number of employees using the space daily, weekly, and monthly, and then total number of monthly visitors. Occupancy numbers help companies estimate how many resources they need. Utilization data, sensors, and observational studies can all be used to track occupancy rates.

Office space planning

Office space planning is using different methods to set up your workplace for optimized space usage. It can be difficult to know how many desks, meeting spaces, and resources in general a company needs to maximize space usage and employee productivity. Ideally, an organization can plan their space effectively by using utilization, occupancy data, employee feedback, and different principles of workplace design.

Peak occupancy

The time and day when an office space is busiest on average.

Recaptured time

Time freed up for others to grab for ad hoc meetings. Recaptured time illustrates how much of that released time is used for ad hoc events.

Utilization

The percentage of the workweek that meeting spaces or desks are reserved. Office space utilization is calculated for a period of time by dividing the total number of reserved meeting room hours by the total potential hours within the work day or work week (assuming an 8 hour work day and 40 hour work week). Ideal utilization should be between 40-60% booked.