Office leaders are underneath rising strain to get extra from their area. Rising prices, evolving hybrid insurance policies, and shifting workforce dynamics have made area planning extra advanced, and extra business-critical, than ever.
Key takeaways
- Efficient area planning requires understanding utilization: Optimizing area utilization is essential as companies plan to extend in-office days. Conventional metrics like area density have dropped considerably, whereas worker satisfaction has turn out to be extra essential.
- Knowledge-driven choice making is important: Eptura’s area planning software program turns flooring plans into actionable knowledge sources, enabling organizations to make knowledgeable selections. By incorporating real-time knowledge, workspace planning instruments assist benchmark present layouts and forecast the affect of modifications.
- Area planning software program streamlines stakeholder buy-in and implementation: The platform facilitates stakeholder enter and comparability of eventualities, dashing up choice cycles. The software program additionally allows area planners to handle and execute modifications, together with assigning seating and monitoring progress, all from the identical surroundings.
With 34% of companies planning to extend in-office days this 12 months, optimizing area utilization whereas enhancing the worker expertise has turn out to be a high precedence. But, many facility groups nonetheless depend on static flooring plans, legacy instruments, or siloed spreadsheets. Others might not have any planning instruments in any respect. And not using a centralized view of area utilization and the flexibleness to mannequin modifications earlier than making them, it turns into almost unimaginable to reply questions like:
- Are we utilizing our area effectively, and the way a lot area do we’d like?
- What’s the fitting seating ratio to assist our hybrid work coverage?
- What occurs if we reconfigure a division or add extra hoteling desks?
- How will we plan for development or contraction with out disrupting the day-to-day?
These aren’t theoretical considerations. Based on CBRE’s 2024–2025 International Office & Occupancy Insights, conventional metrics like area density have dropped by 67% up to now 4 years, whereas worker satisfaction has surged by 75% in significance.
How Eptura helps organizations design smarter workspaces
Leaders aren’t simply being requested to avoid wasting sq. footage — they’re anticipated to create environments which are versatile, partaking, and efficient, usually with the identical or fewer sources.
The hybrid mannequin provides much more complexity. With 92% of corporations now working in a hybrid mannequin, area planners should account for fluctuating occupancy, collaborative hubs, and dynamic seating assignments. And though some organizations plan to cut back workplace sq. footage in 2025, 77% are investing in applied sciences like digital maps, wayfinding instruments, and occupancy sensors to get extra worth from the area they hold.
In brief: area isn’t essentially increasing, however expectations are.
Visualize new layouts earlier than making any modifications
As an alternative of counting on printed plans or disconnected instruments, you should use area planning software program to discover format modifications nearly. Shift workstations, redesign workforce zones, or take a look at out a brand new assembly room technique, all inside a stay planning surroundings. Area planning instruments are sometimes visible and interactive, so you possibly can take a look at a number of flooring plan eventualities to get a clearer sense of how a format will perform earlier than you implement modifications.
In a current dialogue about fashionable office wants, a pacesetter from Cushman and Wakefield — one among Eptura’s 2024 Companions of the Yr — put it merely, “The ground plan inside plenty of the instruments that Eptura supplies is the core knowledge set. With out that flooring plan, the info is type of floating. It doesn’t have a house.”
Eptura helps floor your planning efforts by turning flooring plans into actionable knowledge sources.
Floor format selections in actual knowledge
The ground plan isn’t nearly aesthetics; it’s about how folks use the area. By incorporating real-time knowledge on occupancy, utilization charges, and work level ratios, workspace planning instruments show you how to perceive what’s working, what isn’t, and the place you possibly can enhance.
You possibly can benchmark present layouts, take a look at totally different configurations, and forecast how a change will affect operations earlier than you decide to it, which is very invaluable for groups managing area throughout areas or shifting to extra versatile seating fashions.
“Knowledge is the core by which all actual property selections are made, and it permits for the large concepts to turn out to be actual,” stated Cushman & Wakefield.
Office strategists, facility managers, and portfolio planners can acquire a deeper understanding of utilization over time to tell long-term selections about actual property wants.
Achieve stakeholder buy-in for portfolio modifications
Area modifications affect a variety of stakeholders. With area planning software program like Eptura, it’s simpler to get everybody on the identical web page. Stakeholders can assessment mockups, present enter instantly on the platform, and evaluate eventualities and context. This cuts down on miscommunication and quickens choice cycles.
With interactive flooring plans and visible block and stack capabilities, you possibly can inform state of affairs planning with historic utilization knowledge, decide in the event you can consolidate area, and determine the return interval on implementing format modifications to realize buy-in from C-suite choice makers.
“Our purchasers are searching for expertise that’s fashionable, scalable, and permits for interplay for super-users and end-users alike,” Cushman & Wakefield famous.
That flexibility of supporting everybody from area planners to division heads to particular person staff helps assist the enterprise case for flooring plan or portfolio modifications and smooths the best way for associated change administration.
Plan and implement flooring plan modifications in a single place
Strategic area planning is simply step one. Enterprise area administration software program like Eptura additionally helps area planners handle and execute modifications. Whether or not you’re consolidating area, onboarding a brand new workforce, or planning a full transfer, the platform provides you the instruments to map transitions, coordinate duties, and hold everybody knowledgeable.
You possibly can assign seating, handle transfer tickets, talk modifications with impacted workers, and monitor progress all from the identical surroundings you employ to plan. That continuity helps scale back errors and guarantee smoother transitions, particularly in bigger or distributed organizations.
Optimize area by understanding utilization
Guide area planning in spreadsheets or static flooring plans could cause delays, inaccurate utilization assumptions, and missed alternatives. For instance, one world biotech producer shared, “One of many greatest issues proper now’s for the primary time we’re recording correct details about our workspaces and websites since introducing the Eptura platform to our group. We’ve been capable of see knowledge that goes in opposition to what our authentic assumptions had been about numerous websites; it’s helped tremendously with serving to us make plans and selections.”
If you mix a transparent visible basis with actionable knowledge and versatile instruments, area planning turns into a strategic benefit.
To be taught extra about workspace planning instruments, discover Eptura Office.
Often requested questions
By Erin Sevitz
Erin has 15 years of expertise, together with 10 years in thought management on office administration and the constructed surroundings. In her present position she oversees groups accountable for worktech insights and fascinating Eptura’s 16,000 prospects worldwide. Beforehand she led communications for the Worldwide Facility Administration Affiliation, a world trade nonprofit devoted to skilled growth for office strategists, constructing managers, and company actual property.
