Don’t make this common occupancy planning mistake



Anyone who has ever been involved in an office planning, design or construction has—undoubtedly—encountered a common metric: workplace density. A deceptively simple measure, density is typically expressed in the area (e.g. square feet) of space allocated per person and commonly used to indicate the number of seats present (or soon-to-be present) in a workplace, relative to the total area.


No? Then, there’s something you need to know.

Critical ratio miscalculations have become common with the open workspace adoption, desk-sharing schemes, and higher daily office attendance. These missteps can lead to the overprovisioning or underprovisioning of resources, and impact employee productivity and experience. Yet, architects and designers don’t always get it right.


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  • As a first step toward implementing hot-desking in the future, you might choose to provide lockers to staff who still have assigned seats. In this case, only one locker per seat is required.
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Keeping ratios on your radar

To avoid making an embarrassing and potentially costly mistake, you must build a culture of awareness, vigilance and permission within your project teams. Consider nominating a “ratio reviewer” to challenge assumptions across the board, and publicly share examples of where potential mistakes were caught early (e.g. forgetting that everyone is going to need their own headset).

Don’t be shy: The next time someone hands you a floor plan with a workplace density metric calculated as square feet per person, cross it out. Write “You mean seats,” and send them back to the drawing board. You'll be thankful you did later down the line.

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