Post on 29-Aug-2019
Senion Workplace Survey 2017
© 2017 Senion 1
SENION
Office Workplace Survey 2017
Senion Workplace Survey 2017
© 2017 Senion 2
In offices all over the world, the ways in which work gets done are constantly
evolving. Smartphones, laptops, video conferencing, and cloud based
workspaces have all impacted the everyday office life. The attitude toward work
is another factor fuelling this shift.
If we were to sum up this evolution in one word it would be flexibility; flexible
hours, flexible teams, flexible work arrangements.
As more and more companies are opting for a more agile and dynamic work
environment to increase productivity and optimize their real-estate footprint,
new challenges are emerging.
In the light of this, we conducted this survey of office workers to understand
their attitudes toward some of the challenges in the modern workplace, and
how new workplace policies like hotdesking are impacting office workers.
Senion Workplace Survey 2017
© 2017 Senion 3
BACKGROUND
Seating – permanent, hot desk or hybrid? Desk sharing, or hot desking, was popularized during the 90’s but didn’t exactly turn out to be the
home run most had hoped for. Two decades later, hot desking is once again a topic among facility
managers globally. So how far have we come in terms of adopting agile workplaces?
An interesting insight is that, while compulsory hot desking is still a rare practice, a considerable
number of workplaces rely on an assigned / hot desk hybrid approach with mixed seating
options. The share of workplaces with compulsory hot desking is roughly the same for different
workplace sizes, however, larger workplaces (5000+ employees) are using the hybrid approach to
a higher extent than smaller workplaces, as is visible in the chart above.
501–1000
1,001-5000
5,001+
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Seating policies in relation to workplace size
Permanent seating Hot desking Both
PERMANENT SEATING Each employee has his or her own assigned desk.
HOT DESKING No assigned desks – sit wherever you prefer. Sometimes called hoteling.
HYBRID (BOTH) A combination of assigned and unassigned desks.
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The use of hot desking is arguably most common in the 18–29 age span, with 17% of young office
workers using fully agile seating. When including hybrid seating, almost 50% of young office
workers work in fully or semi-agile workplaces. A possible explanation is that younger
professionals to a higher extent prefer workplaces with flexible work arrangements.
When it comes to how the desks are assigned, the most widespread practice is to let employees
find a place themselves.
As more than half of the respondents are required to find a desk themselves, its apparent that
improvements can be made to take burden off of the employees and assist them in finding places
to work.
Age 18-29
Age 30-44
Age 45-59
Age 60+
0% 5% 10% 15% 20%
Hot desking: A generational trend
Young office workers are more likely to work in hot desking workplaces.
Find it yourself
Assigned in advance
Office staff assists in locating seating
Custom app or reservation program
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
First come, first served
Most common ways of assigning seats in workplaces with hotdesking
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CHALLENGES
Finding desks, colleagues and meeting rooms As companies adopt more agile work arrangements, a commonly voiced issue is that of locating
colleagues, or available spaces to meet or work. When everyone is free to sit wherever they want
– how does one find a colleague? To understand better the magnitude of these issues we probed
the office workers on what they spend excessive time on.
Conference rooms
Colleagues
Available desks
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
Finding colleagues and conference rooms
Amount of office workers spending excessive time locating each destination.
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Out of the three destinations (desks, colleagues and conference rooms), most people reported
spending time finding a conference room and colleagues – whereas finding a desk seems like a
lesser problem.
However, when comparing different seating policies, it’s apparent that employees in workplaces
with agile seating spend significantly more time looking for colleagues and available desks, as
seen in the chart below.
It seems as the more agile a workplace is, the problems of finding colleagues, and locating
available desks grows with the agility. An interesting take-away is that even in workplacese with
traditional permanent seating, the issue of finding colleagues is considerable.
Available desks
Conference rooms
Colleagues
Permanent desk Both Hot desk0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
Office seating policy
Finding your way
Amount of office workers spending excessive time locating each destination
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More than half of office workers report they spend time each week on finding an available
conference room – but what is the experience in doing so? When asked what the experience in
finding a conference room, it turns out that almost half of the respondents found it time
consuming, whereas roughly 40% found it generally easy.
Why is it time consuming? Although every office is unique in its own way, there are a few recurring
themes that emerge in the responses:
• No shows / overbooking
• Not enough space
• Wayfinding problems
That almost half of all respondents reported that they waste time on finding available conference
rooms is an issue to address. Not only does it lead to wasted time, but also curbed productivity,
as highlighted by some respondents:
We can never do anything at the spur of the moment here, everything has to be planned ahead just so
we can have a conference room
u See the appendix for more quotes from respondents on this topic.
Time consuming
Generally easy
0% 20% 40% 60%
Time consuming to find places to meet
Reported experience in finding a conference room
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When it comes to locating colleagues, a significant number of the office workers (37%) agreed it
was time consuming as well. Almost half of the large offices (5.000+ employees) employ fully or
semi-agile seating policies. Locating a colleague in a large office can be tricky as it is, and when
employees are free to sit wherever they desire, this problem is likely to grow with size and
complexity of the workplace.
Time consuming
Generally easy
0% 20% 40% 60%
One in three find it time consuming to locate colleagues
Reported experience in finding a colleague
Every floor is a new adventure to find out where meetings are or where colleagues are located. – Respondent from a 5000+ employee office
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Young office workers spend more time searching the office for rooms, desks and colleagues. A
possible explanation is that young workers are more frequently working in fully or semi-agile
workplaces – where these situations can be amplified.
Less than 30 minutes
30 minutes per week
45 minutes per week
60 minutes per week
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
Time spent per week searching for available conference rooms, desks and colleagues
Age 18 - 29
Age 30+
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Young workers spend more time locating available rooms, desks and colleagues
Less than 30 minutes 30 minutes 45 minutes 60 minutes
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Occupancy – perceived and real An important measure for facility management is the workplace utilization rate. Companies are
using metrics on workplace utilization to make informed decisions on right-sizing their corporate
portfolio.
In our study, the average office worker perceived their workplace occupancy, or utilization rate to
be 83%. However, previous studies have shown that most corporate offices operate on a
utilization rate around 60%. There appears to be a discrepancy between the actual occupancy
and the impression that office workers get.
Measuring occupancy more reliably, and relaying this information to the employees can both
improve the actual utilization as well as reduce the feeling that the workplace is over crowded.
Avg. Perceived occupancy
Avg. Actual occupancy
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Workplaces appear more crowded than they are
Occupied Available
Utilization rates by Industry
FINANCIAL SERVICES 30–90%
HEALTHCARE 60–69%
INDUSTRIAL 50–79%
INSURANCE 80–89%
PHARMACEUTICALS 50–59%
TECHNOLOGY 30–90%
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About the survey The data for this research was gathered in partnership with SurveyMonkey. The survey was
carried out during October 2017, and had a total of 358 respondents.
The respondents were limited to US residents who work part-time or full time in offices larger
than 500 employees.
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Appendix The table below highlights free form responses from the respondents, with regards to finding
places to meet with colleagues.
THEME RESPONDENT QUOTE
No shows / overbooking “We manage our conference rooms through Outlook, and even though a conference room appears to be booked, it's often empty when you walk by.”
No shows / overbooking “Some people schedule a conference for every day of the week for several months - just in case they may have a meeting.”
No shows / overbooking “The problem here is people schedule recurring meetings, then the meeting goes away, but they never free up the room. Scheduling is done via Microsoft Outlook”
No shows / overbooking “Part of the problem is that people don't cancel their reservations when they aren't using the room so that blocks the room on the room calendars.”
No shows /overbooking “Sometimes conference rooms are locked, even when empty”
Not enough space “We can never do anything spur of the moment here, everything has to be planned out so we can have a conference room”
Not enough space “We just need more conference rooms”
Not enough space “There’s not enough space in this building to accommodate all of the meetings”
Not enough space “The challenge is we do not have enough conference rooms. Locating them is not difficult, finding one that is not already booked is the challenge.”
Not enough space “There aren’t that many conference room and so we need to call for them weeks before the meetings”
Wayfinding problems “Every floor is a new adventure to find out where meetings are or where colleagues are located. Some type of indoor map app would be awesome.”
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Wayfinding problems “It’s a pain to remember the conference room numbers. Additionally, the large conference rooms are in high demand.”
Wayfinding problems “We don't use enough technology to use the resources we have. It's too many steps to find a conference room, video conferencing is not available, etc.”
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