How Much Office Space Do You Actually Need

Property is usually the second-largest cost after payroll, and after a shift to remote or hybrid it is frequently the least examined.

Measure attendance, not headcount

The number that matters is not how many people you employ. It is how many are in the building at the busiest hour of the busiest day.

Those diverge enormously. An organisation of 200 with a two-day hybrid pattern might peak at 90 if teams coordinate, or at 160 if everyone chooses Tuesday and Wednesday — which they will, because those are the days people choose.

Measure before deciding. Badge data, desk booking, or a manual count for four weeks. Most organisations discover their peak is higher and their average far lower than they assumed, which means they are simultaneously over-provisioned and short of desks on Tuesdays.

The Tuesday problem

Left to individual choice, attendance concentrates in the middle of the week. Monday and Friday empty out.

This produces the worst outcome available: you pay for five days of space, use it properly on two, and on those two it is uncomfortably full while people struggle to find a room to take a call.

Two responses work. Assign days by team, which flattens the curve and has the side benefit that people arrive to find colleagues. Or accept the peak and size for it, treating the empty days as the cost of flexibility — a defensible choice if stated deliberately rather than arrived at by accident.

What the space is for changes

An office used two days a week by people who otherwise work alone is not doing the same job as an office used five days a week.

Rows of individual desks are the wrong shape. What gets used is space for groups to work together, rooms for calls, and enough informal seating that people can talk without booking anything.

The commonest complaint about hybrid offices is not the commute. It is arriving to sit at a hot desk in an open room and take video calls all day, with nowhere quiet to do it. That experience actively argues against attendance, every week.

Provide enough call space. In a hybrid organisation many meetings include remote participants, so an office day involves more video calls than a fully remote day, not fewer. Under-provisioning here undermines the whole arrangement.

Practical sizing

Count your peak, not your average. Add a margin for growth and for the days that break the pattern.

Consider whether the peak justifies permanent space or whether periodic overflow — a booked venue for the days you gather everyone — is cheaper than carrying capacity you use six times a year.

Look at lease flexibility as a feature worth paying for. Attendance patterns have changed twice in five years and may change again; a ten-year lease sized to today's assumption is a bet.

The alternatives worth costing

Smaller central space plus periodic gatherings. Works well for organisations that are mostly remote with occasional need to convene.

Coworking allowances instead of held space, particularly where people are geographically scattered. Costs scale with use rather than with capacity.

Regional hubs rather than one headquarters, where the workforce has clustered in several cities.

Each has drawbacks and each is worth costing rather than dismissing.

What to avoid

Sizing for a mandate you have not issued. If you hold space for full attendance while permitting hybrid, you will pay for both.

Deciding on symbolism. A large office is sometimes justified as a signal of stability. It is an expensive signal, and an empty large office signals something else entirely.

Not revisiting. Attendance patterns drift. A count taken once, two years ago, is not evidence about now.