The role of the workplace continues to evolve as organizations progress toward the modern hybrid ecosystem. With the changing nature of how we work, the types of spaces we need and the economic headwinds we are facing, leaders are more frequently evaluating their workplace strategy and real estate needs to prepare for an agile future. Now more than ever, decision makers need ready access to real estate data to make strategic, data-driven decisions for the future of their workplace.
If your organization has outdated floor plans and space metrics, information siloed across multiple platforms, or institutional knowledge that isn’t documented, planning for change with today’s dynamic workplace is probably daunting! This gap in reliable space and occupancy information and fundamental real estate metrics could result in significant missed real estate opportunities.
Learn How Wisp Can Help with Your Future Strategic Plans
Following are three tips for setting your strategic workplace planning up for success:
Understand the Unknown
As you look to the future and prepare to make strategic decisions affecting your real estate, it’s imperative to quantify what you already have. Digitizing the entirety of a real estate footprint is the first step to understanding the current state. This should include scaled, visual floor plans with specifically defined space types to standardize the portfolio.
Utilizing a space management system, like Gensler’s Wisp, to digitize a real estate portfolio eliminates the “We don’t know, what we don’t know” adage. Real estate data, such as floorplan occupancy and ratios, are viewable on interactive floor plans. Reports provide accessible visualizations of baseline data such as space type, vacancy, departmental occupancies, neighborhoods, or reservable workspaces. This allows you to save time and money in the long-term and continue to optimize your portfolio to prepare your business for the future of the hybrid workplace.
Streamline Management and Reporting
Having a single source of truth for real estate metrics can significantly reduce manual tasks and rework. Data integrations from other key resources, such as badge swipes or sensors, will streamline reporting and enhance insights — giving your team more time to focus on more critical workplace needs.
When it comes time for shifts in the workplace, your new insights are the foundation for driving change. Leveraging space management software, like Wisp, for design strategy can transform data communication with custom dashboards used for focus groups, leadership interviews, and key client stakeholder meetings. This truly brings data-driven insights into what would otherwise be a more qualitative discussion.
Leverage Data for the Future
By instilling baseline data confidence, leaders can make informed portfolio decisions that align with their company’s mission and vision. This improves employee experiences and connections to the workplace. New strategies can help identify opportunities to support accelerated growth or find measurable savings impacting the bottom line. With this understanding, companies can identify how space is utilized and where to optimize or invest differently in their portfolio.
Space management technology, like Wisp, can provide a catalyst to transform the way the business uses space and how real estate leaders communicate about space usage across the organization. It establishes a resource to keep baseline portfolio and utilization information up to date — improving data accessibility and integrity to inform future change.
In the future, imagine being able to predict show-up rates for occupancy planning. With machine learning this can be possible, but the models require good data inputs that will start with these baseline basics.
Establishing baseline space and occupancy data is the foundation for making informed decisions across an organization. These valuable insights will prepare real estate leaders for new opportunities and help them readily adapt to the future of the dynamic workplace ecosystem.