Conclusion: A View to the Future

It is likely that many employees will not be going back into the office five days a week even after the pandemic ebbs. During the largest work-from-home pilot ever, some employees have shown that they can be as productive working outside the traditional office— some even more. The growth of hybrid work programs and policies are on the rise and will demand more dynamic space and workplace models. Hybrid work will also change how organizations support employees where they work best and provide the technology applications that support all the new ways of working.

Utilization data is a must have for organizations. The continued rapid growth, adoption of technology and digitization will continue to inform and facilitate workplace and occupancy management programs going forward. Manual processes will give way to automated solutions. Long-term, the use of such applications as digital twins, 5G and the continued integration of artificial intelligence will only accelerate the trends that the pandemic launched into hyper speed.

Everyone wants data, but insights are what they really need. There are massive amounts of data, but if that data is not governed by consistent definitions and calculations, it can be deceiving. This report has provided occupancy data in a consumable manner to help guide future real estate and program decisions. However, collecting and sorting data is sometimes the easy part. Interpreting the data is the hard part. Interpreting the data and taking action is the hard part.

Trends in headcount changes will predict how well each business line forecasts its space needs, with direct feedback to decision makers, so they improve at forecasting in the future. This will mainly be done automatically using AI.

Flex space partnerships will be used on demand, reducing the need for current real estate scale.

All physical space changes will be completed through one platform, reducing duplicate efforts and making change processes more efficient. Space data management teams and platforms will transform, as generative design will be implemented within the 3D BIM to provide automated space planning options using data to drive the planning and Space chargeback will be driven by the occupancy data, requiring no processing of data or reports.

This data will be live and changing daily. Employee work styles will be profiled according to their preference for space when they join the company and throughout their employment. Their actual occupancy patterns will be measured against their choices, and their profile adjusted accordingly.

Data quality will be corrected automatically or with automated messaging to responsible parties.

if there is a space change required due to the pattern recognition within the decision engine.

through artificial intelligence decision engines, and occupancy planners and analysts will not be required to complete these tasks.

Utilization levels will be mostly flat across the week through smart scheduling.