Move Beyond Attendance-Taking with Wi-Fi Occupancy Analytics

Corporate Real Estate professionals have been relying on badge data to support campus security, track peak office attendance times, and get a glimpse into office utilization since the dawn of the RFID card. And we’ve all dealt with the downfalls of badge data; piggybacking, a lack of badge-out data, and the forgotten and guest badge.

But now that the flexible, hybrid workforce shift has transformed the way we work, entry-point data simply isn’t cutting it. Real Estate owners and occupiers alike are struggling to meet the demands of employee experience while keeping costs manageable. The dramatic upheaval of in-office work caused corporations to re-evaluate their portfolio strategies, wondering if they too have space to dump footprint in search of real estate saving.

With these added levels of complexities, real estate professionals find themselves searching for better data points – automated and unbiased data points to be more specific. Floor and building-level occupancy utilization have been pivotal metrics for real estate leaders.

Badge Data Helps With Attendance-Taking

While badges will remain a fixture in corporate offices around the globe, these entry-point data sources are becoming less versatile as they fail to meet the evolution of the prop-tech world. AI and Machine Learning have paved the way for innovation, making way for solutions that are capable of uncovering patterns of space utilization across floors and buildings.

Companies still holding on to in-person mandates are looking for attendance-taking metrics to help HR professionals doll out penalties and rewards. Badge data attendance is a great way for them to understand who has come into the office but it stops there. Badge data accumulates total badge swipes into the office on a daily basis. It doesn’t, however, tell the HR professional if that person has lingered in their assigned workspace for 8 hours or if they popped in for a coffee chat and left before lunch.

Additionally, badge data continues to count occupancy all day long. Without badge _out_ data, and let’s face it no one is badging out, the occupancy count of your building will continue to climb all day without accounting for people leaving throughout the day. This poses a problem as it inflates perceptions of utilization, swaying towards an abundance of space. Hybrid work has forever adjusted the need for individual seats in the office, heightening the cost of inflating space utilization.

Sensor Data Range Is Limited

While sensors can provide deeper insights into where employees are congregating, they require physical placement within buildings and offices. This costly and time consuming setup leaves space planners without access to occupancy analytics during installation and then they need a month or more to capture data about the space before decisions can be made.

Sensors for Small Space Redesigns

While sensors can help workspace managers make decisions about which conference rooms or departments need an upgrade or identify spaces that are over performing to be step and repeated across your organization, real estate leaders who are making critical business decisions that impact the overall financial performance of your real estate portfolio require a larger view of building coverage. Sensors at scale offer too granular a viewpoint to make real estate decisions.

Consider this scenario, you are responsible for the real estate strategy for leased space in your corporate office location – or even globally. To make enterprise-level decisions on space needs, is it more important to know how many people are using a specific conference room or what percentage of your total office space by floor or building is being utilized on a regular basis?

Wi-Fi Occupancy Analytics for Lease Management

Wi-Fi Occupancy analytics has the capability to span your global real estate portfolio at a fraction of the cost of sensors and with more insights and opportunities for operational efficiencies than badge data. If you’re looking to make decisions based on real estate performance, optimize operations across your enterprise, or lease new space, Lambent Spaces Wi-Fi occupancy analytics platform can surface the critical data you need to be successful. Contact our sales team today for a demonstration.