What occupancy data should I collect for hybrid working decisions?
Triangulate three primary data sources, plus an AV usage signal, before making any hybrid working decision. Single-source data overstates real utilisation by 40 to 70%, which is enough to keep a half-empty floor on the lease for another five years.
From the floor. The conversation to have at scoping is who the data goes to and what they will do with it. Property and HR using it to right-size a floorplate is the legitimate use case. Line managers using it to monitor in-office attendance is where you get a union grievance and a privacy complaint. We push for a written data-handling policy at the start of any sensor deployment now, because the technology decision and the governance decision are bound together. — Matthew Dunne, Sales Director
The four signals worth collecting:
| Source | What it measures | Strength | Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Booking platform | Reserved desks and rooms | Cheap, already in place | Counts ghost bookings as "used" |
| Occupancy sensors | Bodies actually present | Ground truth on attendance | Capex and install per zone |
| Workplace badges | Entry counts at floor or building level | Already collected by security | No granularity below the door |
| AV usage | Teams Rooms, Zoom or Webex call counts | Confirms rooms ran a meeting | Misses face-to-face only sessions |
Sensor choice matters. PIR is cheapest at around £100 to £150 per zone but only confirms motion. Time-of-flight (ToF) at £150 to £250 gives accurate occupancy without imaging the user. mmWave radar at £250 to £400 returns people-count without cameras, which is the privacy-acceptable option for legal and financial sector floors. The room and desk booking platform feeds the booking signal; occupancy analytics layered on top combines sensor and AV usage data into a single dashboard.
The metrics that actually drive decisions:
- Peak vs average occupancy (the gap is what you can release)
- Day-of-week pattern (Tuesday is the typical UK peak)
- Neighbourhood-level utilisation rather than desk-level (people sit near their team, not at the same desk)
- Meeting-room utilisation by capacity bucket (huddle, standard, boardroom split out separately)
Use this data to right-size the estate, not to enforce attendance. Sensors that get repurposed into surveillance produce union grievances and data breaches, neither of which help the hybrid working business case.
Quick reference: booking platform + occupancy sensors (PIR cheap, ToF accurate, mmWave for privacy) + workplace badges + AV usage; report peak vs average, day-of-week pattern, neighbourhood not desk, room utilisation by capacity bucket.
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