Why You Can’t Get Serious About Productivity Unless You Optimize How Your People Use Your Space

For a living, I fund startups. Before that, I was the founder of two software companies. I have spent hours studying historical finances, forecasts, and future projections. As a typical tech startup, I can easily tell you that the two largest cost items are people (60-75% of total expenses) and space (20-20%). Inventory (for hardware and eCommerce companies) is the only significant cost item I see in early-stage startups.

Startups will often try to squeeze as many people as possible into as small a space as possible during the early stages of their company. This is in an effort to save on costs. As a company raises capital, it will naturally look for office space to improve worker productivity and happiness. Startups are increasingly turning to shared workspaces like WeWork because it is difficult to predict how much space will be needed as you grow (or vice versa).

Anyone who has worked in startups knows that these environments can lead to productivity losses.

Insufficient meeting space to hold discussions

Loud talkers can cause a lack of concentration.

There are huge lines at the shared security check-ins and elevators.

The problems of managing people around spaces was one of the main reasons I supported the company density. They created a "depth sensor" which hangs above doors and anonymously tracks space as shown in the GIF below.

We have many clients using Density technology, including NYU, Dropbox and Envoy. This has allowed us to learn a lot about people who use solutions such as Density to improve productivity, physical security, and match people better. Here are some examples of common problems and solutions that we have seen:

The meeting room camper/the meeting room squatter/phantom

Gartner estimates that the average employee spends 27 hours a year looking for spaces to meet their needs. This is not because companies lack enough space. It's usually because they don’t have enough space, and people tend to take over space that is available.

As organizations grow, they implement systems to make booking shared space easier and more democratic. The general procedure is that you "book" a meeting room by the hour through a scheduling system. The "squatter" is someone who simply goes into a meeting space and starts working on startups. They don't bother booking the room. Others book hours to "camp" in a room so they can get long periods of work done, or just take one-on-one meetings.

The "phantom", who blocks off a meeting room and only uses it occasionally, is equally problematic. This behavior was evident even at Accenture 20 years ago, when staff were mostly on client sites. However, when they returned to the office, there was a rush for phantom booking the few meeting rooms.

We worked with Density to integrate their Outlook system to help clients better manage meeting space bookings and compare that against Density sensor data. This allowed them to see how often the room was used. The system can also compare the hours and people used, with the aim of helping enterprises better manage their limited space resources.

The lunch dilemma

Lunch lines are another major productivity problem as companies grow (or as shared workspaces fill up). Density has seen a rise in use by companies to track the flow of people through the commissaries for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This integration was made possible by the use of internal systems such as Slack and Facebook Messenger, which allows employees to monitor wait times and plan their day accordingly. This also helps management to plan how to staff restaurants during peak hours. These sensors have been used by forward-thinking airlines and travel companies to track staffing levels in lounges throughout the day.

The tailgater

While most offices have physical security in place to safeguard assets and safety, we've all seen the "tailgater", who waits for someone else to scan their card before walking quickly behind them to gain access. It is more difficult to do this in high-rise buildings that have sufficient security, but there are still problems after hours. The video below shows how Dropbox used Density to flag tailgaters with its access control system. The video shows a real-life scenario (faces blurred), where a tailgater pretends to be an employee and then breaks in and steals several laptops. This is especially true on campuses with more ingress and egress points. Dropbox had more than 100 tailgating events per week. While most of these events are not malicious, employees need to be aware of the problem.

The unused space/the oversized meeting rooms

Facilities management groups are perhaps the most valued group in space planning. Meeting rooms that are designed for 12 people can be used for only 2-4 people. It is natural for businesses to expand and find more meeting rooms that could have been built in two rooms. Companies that make large acquisitions need to find ways to consolidate their staff and companies. A Fortune 1000 company found that a 8-person conference room was only used by 3 to 8 people 78% of all business hours. It was only used by 3% of its intended capacity (8 people). This company can solve their problem by expanding their study and right-sizing the conference room mix. They will also be able to save thousands of dollars on real estate expansion.

The insurance risk

You know that when you enter a bar, concert hall or stadium, there is always a person who clicks as you go through. They are probably manually monitoring crowd size for safety and insurance purposes.

Venues now use Density to manage crowd size and comply with their insurance policies. One bar that we worked with received multiple $1,000 fines each month from the Fire Dept for exceeding its capacity. This despite having staff available to manually count. The fire marshal saw the count on the bar manager’s iPhone and thought, "That's really cool." He left them alone, as they could prove that they had adhered to the code.

Unintended uses

We've seen quite a bit! People want Density to monitor whether Alzheimer's patients don't move outside of a pre-agreed area. Gig-economy companies also need Density to anonymly track whether customers or their employees are engaging in unwanted physical contact. I get asked a lot if people want cameras to monitor the flow of people. But they don't want people to be recorded. It is also much cheaper to be able to interpret and deal with large amounts of data when dealing with "polygons", which are shapes from a laser, than with full-length video footage.