Digitize your office spaces for a better ROI

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Digitize your office spaces for a better ROI

ROI: an essential indicator to go for it

Return on Investment (ROI) is a key indicator to measure the relevance of a company’s investments. Our article will allow you to better understand its calculation in the context of a switch to Flex Office, and particularly the part associated with digitalization.

The cost of a workstation

To calculate the ROI of switching to the Flex Office, you need to consider the cost of a workstation. Every year, the IDET (Association of Workplace Directors) publishes its Buzzy Ratios indicators, which give an assessment of the cost and volume of workstations in the tertiary sector. In its latest issue, IDET observes a 9.4% increase in the cost of a workstation in 2022, rising to €13,658 compared to €12,481 in 2021.

A bar chart detailing the average cost of a workstation, divided into different expense items

The cost of a workstation is the sum of several factors (detailed in the above infographic – in French). The main expense is, unsurprisingly, rent, insurance and taxes. The switch to the Flex Office, which facilitates the redesign and optimization of office spaces, will allow you to save on these expenses.

The Flex Office, or how to turn a challenge into an opportunity

A friendly office space with several people seated either at tables with their laptops or on sofas.

The Flex Office ratio is an essential element to know the leeway to optimize workspaces. To calculate it, simply divide the number of available workstations by the total number of employees.

This rate works counterintuitively, i.e. a rate of 100% means that there is no Flex Office. The more you lower this rate, the fewer jobs you have for your employees. This allows you to reduce your spaces or accommodate more employees, but beware of congestion if you are too aggressive!

In other words, 100% of Flex Office corresponds to an employee having a dedicated desk throughout the year. The ratio to begin with is around 90% because you have to take into account holidays leave.

Today, teleworking has an important place in our daily lives, which will change this percentage considerably. If your employees were to work from home 2 days a week, without using a digital application, the Flex Office rate would decrease to 70%. Imagine the savings you can make by going from 90% to 70%!

What about the role of digitalization in this transformation?

A smiling woman, in a light gray suit, in a glass corridor with a tablet in her hand.

As you can see, ROI optimization is based on the search for savings on the costs of a workstation, with the company’s Flex Office ratio as the main lever. But Flex Office means redesigning your spaces first.

With the massive adoption of remote work, the needs of your employees are no longer the same. Indeed, they will favor a way of working according to their needs; For example, they can stay at home to be quiet or come to the office to exchange with their colleagues. With this in mind, you’ll opt for more collaborative and flexible spaces.

To help you with this task, a digital app can be very useful. Indeed, it allows you to optimize the use of spaces and thus improve your Flex Office ratio. For example, it makes it easier to book desks, meeting rooms, parking spaces and various equipment, and thus save your employees precious time.

Based on our experience, we estimate that a pure booking app allows you to earn 5% on your Flex Office ratio. If you add presence detection to this, you gain an additional 5%. Taking our example again with 2 days of teleworking per week, digitalization (reservation + presence detection) allows you to decrease the Flex Office ratio from 70% to 60%. Concretely, detection will allow you to manage “no shows” and thus free up unused desks or rooms.

In short, the goal of digitalization is to ensure a place for users despite the limited number of places.

To help you calculate your ROI, we have developed a simulator. This will allow us to tell you how much net gain you have over one year. Let’s take an example, if you have 50 workstations and you work from home 2 days a week, then we can estimate a saving of more than €40,000 per year thanks to our SMART offer, by freeing up or assigning workstations to other uses.

                        


    
    
                            Calculate your own ROI

Beyond the savings made on square meters, digitalization will allow you to have reliable data on the use of your spaces and thus generate additional benefits, whether quantifiable or not.

Additional benefits

In the foreground, on a table, an open object representing a house and the 6 categories of energy consumption from A to G represented by color gradient arrows going from green to red. In the background, blurred, a person sitting at his desk writing on a thick binder.

The impact of digitalization is not limited to the cost of a workstation or the Flex Office ratio. Indeed, the data generated is of great value and is a source of savings on other items related to your buildings; Examples include energy management or the maintenance of your premises.

By investing in sustainable technologies and practices, such as BMS (Building Management System) equipment, you can achieve significant energy savings. An intelligent solution contributes to the management of lighting, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, allowing optimization according to the real needs of the workspaces. This approach will help you reduce energy consumption, resulting in cost savings and a reduced environmental footprint.

At the same time, as we detailed in our previous article on smart cleaning, it is possible to optimize the use of resources in terms of space maintenance. Smart sensors and detection technologies help target high-traffic areas, adjust maintenance schedules accordingly, and minimize cleaning product waste. This data-driven approach ensures efficient use of staff and products, reducing maintenance costs while maintaining high standards of hygiene and cleanliness.

We could also mention the optimization of the volume of meals in the company restaurant and other services that are just ready for taking benefit from the data generated.

Last but not least, there are benefits that cannot be quantified but are still important. The optimization of workspaces, through digitalization, contributes to an optimal user experience. Well-designed work environments, based on reliable and relevant data, increase employee engagement and improve productivity. In addition, digitalization strengthens your employer brand by creating an attractive work environment. According to a survey carried out in May and June 2023 in France, 94% of respondents, project leaders, believe that they have made teams want to return to the office thanks to these rearrangements as part of the Flex Office. These optimizations have made their workspace more useful (92%) and more conducive to employee well-being (84%).

Sources (in french):

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