Recently I went on a long holiday to a beautiful resort in Egypt. Here I was directly faced with holiday annoyance number one!
Because I like to stay in bed a little longer while on holiday, I walked to the pool around half past one in good spirits. Once there, I saw to my surprise that all the sunbeds were already occupied. I was immediately annoyed. Why does this hotel have so few beds? When I looked closely, I saw that all the beds were covered with a just a beach towel and that only a handful of people were actually present at the pool.
I don’t think I am the only one who gets frustrated about this. In fact, it appears that 80% of Dutch holidaymakers are annoyed by the same thing.
What is annoying is that we do not only experience this on holiday, but also in the office. In the office it is not 30 degrees and we obviously do not have a swimming pool, but with a bit of creativity you can swap workplaces for those sunbeds, and exchange the towels for reservations. Then we end up in a similar situation.
Imagine you want to schedule a meeting with one or more colleagues and you see that all meeting rooms are occupied. However, a walk through the office shows that this is not the case. Most rooms are empty and are the 'victims' of a no-show. In other words: the towels are on the chairs, but in fact no-one is there.
Employees get annoyed quickly. And because they feel that there is a lack of space, they complain. In many cases we see that workspaces within an organisation are not always used efficiently. In fact, the average workplace occupancy is often only 50%.
The trend is that the fixed workplace will increasingly disappear. In our office this is no different. We come to the office when it suits us and look for a flexible place to work. Monday is always a busy day because the majority of our colleagues are present. If you arrive slightly later, it is difficult to find a place. If I had known during my holiday that the sunbeds around the pool were all occupied, I would have walked to the beach or booked another fun activity instead. Naturally, this does not apply to the office. But how much time would it save if I could see in advance which workspaces were occupied and how many were still free? More insight into the peak times would mean I could even plan smarter by working on other days at the office or choosing to meet with clients elsewhere.
The fact is that a workplace often costs more than €10,000 per year. Imagine if you had more information about its actual occupancy and therefore, for example, could use it more efficiently and manage with ten workplaces less? On an annual basis that means savings of €100,000.
