Why a workplace study should come before your next lease

Libby Wareing

4 hours ago

4 min read

Thinking about moving, expanding or downsizing? A workplace study shows how your office is really used before you commit to space you may not need.

Squaredot | 2026

Office decisions are some of the most expensive a business makes. A new lease, an expansion or a full fit-out can tie you into costs for years. Yet many of those decisions are still made on headcount, a quick walk around the floor and a feeling that the office is "always busy".

A workplace study replaces that feeling with evidence. It shows how your space is really used, by whom and when, before you commit to more of it, less of it or a different kind of it.

As our co-founder Kris Krokosz said on the SPOR Podcast: "to do a workplace study for a few thousand pounds and potentially saving millions, is a no brainer."

What is a workplace study?

A workplace study is a structured look at how your office is used today and what your people need from it. At Squaredot, it usually combines four things:

An onsite observational study, recording how desks, meeting rooms and other spaces are used across a typical period.
An online survey, so everyone can say how they work and what helps or gets in the way.
Stakeholder interviews with leaders and team managers about where the business is heading.
Engagement workshops, where people help shape what the new workplace should feel like.

Together, these show the gap between the office you have and the office you need.

Busy is not the same as full

The most common surprise in a workplace study is how different real use is from how the office feels. Even before COVID, the offices we studied typically ran at 35% to 55% utilisation. Hybrid working has made the pattern more uneven, not less.

In one business we studied, there were 902 desks for 1,172 people. It felt tight. But peak use reached 362 desks, and on an average day only 235 were in use. The problem was never a lack of space. It was the wrong space, in the wrong configuration.

Without a study, that business might have looked for a bigger office. With one, it could plan for how people actually used the building.

When should you do a workplace study?

The best time is before any major decision is fixed. In particular:

Before a lease event, so you know whether to stay, move, expand or shrink.
Before a refurbishment, so the design is based on how people work rather than assumptions.
Before a merger or consolidation, when two ways of working need to come together.
When people are not coming in, or complain that the office does not work for them.

Leave it until after you have signed for new space and the study can only tell you how to make the best of a decision that has already been made.

What a workplace study can save

The savings come from making space decisions on evidence. Across our recent studies, rethinking existing space showed possible space savings of 29% to 46%. Over 25 years, we have seen the same principle play out again and again. In one public-sector project, a property estate went from 57 buildings down to 6.

Not every study leads to less space. Sometimes it shows that a business needs more meeting rooms, more collaboration areas or a different layout altogether. The point is that the decision is based on what is actually happening.

Workplace study mistakes to avoid

A study is only as useful as the evidence behind it. These are the mistakes we see most often when businesses try to do it themselves:

Looking at one day. A single snapshot misses the peaks and troughs of the hybrid week. Busy Tuesdays and quiet Fridays both matter.
Counting desks and nothing else. Meeting rooms, breakout areas and quiet spaces tell you just as much about how people work.
Relying on badge data alone. Entry data tells you who came in, not what they did once they were there.
Skipping the people. Observation shows what happens. Surveys, interviews and workshops explain why, and they help people feel part of the change.
Doing it too late. A study run after the lease is signed can only optimise a decision, not inform it.

Bringing people with you

One benefit of a workplace study is easy to overlook. Asking people how they work, and showing them that their answers shaped the design, makes change much easier to land. When a team can see why their new space looks the way it does, they are far more likely to use it as intended.

That is why engagement is built into our studies from the start, and why we go back after a project is finished to check the space is working the way it should.

What you get at the end of a workplace study

A good study should leave you with clear, usable outputs, not just a pile of data. Typically that means:

A picture of how each type of space is used, including peaks and quiet periods across the week.
Worker profiles that show how different teams work, from those who are in most days to those who come in for collaboration.
A recommended mix of settings: desks, meeting rooms, pods, collaboration and social space.
The information you need for feasibility, space planning or comparing buildings.

Start with evidence, then design

Whether you are planning a move, a refurbishment or simply trying to get more people through the door, a workplace study is the cheapest part of the process and the one that shapes everything after it.

If you have a lease event or an office project coming up, book a call with Chris and we will talk through whether a workplace study makes sense for you.