Although circular usage is well-suited to the demands of hybrid work managment, most organizations still operate offices that feel constrained and underused because they focus only on surface-level changes.
Desk ratios are reduced, activity-based layouts are introduced, and sensors are deployed, without building the system required to make circular usage actually work. As a result, midweek congestion persists, teams struggle to collaborate, and leaders reluctantly hedge by maintaining excess capacity “just in case.”
The issue isn’t the midweek peaks in themselves. That’s only a symptom, showing companies have changed their capacity model (fewer desks than employees), but not the system (visibility, demand planning, dynamic allocation) that manages it.
But to create this system, leaders must first let go of certain misconceptions around circular use, which stop them from even bothering to remodel their current system.
Why Many Hybrid Leaders Get Circular Usage Wrong
They assume circular use is all about desk reduction
Many organizations believe that achieving a specific desk-to-employee ratio—such as 0.75 or 0.8—indicates that circular usage has been successfully implemented. In reality, this only changes the physical capacity, not how that capacity is operated.
The tell is that while leadership may plan for 750 desks for 1,000 employees, they still maintain closer to 900 desks in practice because no one can confidently plan for less.
What’s missing are visibility and coordination tools that would enable the organization to operate at the target ratio without creating stress or risk.
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They think only meeting rooms should have a booking management system
Some organizations wrongly assume that only large meeting rooms require a booking system. The idea is that, since rooms are far fewer than desks, they deserve a system that lets employees book in advance, so meeting schedules don’t clash.
This partial solution perpetuates a core problem: employees still lack visibility into the resources they use most, and workplace teams can’t facilitate the coordination needed to sustain circular use.
They believe sensors can fully enable circular usage
Across the portfolios we’ve reviewed, companies tend to turn to hardware systems, such as sensors, to build a systemic support for circular use. But in reality, sensors make it harder to implement circular use, primarily because they conflict with key circular-use principles.
First, the complex hardware setup locks layouts into fixed configurations. Second, because sensors cannot address peak demand, organizations are forced to overprovision resources. Lastly, sensors add cost—hardware, maintenance, and platforms—often offsetting any savings gained from circular use.
They mistake activity-based layouts for circular usage
Creating flexible zones and removing assigned desks modernizes the workspace layout. However, it doesn’t create the operational system that enables circular use.
Without visibility into availability, employees face daily uncertainty about where they’ll sit and whether they can work near their teams. This is typically because activity-based offices provide the infrastructure; complete circular usage requires a management layer that makes that infrastructure predictable and efficient.
These misconceptions share a common thread: they treat circular usage as complete when only the infrastructure has changed.
The desk counts are reduced, the sensors are installed, the meeting rooms are bookable—but the system that would make daily workspace coordination actually function is absent.
An Effective Circular Usage System Must Follow 6 Principles
True circular usage balances three outcomes: economic efficiency, improved employee experience, and operational scalability. Achieving these collective outcomes requires the following six principles:
Resource visibility
Efficiency in terms of fewer desks isn’t worth it if it causes employee stress and high attrition. That’s why a key principle of circular usage is visibility: ensuring employees know, with confidence, that they can access what they need, when they need it.
With this in place, even as leaders implement circular seating, employees don’t have to worry about whether resources will be available or where colleagues are seated.
Visibility operates across three layers:
- Real-time resource availability: Instead of “drive in and hope for the best,” employees see current and future capacity before leaving home. That way, they confirm resource availability and book what they need for the entire workday.
- Guided navigation: Knowing a desk exists isn’t enough; employees need to be close to their teams. Digital floor plans guide employees directly to team members and colleagues. This eliminates both the physical search (wandering the floors looking for space) and the social friction (sitting isolated from teammates scattered elsewhere).
- Guaranteed home bases: While daily flexibility has value, teams need designated zones with guaranteed minimum capacity based on their actual usage. Employees know they won’t arrive to find their entire department squeezed out by other groups.
Delivering resource visibility should be mediated by a system that doesn’t stifle operational scalability. This brings us to the next principle.
Software-first management
True circular usage requires quick adaptation to usage trends. Heavy hardware setups can’t facilitate this, as they make it hard to reconfigure space as usage patterns shift.
Software-first management enables flexible reconfiguration by shifting control to systems with minimal hardware requirements. Allocation, visibility, and access are all mediated via the hybrid work software. While hardware is only used in areas like compliance and security, where it is absolutely necessary.
This ensures the office space is fluid and reconfigurable in minutes, which is a key requirement for sustainable circular usage.
Demand shaping
Rather than building capacity for the busiest days and leaving it underused most of the week, demand shaping redistributes attendance before peaks form.
To implement it, leadership sets the overall framework (like mandated 2 in-office days per week) and has teams declare their collaboration days as units. Only those with a strong need for cross-team collaboration will be allowed to book the same days.
For example, Engineering and Product Design might both book Tuesday-Wednesday because they co-develop features, while Sales and Marketing coordinate for Thursday-Friday around campaign launches.
That way, a company operating at 40% average utilization with severe Tuesday-Wednesday peaks will redistribute that same attendance pattern to achieve 60-70% effective utilization—without adding desks or forcing anyone into the office on specific days.
Dynamic allocation
Ignoring how different teams work and applying blanket policies creates shortages for some teams and wasted capacity for others. Sales teams may rarely be in the office at the same time, while engineering teams tend to cluster on specific collaboration days.
Dynamic allocation lets you set policies tailored to each team based on usage patterns, so resources flow to where they are needed. Instead of fixing capacity in advance, space adjusts over time as attendance, collaboration habits, and team sizes change.
This way, you can implement a resource-sharing model that ensures equitable access. High-demand teams have enough resources, while low-demand teams don’t hold the capacity they rarely use.
Flexibility, but with granular control
Organizations tend to give employees either complete freedom or rigid control over resources. The middle ground—flexibility with guardrails—is avoided because it creates operational work that facility teams can’t manage manually.
In successful circular-usage implementations I’ve led, the solution is a single system that manages all shared resources and embeds those guardrails directly into how flexibility is used. These guardrails could include rules that limit:
- How far in advance can desks or team zones be reserved, preventing early-week hoarding
- How much of a resource can be booked by one person or team, ensuring fair access
- Which resources are prioritized for specific teams versus shared across the organization
- How long can unused reservations be held before they are automatically released
- Team-based or department-level rules to regulate the resources they have access to.
By offering flexibility but controlling how employees use it non-overtly, you preserve employee autonomy while protecting the organization from peak-day chaos and overprovisioning.
Centralized resource management
Fragmented resource management creates two problems:
- Siloed optimization: Each team improves just its metrics, while the overall workplace experience suffers
- Delayed insight: Understanding what’s really happening requires pulling data from multiple systems. By the time patterns are identified, it’s too late to act.
Centralized resource management fixes this by showing all shared resources in one place, in real time. This makes it possible to act before problems appear.
For example, if desk usage drops, teams can immediately see whether it’s caused by a lack of meeting rooms, fewer people coming in, or changing work habits—and respond accordingly. Likewise, rising demand midweek becomes visible days in advance, allowing capacity to be adjusted before stress and crowding occur.
Adopting the True Circular Usage Principle in Your Office
First, redefine circular usage as a way to improve efficiency and the employee experience, rather than just a cost-cutting strategy. Once framed this way, building the system that enables sustainable circular usage becomes non-negotiable.
Secondly, treat each principle explained above as a load-bearing pillar. Remove one, and the entire structure collapses. Organizations that implement visibility without demand shaping get informed chaos. Those that add dynamic allocation without software-first management create policies they can’t execute at scale.
