Office Space Optimization: Expert Tips & Costly Mistakes You Should Avoid [+ Free Readiness Checklist]

Whether you’re downsizing, expanding, or rethinking hybrid layouts, poor office space decisions can quietly rack up operational costs and affect employee morale. 

From underused square footage to layout choices that hurt productivity, companies burn thousands fixing issues that could’ve been avoided early on. 

In this guide, we’ll cover common (and costly) mistakes organizations make when optimizing office space and how to avoid them. We’ve also included a free readiness checklist to evaluate your office setup and policies.

Let’s begin with the misconception of what office space optimization truly means:

What is office space optimization?

Office space optimization involves adjusting an office’s layout, design, and usage to facilitate employees’ work, reduce wasted space, and save on rent or utility costs.

For most organizations, the optimization process involves actions like: 

• Tracking usage trends and utilization patterns.
• Adjusting layouts and resource allocations 
• Installing new workplace technology to enhance the on-site experience.

But there’s more to office space optimization. 

In our experience at Awaio, most companies—approximately 95%—approach workspace optimization using traditional thinking. A common misconception is that space optimization simply means better desks, fancy room booking display systems, trendy hotel-style layouts, etc.

While these are important, treating them as the entire solution leads to flawed office planning strategies and missed opportunities to improve employee workflows or cut real estate waste.

Proper office space optimization focuses on aligning changes to your overarching strategic objectives. Every decision about how space is designed, allocated, or used should directly support your company’s workspace planning policy. 

So, for example:

• If your organization’s strategic goal is to enable more cross-team collaboration, then workspace optimization might involve creating shared areas and fewer isolated offices.
• If the goal is to scale rapidly, the space should be designed to accommodate future headcounts flexibly without significant disruptions.

In both cases, an open floor plan might be the chosen layout, but how it’s designed would differ based on the strategic objective:

An open floor plan designed for collaboration would have a casual seating structure, whiteboards, and shared spaces to encourage spontaneous work. 

However, the same layout might feature modular workstations, standardized furniture, and space-saving designs in startups with scaling headcount. As new employees join the workspace, those features can be easily reconfigured or expanded.

So even when the layout type is the same in name, the intent and features baked into the design reflect different business priorities. Workspace optimization achieves its goal when the office space is used deliberately to support the organization’s strategic objectives.

Given the state of work today, it has never been more important to tie office space design to business and strategic objectives.

Why Office Space Optimization Matters

Office space optimization ensures your workplace can adapt as fast as your organization evolves. Whether you’re scaling teams, shifting to a hybrid work model, or reorganizing departments, optimized spaces make it easier to adjust layouts, reallocate resources, and support new ways of working, without costly disruptions.

Many organizations are already positioning themselves accordingly. According to trusted sources, 69% of office portfolios (greater than 3 million sq. ft.) have undergone significant optimization over the past four years as companies began implementing effective spaces for a hybrid future.

If you’ve been grappling with the thought of adjusting office design, here are three reasons why you should make a move on it today:

1. Modern offices must provide more than just flexible work 

After years of remote work, employees have experienced environments that support deep focus, autonomy, and personal well-being. For many, those setups proved more productive, less stressful, and better aligned with their daily lives than the traditional office. 

As a result, employee expectations for in-office experiences have moved from a traditional, mostly in-person model towards a strong preference for flexibility.  While hybrid work has emerged as the preferred approach (now included in 92% of workplace policies), it is not the silver bullet most organizations think it is.

Our research on hybrid work realities proved a prevalent notion: hybrid work frequently combines the downsides of both remote and in-office setups without delivering the full benefits of either. Think commutes with no clear purpose, unassigned desks that hinder productivity, and in-office policies that ignore the flexibility workers now consider non-negotiable.

A purposeful office space optimization program helps you think beyond just providing flexibility. It enables you to achieve balance by reshaping office space around what employees value most and overall organizational goals. 

2. Saving office space costs is imperative for employers

With commercial real estate expenses now among most organizations’ top three overhead costs, every empty desk represents capital that could be deployed for growth, talent acquisition, or technology investments.

According to CBRE, the percentage of companies using assigned seating plummeted from 83% to 55% between 2022 and 2025, driven by the widespread adoption of hybrid work models. This is more of a financial necessity than a cultural shift. Current office utilization rates average 40% in traditional fixed-seating environments, meaning organizations effectively pay for entire buildings while using less than half the space.

Suppose an enterprise with 1,050 employees spends approximately $1,000 annually per desk. They can immediately unlock $525,000 in annual savings by implementing a 2:1 desk-sharing ratio instead of the traditional 1:1 model. That’s capital that can be reinvested in revenue-generating activities rather than sitting idle in empty workstations.

The cost of inaction goes beyond unnecessary expense. Organizations that fail to optimize their workspace portfolio risk competitive disadvantage as more agile competitors redirect real estate savings toward market expansion, talent acquisition, and customer experience improvements. 

For facility managers, CFOs and operations leaders, workspace optimization now represents one of the most accessible sources of enterprise value creation with minimal operational disruption.

3. Poor office layouts can cost companies millions in lost productivity and employee turnover.

The wrong office layout quietly drains millions in productivity by eroding focus, trust, and psychological safety. 

Take open office layouts. 

While designed to encourage collaboration, they often reduce productivity through increased distraction, lack of privacy, and limitations to office space personalization. 

• Employees may feel watched or psychoanalyzed if they are not perceived as constantly working. 
• The absence of visual boundaries makes handling sensitive information risky and creates persistent mental discomfort.
• The environments disproportionately impact neurodiverse employees, particularly those with ADHD or heightened sensitivity to sensory stimuli.

These are just a few key challenges employees experience in open-floor offices. If those challenges lead to disengagement and attrition, a typical S&P 500 company loses between $228 million and $355 million annually. 

Considering other poor office planning issues that erode productivity, the cost quickly adds up. Think of complex 

• Office booking rules,
• Friction from using multiple office management tools
• Absence of wayfinding, etc. 

One hour lost here, two hours lost there, the productivity tax of poor spatial design compounds over time.

Addressing these fundamental workspace needs ensures your organization can effectively remove barriers to productivity and engagement while saving cost of operation. 

When you’re ready to optimize office space, avoid these costly mistakes. 

The Costly Office Space Optimization Mistakes You Should Avoid

• Optimizing office space without planning 
• Investing in multiple, disconnected workplace management systems
• Relying on hardware-based systems
• Prioritizing cost-savings and aesthetics over employee needs
• Ignoring self-serve management 
• Optimizing for peak days 

Let’s explore these costly office space optimization mistakes in more detail.

1. Optimizing office space without planning

The most common mistake in office optimization is trying to improve space efficiency without conducting proper space planning— especially after the lease is signed. 

It’s like rearranging furniture in a room you haven’t measured. Without understanding what’s needed, any attempt at “optimization” risks being misaligned, short-sighted, and ultimately wasteful.

The image below presents a side-by-side comparison of Office Space Planning and Optimization in table format, covering purpose, approach, timing, outcomes, and more.

As you’ve seen, office space planning targets a different goal; it comes at a different time, and has different decision drivers than office space optimization.

In an ideal scenario, companies conduct thorough due diligence before choosing a space. That includes 

• Calculating square footage based on current headcount, 
• Projected growth, 
• And functional needs such as meeting rooms, collaborative zones, and private offices. 

A traditional benchmark might allocate 150 to 250 square feet per employee. 

But in practice, this level of planning rarely happens because companies set up office space based on different circumstances: 

• Downsizing, 
• Changing to hybrid work, 
• Relocating to a new region

You name it.

They often choose offices with pre-existing layouts. The convenience of plug-and-play spaces or the pressure to act fast means strategic planning takes a back seat.

Data on how often companies conduct formal space planning before leasing is limited. However, industry trends suggest that cost control is the primary driver behind recent downsizing and return-to-office decisions. 

And for justifiable reasons: Decreased office attendance contributes to the rising vacancy rate, which is projected to exceed 20% in major cities by 2030. That’s a massive underutilization of high-cost real estate.

When cost recovery becomes the primary motive, companies are even less likely to revisit whether their space configuration matches the actual needs of their workforce. Optimization becomes a band-aid: adjusting desk layouts, adding collaboration zones, or enforcing desk-sharing policies, without ever reassessing whether the core layout supports how people work.

This leads to a deeper misalignment. 

Employees view the office as a space to connect, collaborate, and recharge. Organizations, by contrast, see it as a cost center that must be justified. The disconnect creates frustration on both sides.

Ultimately, optimization without planning means companies may save space in the short term, but without strategic alignment, they risk lower morale, decreased productivity, and wasted investment. 

The better approach? Plan first. Optimize later. 

Awaio supports flexible office space planning and allocation 

If your workplace has been allocated a limited number of resources, such as parking spots, desks, meeting rooms, etc., but you don’t know how to share them without conflict, Awaio can help.

Awaio helps hybrid enterprises with hundreds of headcounts reduce congestion, scheduling conflicts and lost productivity through dynamic office space and resource sharing. 

Whether you’ve recently transitioned to hybrid work and are struggling to implement flexible work arrangements or you simply just need a better office space management alternative to spreadsheets, here’s how we help:

• Awaio allows you to create different work zones for teams or departments. 
• Tag any office equipment for specific functions (like digital meetings or focus work) or zones, so it’s easy for employees to reserve spaces & equipment based on their task
• Create flexible booking rules for each zone to ensure there is no conflict.

This system integrates with your Google or Outlook calendar. It works for room booking, desk sharing, parking space management, office lockers, EV charging, and any other office resource you wish to add. 

You also don’t need to install hardware like cables or digital booking screens. The entire office space management system works from your smartphone. 

2. Investing in multiple, disconnected workplace management systems

Enterprises are spending more than ever on workplace technology. But that doesn’t mean they’re spending wisely. 

Gartner forecasts that enterprise IT spending will increase by 9.9% in 2025, partly due to rising costs and continued investment in cloud-based tools. The average organization now uses over 300 software applications. 

The rationale is to drive productivity through automation. 

However, when it comes to workplace management, adding more tools often has the opposite effect. One of the most common — and costly — mistakes is investing in multiple disconnected systems to manage physical office assets. 

• One tool for room bookings, 
• Another for lockers, 
• A separate platform for access control, 
• Yet another for parking.

On paper, each system may seem robust. In practice, the lack of integration creates friction, confusion, and duplicated costs. Frustrated employees waste time navigating multiple apps to complete basic tasks. Overburdened office admins juggle overlapping vendors, inconsistent data, and siloed workflows.

As a result, the pursuit of efficiency through multiple office management tools cancels itself out. In our experience, enterprises may spend 10–20x more than necessary on office management, undermining the goals of cost reduction and productivity gains.

Worse still, these tools are often layered on top of an office layout that was never strategically planned. When space optimization is attempted without space planning, and tech is added on top, the result is an expensive, disjointed experience that neither cuts costs nor boosts productivity.

The smarter alternative? 

Invest in flexible, all-in-one workplace management systems. The ideal platform should not only centralize core features like room booking, desk sharing, visitor management, and parking but also enable any shared office asset to be configured as a bookable resource. That way, you can save cost and time while fully controlling and adapting your workplace needs in one system. 

3. Relying on hardware-based office space management systems

Traditional office optimization tools often revolve around fixed hardware like booking screens mounted outside rooms, wired occupancy sensors, digital signage, and check-in kiosks. These systems made sense when offices were static and predictable. 

However, the rise of flexible work arrangements means office space must now be shaped for fluctuating needs which is difficult to achieve with a fixed hardware system. A minor space reconfiguration project might snowball into a complicated project involving installing and reinstalling complex wired setups, rewiring occupancy sensors to new zones, planning for downtime, etc.

Beyond the logistical challenges, the financial impact of maintaining hardware-based systems can be substantial. 

• As hardware ages, the cost of repairs and replacements adds up. 
• Constant upkeep and servicing drain both time and resources. 
• Hardware systems can fail at a critical moment, costing your organization hours and causing lost productivity.

These issues quietly erode the purpose and function of any office space planning initiative. 

Pro-tip: Prioritize hardware-free office space management systems when allocating a workspace management budget. They cost less, are easy to manage, and don’t require constant upgrades. A hardware-free system like Awaio works on your smartphone. In one click, employees can reserve or release any office equipment for work.  

4. Prioritizing cost-savings and aesthetics over employees’ needs

In the post-pandemic rush to reconfigure offices, companies are falling into a costly trap: optimizing for savings and aesthetic “wow factor” instead of what employees truly need.

It’s a trend now known as “office space hotelization”—office spaces built to feel like five-star resorts. Think of on-site gyms, full-service kitchens, and luxury lounges. Futuristic office Towers like London’s £1 billion 40 Leadenhall lead the charge. 

But what’s the ROI on a beautiful office building if it’s empty?

At first glance, the latest survey data seems to support such investments: 

• 26% of workers cite free food and beverages as return motivators,
• 16% mention fitness facilities. 
• More than half of employees (55%) consider full-service restaurants a top amenity.

Yet these statistics mask a critical truth: amenities matter, but they’re not the deciding factor. You can install an on-site barista station, meditation rooms, and a state-of-the-art gym, and still face rows of empty desks. 

Why? Employees aren’t primarily seeking luxury at work; they’re seeking other employees. People come to the office to be with other people. Without that, even the best espresso machine won’t draw them in. 

So while optimizing office design for aesthetics, consider the opportunity for meaningful collaboration, spontaneous innovation, and social connection as they outweigh even the most impressive physical perks. 

This requires:

• Collecting meaningful employee feedback through targeted surveys and focus groups that go beyond superficial preferences to uncover workflow needs
• Gathering behavioral data that reveals how spaces are actually used, not how they’re intended to be used
• Making iterative improvements based on this real-world information rather than industry trends

Pro tip: Awaio’s all-in-one office space management software can help you collect all office utilization data in one place, from how office lockers are used to rooms, desks, parking spaces, and even EV charging spots. You don’t need to install cables and digital screens. Everything is managed from your mobile phone, and you can get it working in minutes.

5. Ignoring self-serve management in office resource systems

Many organizations still rely on admin-controlled workflows to manage room bookings, desk reservations, visitor access, and other office resources. The belief is that centralized control creates order. But in practice, it creates friction that scales with headcount, hybrid work complexity, and space usage variability.

When employees can’t access resources directly, admins quickly become a bottleneck. Booking requests pile up, response times slow down, and frustrated employees begin sidestepping the system—grabbing open desks or meeting rooms without logging their usage.

The downstream effect?

• Utilization data becomes unreliable, making it nearly impossible to optimize space effectively.
• Booking conflicts increase, as no one has a live view of availability.
• Admins burn time managing requests, rather than focusing on higher-value tasks.

This approach erodes trust in the system and stalls space optimization efforts. 

The solution is simple: Empower employees with real-time, self-serve access to the needed resources. Based on their work style, let them book desks, find colleagues, or reserve meeting rooms via mobile, on the go, or in advance. This increases productivity through smoother daily workflows and more precise space utilization data to inform layout and design decisions.

We’ve consistently seen that organizations that deploy self-serve systems with mobile access report savings of 8–10 hours per employee per month. At an average salary of €40,000/year, that’s over €2,000 in regained productivity per employee annually.

Pro-tip: In Awaio, both employees and admin users can manage office space and resource booking anywhere, anytime, with just their mobile phone. At home, on a Sunday? You can book all the resources you need for work next week— even lockers- when you expect a parcel delivery. Admin can also customize booking rules and adjust availability to ensure everyone has what they need every time. That means:

• Fewer delays.
• Clean, real-time utilization data.
• More productive hours reclaimed

6. Optimizing office space for peak days

Planning your office layout around the busiest day of the week may feel like a safe bet, but it’s one of the most expensive mistakes hybrid workplaces make. 

The logic sounds solid: if your space works at 85% capacity, surely it’ll perform on any other day. The problem with that assumption is that it ignores a critical reality: most days look nothing like your peak day.

Take a closer look at the pattern:

• Tuesday and Wednesday show the highest occupancy.
• Fridays drop as low as 15% in the evening.
• Midday is the only consistently active window across the week.

While Tuesday and Wednesday are outliers, the data tells a different story: the average weekly utilization is just 57%, meaning nearly half of your office goes unused most of the time. The result? Oversized floor plans, underused resources, and wasted spending.

Many organizations soon realize the cost of over- or underoptimization based on false data. In the UK, for instance, most businesses now believe they got their office space strategies wrong in the wake of the pandemic. Nearly two-thirds of the surveyed organisations say they may have downsized their office space too much over the past few years.

While you still need office space design that handles peak days confidently, build flexibility into the baseline: 

• Convert static zones into modular ones that adapt by day or hour.
• Reconfigure large rooms into bookable pods or quiet areas during low-traffic times.
• Use real-time occupancy data to match layout to behavior, not assumptions.

Peak days are worth watching, but patterns should drive your decisions. The real win lies in optimizing space for how people work, not just when they show up.

The right workplace management system simplifies office space optimization

The right workspace management software should help you design adaptable office spaces. That means, in addition to providing real-time and historical data on all office resources, it should also enable enough flexibility to manage every workspace resource in one place. It should provide a true all-in-one workspace management system where you can turn any office equipment into a bookable, shareable, and trackable digital asset. That’s where the real flexibility and cost-saving benefits come in. 

This is what Awaio provides.

How Intrum Oslo optimized its hybrid office with Awaio

When Intrum planned its move to a new hybrid-ready office in Lysaker, Oslo, it needed more than a desk-booking app. They wanted a platform that could manage a full range of shared resources—rooms, desks, lockers, parking, and more—with the flexibility to adapt as workplace needs evolved.

Awaio delivered on that need:

• Workplace managers gained visibility into how every resource was used, enabling smart decisions and rapid adjustments without hardware constraints.
• Employees could reserve what they needed from a mobile app or browser, reducing friction and supporting hybrid scheduling.
• Everyone could easily navigate the office, finding desks, meeting rooms, coffee stations, and emergency exits from a single interface.

The result is smooth operations, high employee satisfaction, and a workplace strategy that adapts as fast as its users.

[Template] Office Optimization Readiness Checklist

Optimizing your office space without the proper foundation can lead to underused assets, frustrated employees, and wasted budget.

Before you roll out any strategy, you need clarity on:

• What optimization opportunities exist in your office space today
• Strategic alignment: Does C-level leadership see workspace management as a strategic asset?
• How employees use and interact with space
• Where current utilization patterns break down

This checklist helps you pressure-test your readiness, so you can make data-driven decisions that reduce costs while improving the workplace experience.

Frequently Asked Questions About Office Space Optimization

What is the difference between space optimization and space utilization?

Space optimization involves maximizing the use of available space. On the other hand, space utilization involves tracking how effectively space is being used in real time.

How does space optimization affect the environment?

Optimizing office spaces reduces resource consumption and waste, lowers energy use, transportation costs, and overall carbon footprint, and has a net positive effect on the environment.

What is smart office space?

A smart office space uses technology to make the workplace more adaptable to users’ preferences. In a smart office space, you’ll find office equipment with IoT devices that allow things like lights, thermostats, or desks to adjust automatically based on who uses them. For example, a meeting room can turn on the lights and start the video screen when someone enters, or a desk can remember your preferred chair height and screen setup.