Whitepaper "Workplace Equilibrium"

How modern space management combines efficiency and employee satisfaction

Discover how you can optimize your space efficiency while increasing employee satisfaction.

Balance instead of compromise: Traditionally, efficiency is seen as the opposite of comfort. Find out in this white paper why these supposedly incompatible goals can actually complement each other perfectly.

Using our Workplace Equilibrium Model , you will learn how to reconcile both goals by creating a dynamic, data-driven office environment that adapts efficiently to the needs of your employees.

Achieve workplace equilibrium in your office!

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To the author

Marvin Christ - or Marv for short - is an expert in Customer Success Management & Consulting at Thing-it.

After completing his academic degrees in IT management and practical computer science, he gained over five years of professional experience in
various roles within the Siemens branch for intelligent infrastructure. He then moved to the PropTech startup scene at Thing-it.

His extensive experience has now complemented the Thing-it skillset for five years. His in-depth know-how ranges from software engineering and complex IoT systems to a far-
reaching understanding of smart infrastructure. At Thing-it, his skills are primarily used to promote the technical orientation of services and pre-sales enablement. He also supports the development of the Thing-it data analysis strategy and promotes the customer-oriented approach.

As a long-standing co-designer of numerous customer projects, he has experienced the changes in modern working environments at first hand and provides valuable input on the topic of smart offices - both from a technical and strategic perspective.

Function and purpose of an office

We should rethink how offices work and what purpose they serve.
The pandemic has turned traditional office norms on their head, forcing companies to rethink the role of the physical workplace. While hybrid models are now widely accepted, companies continue to wrestle with the question of how much office space they actually need and for what purpose.

employees come together in the office. Studies suggest that companies are currently trying to bring employees back - whether through regulations or incentives (Firth, et al., 2023; Osiecka, et al., 2024). However, finding the right balance remains a challenge!

The question often arises as to whether efficiency can be equated with a reduction in space, or whether a successful workplace model requires more than just an optimization of space. Companies seem to be walking a fine line: they need to optimize their office space in order to work efficiently, while at the same time making the office an attractive and user-friendly place for their employees.

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Efficiency and comfort - no opposites

Efficiency and comfort are not mutually exclusive. However, striving for one can jeopardize both.
Traditionally, companies have viewed successful space planning as a compromise between space efficiency and workplace experience. Accordingly, optimizing one would come at the expense of the other.

Even before the pandemic, rigid office layouts were often optimized less for the workplace experience and more for efficiency. But even then, many desks remained unused due to illness, vacation and business trips (Advanced Workplace Associates Ltd., 2015).

On the other hand, more space per employee is no guarantee of happy employees. Poorly planned open-plan offices can feel more isolating than collaborative and can even reduce employee satisfaction (Rothe, 2025). At the same time, overcrowded spaces lead to stress and distraction. The solution is to find a balance: A moderately high occupancy density encourages creativity and interaction but beyond a certain threshold the benefits diminish. According to Rothe, a poorly planned, flexible office actually produces poorer work results than a classic open-plan office.

Achieving balance is therefore not just about maximizing or minimizing space. Instead, modern workplaces must be designed in such a way that they adapt to the needs of employees and the dynamics of team sizes while ensuring high efficiency and productivity.

The Workplace Equilibrium Model - WEM

Achieve balance in the workplace.
The previous examples illustrate what we believe to be a key insight: Workplace efficiency and employee comfort are not opposing goals, but are in fact closely linked. At Thing-it, we observe that those companies that do not see these goals as opposites achieve the greatest success in modernizing their office environments. Instead, they strategically balance these two goals to create a balanced office concept. Based on this approach, we have developed the "Workplace Equilibrium Model - WEM " for short: A structured, two-dimensional framework that helps companies evaluate and optimize both space efficiency and workplace experience.

Rather than viewing workplace efficiency and workplace experience as opposing forces, the WEM presents them as two distinct but interrelated axes. This approach allows organizations to categorize their current workplace strategies into four quadrants, each of which represents a different balance (or imbalance) of efficiency and workplace experience. By moving beyond a linear view, organizations can better understand what influences their office environments and how they can positively evolve them.

In the following, we will outline each quadrant and discuss the considerations behind it.

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The upper left quadrant

Comfort at any price

This quadrant represents the organizations that place the workplace experience above all else. Here, employee satisfaction comes first - regardless of space utilization. Discussions with our customers have shown that this view is often expressed in this way:

"It must never happen that an employee cannot find a free desk or space when they need it. It's okay for us if the office is not fully utilized."

While this approach may be beneficial for the comfort of employees, it leads to inefficiencies that can have financial and environmental consequences. Unused office space consequently leads to excessive real estate, maintenance and energy consumption costs. Factors that are being viewed more and more critically as sustainability becomes an increasing priority for companies (CBRE, 2024a). As we have already mentioned, we also believe that an office environment that feels too empty can have a negative impact on employee morale, engagement and collaboration. An office that feels deserted can destroy the very positive workplace experience it is supposed to enhance.

The lower right quadrant

Efficient use of space at all costs

In contrast, the quadrant on the bottom right describes companies that take a strictly cost-oriented approach to office management and focus exclusively on maximizing space efficiency while putting employee comfort on the back burner. These companies
often formulate their philosophy as follows:

"We need to make sure that our investments are used as efficiently as possible to save costs and reduce waste. It's okay if employees can't always find a desk or a room when they need it."

A common strategy in this quadrant is the introduction of rigid head-to-desk ratios, where several employees share one workstation. This is based on the assumption that not everyone will be in the office at the same time. Although this can lead to higher space utilization, it often backfires according to
: shortage problems arise and employees have to compete for workstations, which leads to frustration and an overall poor working atmosphere.
This approach can also lead to distractions and lower productivity, which ironically affects overall efficiency, even though this should actually be maximized (Knoll Inc., 2011; Rothe, 2025).

The upper right quadrant

The equilibrium

In contrast to the two previous quadrants - which reflect the two one-dimensional opposites - the upper right quadrant represents the optimal state: an office in which space efficiency and workplace experience are harmonized. At Thing-it, we call this the Workplace Equilibrium.

We are increasingly seeing forward-thinking companies striving for this balance because their previous strategies have failed to achieve either real efficiency or a positive workplace experience. In work environments where this balance has been achieved, it is clear that high space utilization does not necessarily affect employee satisfaction. Dynamic management actively encourages collaboration, creativity and engagement in the workplace.

"We believe there is a happy medium between space efficiency and a positive workplace experience that encourages collaboration, creativity and engagement."

To achieve this balance, intelligent strategies for dynamic space management are required. For example, in high-utilization environments, demand for work and meeting spaces needs to be carefully orchestrated. Here, we would highly recommend implementing a booking solution to ensure reliable management of limited resources, avoiding frustration while maximizing resource utilization. Ultimately, employees need planning certainty to be happy and satisfied at work.

In contrast, such booking systems are unnecessary in organizations that fall in the upper left quadrant, where space is abundant and demand is low.

We believe that companies can only find effective solutions to their individual office planning challenges if they take a holistic view of space efficiency and workplace experience.

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The lower left quadrant

The undesirable standard

Perhaps the most telling finding from the WEM is that companies often end up in the
bottom left quadrant by default - even if their goal was to optimize either space efficiency or workplace experience. This quadrant represents the worst of both worlds: inefficient use of space, combined with a poor employee experience.

As the dotted line suggests, this is often the result of organizations looking at office strategy from a linear perspective and assuming that efficiency and workplace experience lie on a single spectrum. As we have already discussed, we believe this
perspective carries some risks. Without a structured approach, there is a risk that organizations will implement measures that achieve neither goal, which can lead to a dissatisfied workforce and significant inefficiencies (Rothe, 2025). All of this will lead to the "undesirable standard" creeping in over time and a company unexpectedly finding itself in the bottom left quadrant.

The dynamics of modern offices

Modern offices are constantly changing.

As companies adapt to new ways of working, office environments must also evolve accordingly. Over 80% of companies are actively pursuing strategies to improve the workplace experience and space efficiency in the coming years (CBRE, 2024b). However, reconciling these two goals requires a holistic approach - one that avoids unintended trade-offs between space efficiency and employee satisfaction.

The Workplace Equilibrium Model provides a structured framework to achieve this balance. It helps companies become aware of their current office situation in order to optimize their space while creating an engaging and productivity-enhancing office environment. In this section, we explore how the WEM can be applied to real office scenarios. We also show how Thing-it customers are adopting WEM to prevent inefficiencies and ensure their office spaces remain both dynamic and efficient.

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The relationship between efficiency, overcrowding and employee behavior

An analysis of our customers' booking and occupancy data provides valuable insights into how employees react to different levels of office occupancy. One key observation is that when occupancy levels are low, employees tend to refrain from reserving desks as they assume the space will be available anyway. However, as occupancy increases, behavior changes - employees begin to proactively reserve desks in order to secure a workstation.

This pattern suggests that higher space efficiency does not per se affect the workplace experience; rather, it is the perceived accessibility of resources that influences employee behavior. As office environments become more crowded, employees strive for predictability - an indicator that efficient space management with high workplace satisfaction is possible when supported by the right systems to ensure this predictability, for example.

The following chart, which is sourced from sensor-based occupancy data from Thing-it customers, illustrates this trend; initially, workspace bookings remained low as employees saw little need to reserve a space. However, as occupancy (captured via sensors) increased, so did the number of bookings, reflecting the growing need for predictability in the use of
workstations.

In our view, this insight challenges the assumption that an increase in occupancy rates automatically leads to dissatisfaction. Instead of expanding office space to address concerns about resource scarcity, companies can introduce measures to improve the workplace experience
: for example, a booking solution to manage demand efficiently. Implemented correctly, such systems reassure employees that resources are available, creating a positive office experience without compromising efficiency.

The disadvantages of a rigid head-to-desk ratio

A head-to-desk ratio can lead to an unwanted standard.

One of the most widespread strategies to increase space efficiency after the pandemic was the introduction of a stricter ratio between employees and available workstations. Before the pandemic, a 1:1 workstation to employee ratio was the norm. However, as hybrid working models became more prevalent, many organizations moved to a ratio of 1.5 to 2 employees per workstation to optimize office costs and minimize already underutilized space.

While this approach can obviously improve efficiency, it often ignores the different space requirements of different teams . It is quite possible that occupancy data at building level may indicate that a building is underutilized. However, on closer inspection, we find that workspace requirements can vary greatly by department. For example, some teams may struggle with a constant shortage of workstations, while others may never utilize their allocated capacity. A general application of head-to-desk ratios here would potentially lead to frustration, loss of productivity and an overall decrease in job satisfaction. The whole thing is a good example of how organizations in WEM fall into the "undesirable standard" quadrant, where neither efficiency nor employee satisfaction is fully achieved .

To avoid this, we recommend that organizations take a data-driven approach that continuously evaluates resource utilization rather than relying on rigid tools such as head-to-desk ratios.
This is reflected in the workplaces.

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Balance thanks to sensor-based data

Maintaining a balance requires constant work. To maintain it, we need to work in a data-driven way.
The WEM illustrates a fundamental principle for us about modern office environments: They are never really "finished". Rapid changes in working styles, team structures and business priorities mean that office spaces need to be regularly re-evaluated and adapted to maintain their efficiency and quality.

Even at the smallest level, individual floor plans need to be constantly optimized . Changes, such as team relocations, changing collaboration requirements or fluctuating demand for meeting rooms, have an impact on space efficiency. Without continuous evaluation , previously efficient office plans can quickly no longer match the actual needs of employees .

Take the floor plan below, which visualizes the average peak occupancy per workspace. A quick analysis shows that the meeting rooms are consistently at full capacity. At the same time, certain areas make full use of the desks allocated to them. While others are only using around two thirds of the desks allocated to them. This again highlights the limitations of static head-to-desk ratios: the rigid approach does not take into account the different requirements of individual teams.

To maintain an optimal balance between efficiency and productivity in an office space, companies should regularly analyze and evaluate their existing data points. Regular evaluations allow companies to identify inefficiencies, optimize resource allocation and proactively address potential bottlenecks before they become a problem.

In the case of this particular floor plan, the original assumptions about the availability of desks and meeting rooms no longer match the actual usage patterns. Some areas may already be experiencing frustration due to a lack of available workspaces, while others may have excess capacity leading to inefficiencies. Without structured, data-driven decision making, companies run the risk of slipping into the undesirable state of WEM, where neither efficiency nor the employee experience is fully optimized.

Through a strategy of continuous evaluation and adaptation of their own office space, companies can ensure that they remain in the balance quadrant and achieve both cost efficiency and a highly functional, appealing office environment. We believe that the key to success lies not in a one-off office redesign, but in the continuous optimization of office space based on actual usage patterns and the current needs of your employees.

Conclusion

Achieving the workplace equilibrium in your own office.
The modern office is evolving at an unprecedented pace, challenging organizations to find the balance between space efficiency and workplace experience. Traditional linear approaches, where these two factors are seen as competing priorities, often lead to sub-optimal strategies that cannot effectively achieve either goal.

The Workplace Equilibrium Model can provide a structured framework for redefining this relationship. It shows that efficiency and workplace experience can coexist when viewed holistically. By leveraging data-driven insights - such as occupancy trends and booking behavior - companies can ensure that office resources are used effectively while maintaining an office environment that fosters collaboration, creativity and engagement.

The examples above illustrate that higher space utilization does not necessarily have to be at the expense of the workplace experience. With a strategic approach, efficient space utilization can be achieved without employees becoming dissatisfied.

In our view, the future of the office does not lie solely in maximizing or minimizing its own space, but in achieving an individual and constantly changing balance. We believe that the most successful companies in the future will continue to be those that continuously adapt their office space
to the changing needs of the company and its employees to ensure that efficiency and workplace experience remain in harmony over time.