Over the past two years, more non-real estate people have begun dabbling in real estate data. I have pulled together more occupancy and utilization charts in the past 6 months than in the past 6 years combined. I have gotten so good at describing the difference between peak, average, and seasonal occupancy patterns that I could probably jump on a call with anyone in the world and quickly have them understand it without any warmup or research into their specific situation.
The biggest challenge of this dabbling has been the rising belief that there is some relationship between how many people are in the office and successful collaboration. I have seen this belief manifested in many places with people who should know better. But I have learned it must be said emphatically that having lots of people in the office does not mean those people are collaborating.
I get that it feels counter-intuitive, so let us walk through it. We have been trained over the past two years that “the office is for collaboration.” Therefore, anyone in the office must be collaborating. Therefore, more people in the office means more collaboration. Unfortunately, A = B = C is not true in this case and the reasons can be interesting.
Firstly, collaboration is a tough word to crack. We can all agree that two people together to share a pint has some collaborative aspect even if it is not deep collaboration. Similarly, two people in-person with another two people virtual limits, or negates, the benefits of those who are together. If everyone is forced to be on a screen regardless, then it does not really matter whether you are in the office or at home.
Then, we need to take a look at non-collaborative office attendance (aka “following the mandate”). The rise in mandates and managers trying to force their teams to leave up to them leads to malicious compliance where employees are in the office but only to sit quietly at their desks until quitting time. You can get high occupancy with no collaboration this way. Your occupancy metrics may look good, but your effective use of in-person time is worse than working virtually.
Finally, too many people in the office planning to collaborate in similar ways (if the office has not been updated to deal with it) can prevent the planned collaboration from happening at all leaving a negative experience for colleagues. Ironically, too many people coming together at once could create a negative collaborative experience if the workplace is not designed right. In these cases, lower occupancy might yield better overall outcomes.
It can be hard to grasp that occupancy and in-person collaborative success are not directly related and may even be negatively correlated. For decades we were trained that it is never bad to have everyone together. But it is simply one more paradigm that was changed coming out of the pandemic.