Insurance Firm Plans Real Estate Growth with Desk Utilization Analytics

“Working with Relogix has surpassed our expectations. Their rapid installation, data accuracy and visualizations provide us the information we need to make sound real estate strategy decisions.” – Senior Real Estate Director

The Challenge

The client—a global insurance firm with more than 5,000 employees across 120 countries worldwide—was eager to begin its workspace transformation journey. Located throughout Canada and the United States, many of its employees were still working in a traditional workspace environment with assigned seating, and several spaces were visibly vacant. However, the company decided that these observations were not enough to inform their new work setting design.

The Corporate Real Estate (CRE) team identified three keys to a successful transformation journey.

• First, it needed to collect unbiased occupancy and utilization data on how various workspaces in its offices were being used, while also respecting individual team member privacy.
• Second, the client needed to extract key insights from that data for engaging in meaningful conversations with business unit leaders.
• Third, its workspace transformation strategy should be aligned with the diverse needs of its current and future employees, while also maintaining the company’s existing corporate culture.

The client tested several solutions but could not find one to meet their standards. The other services’ inability to capture unbiased data led to inaccurate and inconsistent results and severely lacked in satisfactory customer service.

Partnering With Relogix

The client found the answer to their challenges in Relogix. Deciding that desk-level sensors would be the best way to gather the data to inform its real estate strategy, the company partnered with Relogix for its turnkey sensor-as-a-service solution and data analytics and insights platform.

Relogix successfully deployed over 1,600 state-of-the-art sensors in five locations across North America to measure occupancy and utilization and dwell time of seats. Over a six-month period, every minute of the workday, each sensor captured real-time data that was then auto-populated to a secure online dashboard for the client’s exclusive analytics and insights.

Within just one hour of installing the sensors, the client was able to begin accessing the data it needed.

The Results

The company partnered with a dedicated Relogix Solutions Architect to develop a custom data visualization dashboard that would best suit their unique needs. The client chose to measure two main metrics that were most relevant and actionable: occupancy (whether or not there was presence at a seat) and utilization (how long the seat was continually in use). What they learned was:

The Relogix solution enabled segmentation of the data collected, to ensure that space planning represented the diverse needs of each business unit. Occupancy and utilization were observed and segmented by building and business unit, providing the level of detail necessary to facilitate discussions with each business unit owner about how their space was being used.

Ultimately, by developing a much deeper understanding of its space and employees’ work habits, the client has been empowered to effectively allocate space to support its flexible work program across its CRE portfolio. The company has also been able to plan out appropriate meeting room sizes to meet the varied needs of its employees.

Moving Forward

The company’s CRE experts were able to identify unused space using the Relogix platform. While some of that space has been repurposed, the client has also decided it will have a 22% structured vacancy, ensuring there is room to scale in size. That structured vacancy can accommodate future growth, without the need to grow their real estate footprint.