Dive Brief:
- Workplace friction — finding places to sit and meet, coordinating in-person time with teammates and managing scheduling conflicts — is costing the average mid-sized company $9 million annually, according to a report by office analytics company Robin.
- Based on employees’ estimates of time spent on workplace coordination and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics compensation benchmarks, annual losses can reach $14,000 per knowledge worker, according to a survey of 500 employees and workplace professionals in the U.S. and Canada.
- Although organizations are trying to solve this problem, they’re often using systems that don’t share data, Robin said in a release. At organizations where workplace systems work together, only 14% of employees said workplace friction created a noticeable drag on their productivity, compared with 63% of those at organizations with disjointed systems, according to the report.
Dive Insight:
Employees seek physical workplaces that support learning and well-being, reports show. A survey of 16,000 full-time office workers across 16 countries by building design company Gensler found that employees are more likely to view their workplaces as effective for learning if they’re designed to support focused work and rest. At the same time, although workplace management technology has become commonplace, most decision makers are unclear how their offices are being used for focused work and team collaboration, according to a report by occupancy management company Butlr.
Workplace improvements should begin by planning around the technology employees and operators use and aligning office infrastructure with the demands of hybrid work, Christian Bigsby, senior vice president of workplace resources at Cisco, told Facilities Dive in an interview. By making those improvements, operators can anticipate show-up rates and meeting room usage, Bigsby said.
In its report, Robin said much of the friction in workplaces results from organizations cobbling together point solutions. “Room booking in one tool, desk reservations in another, services in a third, visitor management in a fourth,” it says. “The friction is visible, but the signal stays scattered across systems that do not talk to each other.”
This coordination friction adds up to $4,453 per employee per year, and that’s based on the most conservative BLS figures, according to the report.
Workplace operators think the cost is even higher – closer to $9,000 per employee per year, the report says. That’s because workplace operators see friction as a systemic problem in management as opposed to contained annoyances.
Given the two estimates, workplace friction could cost anywhere from $4.5 million to $9 million per year, assuming a 1,000-employee organization, Robin says.
When the office doesn’t function the way it should, managers work around it, the report says, by “rebooking spaces, fielding the complaints, and trying to keep the office usable,” Robin says. “Neither side is measuring what the office gives up each time this happens.”
