Abstract
Data are required for optimizing workplace design, assessing user experience, and ensuring wellbeing. This research focuses on the benefits of incorporating post-occupancy evaluation (POE) data analysis by studying the digital trail of employees generated by the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure of the office. The objective is to enable a safe return to offices through compliance with COVID-19 space-capacity regulations and in consideration of the health and wellbeing of employees. Workplaces, teams, and people have become more digitalized and therefore more mobile due to the globalization of knowledge and cutting-edge technological innovations, a process that has been accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis. Now, hybrid work and fully remote working routines are increasing in a significant number of companies. Nevertheless, with the return to the office, understanding how to calibrate spatial capacity is now key for workplaces and companies. Traditional assessment methods are obsolete; new methods that respond to mobility, changing occupancy rates, and comfort are essential. This paper analyzes, through the case study of a pre-COVID-19 activity-based office, the advantages of using digital indoor-location techniques (such as Wi-Fi networks, which additionally have the advantage of being previously installed in the majority of these spaces). The paper demonstrates that the incorporation of digital POE of user trends enabled a more seamless, accurate, and scalable return to a new normal office work scenario and an improved post-COVID-19 design of workplaces.
Highlights
The objective of this paper is to evaluate the improvements of using digital infrastructure already in place at an office as a post-occupancy evaluation (POE) tool to gain input on the employees’ use of space
2: The quantitative manual “viewers” (QMv) method is a method of tracking employee location by external professionals, called “viewers”; these viewers were trained to do regular walkthroughs of all the office spaces following a map of the office and writing down the occupied or empty spots of the office every time they pass by
Due to quantitative manual “self-register” (QMs) being significantly difficult to implement and unreliable, quantitative digital (QD) is essentially the only way to understand users’ choices, which is fundamental in a flexible workspace
Summary
The workplace is undergoing a dramatic transformation in its transition from the industrial age towards the knowledge age [1]. The requirement to anticipate and predict change is crucial to making the most of the transition and remaining sustainable [2,3]. To understand how the workplace is developing, it is necessary to understand new work styles, patterns, and locations that will ensure organizations stay effective in the long term [2]. Several factors have driven the transformation in workspaces: the sharing economy [5], the need for flexibility [6,7], the increase in self-employed workers, and the use of mobile technology, making it possible to work anywhere at any time [6,8]
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