An efficient workplace doesn’t just relate to how people work but also how the workspace is used. Meeting rooms may be booked out but not used, a very hot room in the afternoon may be avoided and people may not like working in certain areas of the office which seem cold and unfriendly. Jason Moss, SVP Marketing & Ecosystem at Acuity Intelligent Spaces, explains how workplace data can be gathered and used to make the workplace a high-performing business asset.
We already know what is going on in the workplace. We just are not very good at listening to it.
You can see it on almost any office day. Every small meeting room is booked, yet two people are having a one-on-one in a conference room designed for 12. Somewhere, a team is standing in the hallway looking for a place to meet while 10 empty chairs sit behind a closed door. The room is technically occupied. It is just not exactly earning its keep.
Then there is the west side of the building in summer. By mid-afternoon the sun is pouring through the glass, the temperature is climbing and people quietly migrate elsewhere. No survey required. Their feet have already completed the feedback form.
And increasingly, people move to common spaces to work. Not because the desks are unavailable, but because some areas feel so quiet and desolate that they have developed a bit of a library effect. A library is wonderful. It is just not always the reason people made the commute to the office.
The workplace is giving us clues all day long about how people meet, move, collaborate and avoid friction. Employees notice them. Facilities teams notice them. IT notices them. The problem is that these observations rarely come together in a way that helps the people making decisions see the full story.
The blind spot in workplace data
Most CXOs have a reasonably clear view into customers, finances and operations. The dashboards may not be perfect, but the data is there. The physical workplace is different.
We can usually tell what a building costs. We are often much less clear on how well it is performing. Are rooms being used in the way they were designed? Are meeting spaces supporting the work people actually need to do? Are technology issues shaping behavior before anyone opens a ticket? Is energy being used where people actually are?
The irony is that the people in the office often already know the answers. They feel the hot zone. They know which room never connects the first time. They know where collaboration happens and which spaces everyone avoids. But anecdote alone is hard to turn into an investment case, an operating decision or a repeatable improvement plan.
Meanwhile, AV systems, room devices, environmental sensors, lighting, HVAC, room-booking platforms and building management systems are generating signals about how spaces are used and how they perform. The blind spot is not a total lack of information. It is our inability to connect the human story with the operational data and give decision-makers a narrative they can act on.
Connect the unconnected
The first action is straightforward to describe, even if it takes real work to deliver: connect the unconnected.
For years, workplace systems were selected and managed as separate domains. AV did its job. Lighting did its job. HVAC did its job. Room booking did its job. Each system could be useful on its own, but each saw only one part of the environment.
Connecting building systems and devices creates access to the data already being produced across the workplace. It allows teams to move beyond isolated room status, device health or occupancy readings and begin understanding how the environment performs as a whole.
This does not mean connecting everything simply because we can. It means connecting the systems that help answer meaningful business questions: Where is friction occurring? Which spaces support the work people are trying to do? Where are comfort, technology and occupancy out of alignment? Where would a change in configuration or investment improve performance?
A single signal can identify a symptom. Connected signals can begin to explain the cause.
Why software-based integration matters
Once the unconnected is connected, the next step is turning data from multiple sources into insight. This is where software-based integration matters.
A booking platform may show that a room is reserved. An occupancy sensor may show that only two people are inside. The AV system may show that the display was never used. An environmental system may show that the room requires significant cooling. No single system can tell the complete story. Together, they can reveal that a large, technology-rich room is repeatedly being used for work that could happen somewhere smaller and more efficient.
Cloud-manageable, software-based ecosystems provide a consistent layer across AV, environmental systems, building management, lighting, HVAC and workplace tools. Each source has value on its own. The bigger opportunity comes when those sources can inform each other and create insights that no one system could produce alone.
We are already seeing the beginnings of this in the market. Projects such as Microsoft’s Experience Center One in Redmond, Washington, which features the Q-SYS Full Stack AV Platform bringing together audio, video, control, automation and monitoring as part of a connected ecosystem to drive innovative experiences. When teams can combine insights from platforms such as the Teams Pro Management portal and Q-SYS Reflect, they can identify system health issues earlier, understand performance across spaces and act before the end-user experience is affected.
That changes the role of workplace technology. It moves from infrastructure that needs to be maintained to an active source of operational spatial and physical intelligence.
Make the workplace a high-performing business asset
For years, the mandate was straightforward: make the technology in the room work. That is still essential. But working is now the baseline. The larger opportunity is performance.
When AV systems, sensors, workplace platforms and building systems are connected, the physical environment becomes a live source of business insight. The result is not simply a smarter building. It is a workplace that can be measured, improved and managed against the outcomes the business cares about.
Done well, that can help organisations:
• Use real estate more effectively by matching space to actual patterns of work.
• Improve operational performance by identifying recurring issues earlier and resolving them proactively.
• Align energy use with occupancy, comfort and demand.
• Create workplace experiences that make it easier for people to meet, collaborate and do their best work.
The problem is that workplace behaviour and building data are visible, but fragmented. The action is to connect systems and devices, then use software to combine their signals. The result is a clearer view of workplace performance and a stronger basis for decisions about space, technology, operations and investment.
The organisations that get the most value from intelligent workplaces will not simply be the ones with the most technology in their buildings. They will be the ones that listen to what their workplaces are already telling them, translate those signals into insight and act on what they learn.
The workplace has been talking all along. It is time we started listening.
For more information about the Q-SYS visit: www.qsys.com