According to Office Finder, it's best to leave approximately 175 square feet of space for each person who works in your office. Leaders and executives typically need between 200 and 400 square feet. Open office workstations only require about 100 square feet per person. For more traditional offices, with between 250 and 300 square feet per employee, you'll need fewer common workspaces.
The typical ratio here would be one conference room for every 20 employees. With this density, an office of 50 people would only need two or three conference rooms. During the pandemic, JLL reported that the average amount of space per employee was 196 square feet. Today, workplace design studies concluded that the average office space per employee is 150 to 175 square feet.
This includes dedicated desk space and surrounding space, and you should also consider the amount of space in meeting rooms and common areas. What style of office space works best? The 100-square-foot-per-person rule works best for open-plan offices, which have become much more popular over the past decade. Making everyone feel close to each other can promote innovation and efficiency. Open-plan workspaces can also reduce costs by sharing resources such as printers, photocopiers, and even lighting.
However, this doesn't fit every type of business. If you want to encourage a more isolated work style, with cubicles and workstations, consider allowing up to 200 square feet per person. Of course, you can also choose a combination of both worlds. To understand how much space you'll need per employee, you'll need to visualize your future office space. While this calculator will provide you with an estimate of the amount of space your new office needs, it is based on industry standards and is not intended to act as a definitive assessment.
Or, if you're organizing larger business meetings or training sessions and you're worried that your office space isn't large enough to accommodate a growing team, consider renting a conference room at a nearby hotel. Employees who have to travel a lot to get to work but find it difficult to concentrate at home may prefer to work in a coworking space or a nearby satellite office. Denser offices often have large collaboration spaces for employees to work together, exchange ideas, and relax. As a result, you may not need additional office space for your growing company, but you may need to upgrade your conference room technology.
In addition, the space must include easy-to-use technology that helps employees quickly find and reserve the spaces they need to do their best work. In companies with private offices, employees with private offices will get a higher proportion of the total space than those who are in cubes or workstations.
