What is a workplace strategy?

In short, a workplace strategy is a plan to align your office environment with business objectives. That could be how your office design can enhance business performance, how it can better cater to employee needs or how it can adapt to business growth.

Why is a workplace strategy important?

Your workplace strategy is important because it can significantly impact business performance. This includes employee engagement, productivity, wellbeing and collaboration – as well as space utilisation and the associated costs.

How to create an effective workplace strategy

To create an effective workplace strategy, you firstly need to define business goals and engage with employees. After that, find or create a workspace that matches your goals and meets employee requirements. Finally, you should consider new processes to improve or streamline workflows and how your workplace can support these. You can find out more in our guide to creating successful workplace strategies.

What’s the best workplace strategy for hybrid working?

Space utilisation is a key element of workplace strategies for businesses using a hybrid working model. With employees working in different locations, it’s vital that you maximise efficiency of the space you’re paying for. For example, you may be able to swap some of your existing desk space for a more collaborative, communal area.

What is a future-proof workplace strategy for businesses?

No workplace strategy is future-proof by nature. It’s important to continually monitor performance and review your strategy – both to adapt to changes in your business or industry more broadly, and to make further progress towards your business goals.

What are the key elements of a successful workplace strategy?

The key elements of a successful workplace strategy are: • People – Prioritising employees, their feedback and how they work • Place – Finding or creating a space that works for your business • Process – Implementing a strategy that delivers results

How does workplace strategy impact company performance?

An effective workplace strategy can improve company performance in a number of ways: • Increased productivity • Enhanced engagement • Improved collaboration • Reduced costs • Better staff retention

How does workplace strategy impact employee retention?

Workplace strategies can improve employee engagement, which has a positive knock-on effect for staff retention. For instance, highly engaged businesses achieve 59% less staff turnover.

How do you measure the ROI of a workplace strategy?

To measure the ROI of your workplace strategy, monitor metrics like cost per employee and revenue per employee. Be sure to factor in any effect on productivity and staff retention, which have their own impact on your revenue and expenses, respectively.

How to Measure the Success of Your Workplace Strategy

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min read

Patrick Isitt
Senior Content Manager
Content specialist in office design and build.

If you want to align your office space to business objectives, a workplace strategy is a must. Whether that’s improving collaboration, boosting productivity, or making better use of your office footprint, your strategy should be working for you, not against you.

We’ve previously covered how to create a successful workplace strategy for your business. But here’s the big question: how do you know if it’s actually working? Without measuring success, you could be investing time and resources into a strategy that isn’t delivering results—or worse, creating new challenges like disengaged employees or underutilised space.

The good news? There are clear, measurable ways to track the impact of your workplace strategy. In this article, we’ll walk you through the key metrics that matter—from employee engagement and space efficiency to productivity and financial returns. More importantly, we’ll show you how to use these insights to fine-tune your approach and create a workplace that truly supports your people and your business.

Why measuring workplace strategy success matters

A good workplace strategy can play a vital role in the performance of your business. It impacts employee engagement, wellbeing, collaboration and productivity – not to mention how efficiently space is used.

These factors all have their own effect on your bottom line. For example, high engagement can reduce both absenteeism and staff turnover – which saves costs on recruitment and training.

Without measuring its success, you risk wasting resources on a strategy that doesn’t deliver any results. Even worse, your strategy may be making things worse. Low productivity, high attrition and poor space utilisation could all go unnoticed without keeping tabs on your workplace strategy. So, which metrics should you track?

Key metrics to track

Below, we’ll look at five key areas to monitor when implementing a workplace strategy…

Employee experience & engagement

It goes without saying that changes to your workplace primarily affect your employees. With this in mind, employee feedback can be a great way to track the success of your workplace strategy.

The most common method is using employee surveys and polls on a monthly or quarterly basis. However, you can also conduct sentiment analysis using internal communication platforms, social media sites and online forums, as well as performance reviews, HR reports and exit interviews.

Space utilisation & efficiency

Space utilisation is a key part of any workplace strategy. It allows you to maximise efficiency and minimise redundant real estate costs. Motion sensors are a great way to monitor utilisation as they tell you how frequently different spaces, rooms or even desks are used.

You can also:
- Assess entry and exit patterns using smart badges or access cards
- Analyse data from desk- or room-booking systems
- Track the number of devices connecting to Wi-Fi in different office zones
- Undertake manual workplace audits, periodically checking space usage

Productivity & performance

Improved business performance is one of the most valuable benefits of a good workplace strategy. Of course, this depends on your company’s goals and how performance compares to pre-strategy levels.

Ideally, you will have historical data to serve as a reference point. This will allow you to compare, for example, project completion rates before and after the introduction of a workplace strategy.

Time-tracking software is another useful tool, allowing you to monitor the overall time spent on projects – or how much time employees spend on high-value tasks compared to administrative work. Similarly, project management platforms provide an easy way to track overall output.

Quality of work is another barometer for your team’s performance. For example, you could track how many revisions clients are requesting. Again, you’ll need to make sure you have historical data for comparison.

Talent retention & recruitment

How does your business fare when it comes to attracting and retaining employees? This is often a vital acid test of a workplace strategy, as offices have a significant impact on:
- Attracting talent – one in four people have turned down a job because they disliked the office environment.
- Staff retention – Employee engagement (directly impacted by the office environment) has been found to reduce staff turnover by 59%.
Monitoring your staff turnover rate will give you a pretty clear idea of any changes in staff retention. That’s the number of employees who leave in a certain period, divided by the total number of employees – then multiplied by 100.

In terms of attracting talent, there are a number of recruitment metrics to consider. This can include time-to-hire (how many days it takes from posting a job to a candidate accepting your offer), cost-per-hire (the total cost of recruitment divided by the number of hires), and offer acceptance rate (what percentage of candidates accept job offers).

Financial impact

Last but not least, there’s the financial impact of your workplace strategy. This can be measured by calculating:
- Cost per employee – Dividing the total office costs (rent, utilities and maintenance) by the number of employees using the space.
- Space utilisation rate – Dividing occupied workspaces by the total number of available workspaces.
- Revenue per employee – Dividing total revenue by the number of employees
Above all, it’s important that things like productivity and staff retention are factored into the return on investment (ROI) for a workplace strategy. As we’ve mentioned, retaining staff minimises recruitment and training costs for businesses, while higher productivity can drive revenue growth.

How to benchmark and continuously improve

It’s all well and good having various metrics to monitor your workplace strategy. But what should you be aiming for? This is where industry standards can help.

For example, at Oktra, we find that many companies achieve around 60-70% space utilisation. Using these industry standards as an initial benchmark is a good way to ensure your business isn’t lagging behind the competition.

Of course, there’s always room for improvement – and being average shouldn’t be the end goal for any business. Moving forward, you can adjust your workplace strategy based on insights and business goals. Perhaps you find that employees aren’t satisfied with the work environment or productivity isn’t improving as expected. Alternatively, you might simply want to exceed industry averages to create an exceptional workplace.

Finally, iterative reviews are critical for an effective workplace strategy. This is primarily because they allow you to continuously improve your workplace, but also because circumstances can change. Whether it’s an influx of new employees or just a shift in employee preferences with regards to workspaces, iteration gives you the scope to continually adapt what success looks like.

Let’s talk about your workplace strategy

Ready to implement your own workplace strategy? Or maybe you’re concerned that your existing strategy isn’t working? Whatever the case, Oktra’s workplace consultancy services can help transform the way your workplace works for you.

Our team can assess your current setup, from space utilisation to employee sentiment analysis, and recommend actionable insights to drive business performance.

To find out more, don’t hesitate to book a consultation with our expert team.

- Workplace strategy FAQs
- What is a workplace strategy?
  
  In short, a workplace strategy is a plan to align your office environment with business objectives. That could be how your office design can enhance business performance, how it can better cater to employee needs or how it can adapt to business growth.
  
  Why is a workplace strategy important?
  
  Your workplace strategy is important because it can significantly impact business performance. This includes employee engagement, productivity, wellbeing and collaboration – as well as space utilisation and the associated costs.
  
  How to create an effective workplace strategy
  
  To create an effective workplace strategy, you firstly need to define business goals and engage with employees. After that, find or create a workspace that matches your goals and meets employee requirements. Finally, you should consider new processes to improve or streamline workflows and how your workplace can support these.
  
  You can find out more in our guide to creating successful workplace strategies.
  
  What’s the best workplace strategy for hybrid working?
  
  Space utilisation is a key element of workplace strategies for businesses using a hybrid working model. With employees working in different locations, it’s vital that you maximise efficiency of the space you’re paying for. For example, you may be able to swap some of your existing desk space for a more collaborative, communal area.
  
  What is a future-proof workplace strategy for businesses?
  
  No workplace strategy is future-proof by nature. It’s important to continually monitor performance and review your strategy – both to adapt to changes in your business or industry more broadly, and to make further progress towards your business goals.
  What are the key elements of a successful workplace strategy?
  The key elements of a successful workplace strategy are:
  - People – Prioritising employees, their feedback and how they work
  - Place – Finding or creating a space that works for your business
  - Process – Implementing a strategy that delivers results
  How does workplace strategy impact company performance?
  An effective workplace strategy can improve company performance in a number of ways:
  - Increased productivity
  - Enhanced engagement
  - Improved collaboration
  - Reduced costs
  - Better staff retention
  How does workplace strategy impact employee retention?
  
  Workplace strategies can improve employee engagement, which has a positive knock-on effect for staff retention. For instance, highly engaged businesses achieve 59% less staff turnover.
  
  How do you measure the ROI of a workplace strategy?
  
  To measure the ROI of your workplace strategy, monitor metrics like cost per employee and revenue per employee. Be sure to factor in any effect on productivity and staff retention, which have their own impact on your revenue and expenses, respectively.