Top Three Businesses That Can Do More with Less Office Space

Open Office Space for CRE The trend towards more efficient office space continues to grow. Once, companies planned 250 rentable square feet per employee, with efficient spaces holding a worker in 200 or 225 feet. Some companies now operate with a density goal of 175 rentable square feet per worker. However, a combination of technological innovations, shifting client needs and more flexible working styles are making it possible to achieve much higher levels of efficiency. Here are the top three types of businesses that can usually shrink their spaces without sacrificing productivity or morale.

Sales-Oriented Firms and Departments

Outside salespeople typically aren't successful when they are at their desks. Instead, they can be most effective when they are with clients or prospects outside of the office. Furthermore, while your sales force used to have to come into work to update files, send out follow up items and the like, remote working technologies are now making that obsolete.

The end result of these advances is that you don't need elaborate office space for your sales team. Instead of rewarding your producers with expensive and mostly empty corner offices, you can equip them with better tools, offer a higher standard of travel, or just let them enjoy the fruits of their labors through higher levels of incentive compensation.

Inside sales professionals do need office space, though. However, they can also choose to do remote tele work, letting you get away with fewer workspaces. The shrinking size of office technology also reduces workspace size. Inside reps can be productive with a laptop and a headset thanks to VOIP making the traditional desk phone obsolete. Centralized CRM systems also make paper-based recordkeeping unnecessary, letting you configure even smaller workstations.

Tech Companies

While the trends that impact sales based companies also impact technology firms, other trends might seem to require larger spaces rather than smaller ones. As research continues to mount on the impacts of the open floor plan office, industrial psychologists are noting that certain workers that need intense concentration -- like programmers -- can actually be less productive in an open environment.

The solution to this problem is simple. Build more offices. However, instead of building large offices that can accommodate teams or people or even two- and three-person communication, you can create smaller rooms that are designed to let a single person get away from the hullabaloo of the open office and get some quiet work done. These spaces can be available on an as-needed basis, letting you build fewer of them. They are also smaller than traditional offices, letting you save office space.

Companies with Millennial Workers

Millennials are also making it easier to occupy less office space. They typically like working collaboratively, making them perfect candidates for dense open spaces. Because they typically eschew structure and hierarchy, they need less fixed space, allowing you to move people around to increase utilization. Finally, they also prefer to arrange their work around their lives, rather than the other way around. Because of this, they are likely to be open to remote working or work-live arrangements that shift some of your office space's demands back to their residence -- where they are paying the bills.

While the office space market remains in a state of flux, one trend is here to stay. Companies are doing more work than ever in less space. This leads to lower occupancy costs and a better bottom line.