What does that mean exactly?

It means that organizations are treading carefully, looking to balance growth with caution and find ways to control operational costs. There is willingness to spend, but spend conservatively, often reusing existing architecture or finding ways to increase the use and functionality of what they have.

It’s also telling that last year’s top answer was to “improve reporting”. It seems like now the results of that reporting are in and leaders are looking to improve upon those numbers.

What can we do as designers?

Optimization isn’t just about lowering costs; it’s about getting more out of what you have. Real estate leaders are looking at utilization* as the key metric behind optimized spaces. The more a seat is utilized during the day, the more optimized your space is.

And believe it or not, the average individual work seat is only utilized 54% of the time globally in 2025. What’s even more surprising is that even the pre-pandemic average utilization was only 61%! This is fuel for the fire in any conversation about seat sharing or unassigned seating. It’s also important to ask clients what their current utilization rate is, and what they’d like it to be. Even if they don’t know, or aren’t tracking it, it shows our commitment to their performance.

*Utilization = Percent of time individual seats are occupied over a specific time such as workdays and shifts.