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Workers Return to Office: Use Collaborative Spaces More FrequentlyWorkers Return to Office: Use Collaborative Spaces More Frequently

In today's Workspace Connect Wrap, workers come in to collaborate, and WeSpire's employee resource group tools go into general availability.

Lisa Schmeiser

May 27, 2022

2 Min Read
Workers Return to Office: Use Collaborative Spaces More Frequently

Welcome to the Thursday, May 26 edition of the Workspace Connect Wrap, our regular summary of workspace-related news. In today's wrap, we find workers using the office more—for collaborative activities—and WeSpire's employee resource group (ERG) tools go into general availability.

 

Research: Demand for Collaborative Space Climbing, but Attendance Remains Unpredictable

New research from space utilization and management platform VergeSense shows that office utilization has risen 87% year over year. Also, as more workers return to the office, they're spending more time in collaborative spaces. Prior to the pandemic, an average of 10% of spaces per floor were collaborative; that has more than doubled to 25% of spaces per floor today.

 

The State of the Workplace Data Report summarizes the data collected from 100,000 separate workspaces in 550 buildings globally. The report also found that the busiest days of the week in the office were Tuesday (24% of office space utilized) and Wednesday (23%), while Friday was the least busy was only 12% of office space utilized.

 

However, the report concluded, "unpredictable attendance is here to stay. From the data collected in this report, it is clear that we have not yet settled into a predictable utilization trend."

 

 

WeSpire Employee Resource Group Tools Now in General Availability

The employee experience platform has announced the general availability of its employee resource groups (ERG) management tool. The ERG management tools within WeSpire's Inclusive Culture platform intend to help ERG and HR leaders set and track employee engagement, workplace productivity and business goals, particularly in alignment with greater ESG goals.

 

Through ERG management tools on WeSpire's platform, workplace leaders can:

 

  • Responding to employee needs, requests, and ideas across groups.

  • Create and publish targeted activities, post and share resources with group members, and access a library of ready-to-launch events and campaigns.

  • View insights into critical employee issues and HR data to make more informed decisions about growth and retention.

 

"Cultivating an inclusive culture is no longer a nice to have for companies — it's a requirement," said Susan Hunt Stevens, founder, and CEO, WeSpire. "When ERGs are designed, implemented and measured effectively and aligned with a company's mission and values, they can be transformative in driving belonging and enhancing the strategic benefits of diversity in the workplace."

 

WeSpire also recently launched a carbon management tool to allow companies to set employee goals for carbon reduction.

About the Author

Lisa Schmeiser

Lisa Schmeiser is the editor of No Jitter and Workspace Connect. Her tech journalism career spans more than two decades, from writing tech-hows through the 1990s to editorial positions at ITPro Today, InfoWorld and Macworld. She's been nominated or won awards for her tech feature writing, including a recent nomination for the Jesse H. Neal award and the American Society of Business Publication Editors award for best tech feature. Schmeiser is also a frequent contributor to tech-facing podcasts on the Relay.FM network and on TechTV's The Week in Tech. She can be found on Twitter at @lschmeiser.