How many meeting rooms should you have?

When planning a new office, this question often comes up: How many meeting rooms do we need?

Traditional guidelines suggest allocating a certain number of meeting rooms per 100 employees, but how reliable and useful are these recommendations? With suggestions ranging from one meeting room for every 10 employees to one for every 20, the disparity can lead to significant differences. For instance, for a company with 100 employees, this could mean the difference between having 5 or 10 meeting rooms. Instead, we suggest to use another method - collecting data on meeting patterns for your organization.

Rethinking benchmarks in meeting room planning

Relying solely on these standardized benchmarks for meeting room allocation is problematic. The significant variance in recommendations makes it challenging to determine the most appropriate ratio for any given organization. Should it be 10 rooms for 100 employees, or only 5? Overestimating leads to underutilized space and unnecessary expenses, while underestimating can result in insufficient meeting areas, impacting productivity and employee satisfaction.

When discussions around this topic arises in the organization, it can often become heated. A fear of not having enough meeting rooms can lead to planning too many rooms, which can be both unsustainable and expensive.

Moreover, these benchmarks often fail to reflect the real dynamics of meeting patterns within organizations. Hybrid work policies, meeting culture, amount of external visitors and so on, may affect the numbers. How do you know how close to a norm you should be?

A discussion around what kind of utilization the norms lead to can also be interesting. With the data, presented in more detail below, there is on average 1 per 14.3 employees per room, but at peak times, there are still close to 3 per 10 available rooms, and on average only 3.5 out of 10 are in use.

Instead of conforming to outdated norms, a more effective strategy involves analyzing your organization's specific meeting patterns. By gathering data on the number and size of meetings and their frequency throughout the day, organizations can tailor their meeting room allocations to better meet actual needs. This approach not only ensures efficient use of space but also enhances overall workplace functionality and employee satisfaction.

30,000 meeting room observations

We’ve analyzed over 30,000 meeting room observations across more than 600 rooms and found that

 💡 On average, there is 1 meeting room per 14.3 employees (median 1 per 12.4 employees).

 💡 The variation is large - the buildings with the fewest meeting rooms per employee had 1 room per 37 employees, the lowest had 1 per 5.6 (!) employees.

 💡 Across these offices, 3.5 rooms out of every 10 is in use during office hours. At peak times, 7.2 out of every 10 rooms is in use.

 💡 For office buildings with the lowest meeting room use, there was 1 meeting room per 10.1 employees.

 💡 For office buildings with the highest meeting room use, there was 1 meeting room per 18.1 employees - but it varied from 1 per 10 employees to 1 per 30 employees, so the average is not very informative.

 💡 One of the buildings with the most rooms per employee (1 room per 10 employees) had all rooms in use at peak times - suggesting that for them it is actually necessary to have 1 room per 10 employees.

 💡 Another building with 1 room per 10 employees saw that on average, 82% of the meeting rooms were empty, and at the time with the highest usage, still 34% of the meeting rooms were empty. This suggests that for this organization, 1 room per 10 employees is perhaps too much.

As you can see from the data above, it is difficult to simple take an average and apply it to your organization. And also, it1s unnecssary! Office space is expensive, so the cost of building too much is high. And the cost of building too few meeting rooms can be high also, as it can lower employee satisfaction and productivity. Make sure you approach this in an analytical way - collect data about meeting patterns for your specific organization.

How many employees that “share” a meeting room can vary widely, from 6 to 37. How can we find out what the ideal number is?

Collect your own data to know how many rooms you need

How can you find out how many meeting rooms you need? By collecting data on the organization’s actual meeting patterns, and designing meeting rooms based on this information. You will then know much more accurately how many rooms you need - whether it is 1 room per 10 employees (unlikely) or 1 per 30 employees. And, how large each of the rooms should be - don’t fall in the trap of building the rooms too large, and save yourself the unnecessary square meters.

Collecting occupancy data - various methods

Collecting data can be done in a various way, and we recommend downloading our complete guide to read more about methods. The easiest method is to look at booking data, if there is a system showing booking history for meeting rooms. However, this method is quite flawed, as there is usually a big gap between how many people the room is booked for, and actual attendance - even though it’s booked for 5 people, only 2 show up. Additionally, in 10-30% of booking instances, the meeting does not even take place ("ghost meeting")! This means that the data you will get from the booking system is unlikely to represent actual meeting patterns.

If the meeting rooms have occupancy sensors, data from these should be used to analyze meeting patterns. If it does not, we’ve developed an app that makes it incredibly easy to collect occupancy data - you can get started in just a few hours, and after a week you’ll have your results. This is an incredibly easy way to collect accurate and precise data, that will help you both save money (not build more than you need) but also increase employee satisfaction and productivity. Read more here.

Our complete guide will show you in detail how to approach the problem of finding the correct amount and size of meeting rooms for any organization - including guidance on how to analyze occupancy data. Click here to download it

It’s easy to find what is optimal for your organization

As can be seen from the numbers mentioned previously, the traditional way of designing meeting rooms does not seem to be founded in reality at all. Instead, it’s based on outdated benchmarks and gut-feelings on what is needed. Our analysis shows that most organizations have a mismatch between the number of meetings and the size of available rooms, leading to either underutilized or overbooked spaces. This approach is not necessary - there is a much better way of doing it that will save money, is more sustainable, and will make employees more satisfied (no more lack of meeting rooms!).

If you’d like to discuss how you can find the optimal meeting room design and configuration for your office planning project, get in touch with us. We offer a free consultation meeting to discuss your project needs and to see how our office planning software can benefit - no strings attached. Book here.