Meeting room planning myth vs reality
Planning meeting rooms without data as your foundation is a fast track to wasted money and dissatisfied employees. With 78% of meetings involving four or fewer people, yet the average meeting room seating over 9.1 people, many offices are filled with oversized, underused meeting rooms. And still, employees complain about a lack of rooms.
If you are planning a new office, instead of relying on outdated standards like ‘1 meeting room per 15 employees,’ look into what your organization actually needs. For some, it might be 1 room per 8 employees, while for others, 1 per 40 may be enough.
Luckily, it is easy to find the correct number that will maximize employee satisfaction and productivity - and save you from spending way too much money on unused and unnecessary space. How?
Collect data on meeting patterns.
By collecting data about your company’s or client’s actual meeting patterns, you can find out exactly how many meeting rooms are necessary to keep employees happy and productive, and how big they should each be. Our office planning platform makes this incredibly easy. Keep reading to find out more.
Insights on meeting patterns
Based on over 30,000 meeting room observations, we’ve found that:
51% of all meetings have two or fewer participants
78% of all meetings have four or fewer participants
19% of meetings involve just one person, and in 64% of these cases, that person uses a room with six or more chairs.
On average, a meeting has 3.3 participants
The average meeting room has 9.1 chairs
Between 10% and 30% of meeting room bookings end in no-shows (‘ghost meetings’), further contributing to the perceived shortage of meeting rooms
Overestimating the need for meeting room space
When designing an office, companies tend to overestimate how many large meeting rooms are required. Departments frequently emphasize the importance of big meetings, but in reality, the need for large rooms is much less than imagined. The result? Too many large meeting rooms and (often) not enough smaller rooms. When rooms are too large, it means that at any given point there is excess capacity, even though the room is taken.
How to optimize meeting rooms based on real data
To determine the actual number of meeting rooms your company needs, the first step is to analyze real meeting patterns. This will answer questions such as
What’s the average number of meeting participants?
How many large meetings do we have, how often do they occur and how large are they?
How many meeting rooms are occupied by only one or two people, and how would our room availability look if these were held elsewhere?
What is the maximum number of meeting rooms in use, and how often do we see peaks?
Are there any rooms that are never in use?
Are there any
The above questions are just a few selected ones that can be answered through an occupancy, and that will help tremendously in creating the optimal meeting room setup for your organization.
These numbers, although we have given a few averages above, varies widely between organizations. There is no one correct number of meeting rooms per employee - you need to find out what is the number for your organization specifically. Analyzing this data also helps ensure that the office design meets actual employee needs, reducing frustrations caused by inadequate room availability.
The opportunity to change meeting culture
Moving to a new office is not just a great time to rethink the meeting room setup: it’s also an ideal opportunity to rethink meeting culture.
This has been even more relevant following the COVID-19 pandemic. This article from HBR cites research stating that not only is up to a third of all meetings likely unnecessary, but also that 68% of employees don’t feel that they have enough uninterrupted focus time during working hours.
According to DN's article "How to Get Rid of Useless Meetings” (Norwegian), 40% of time spent in meetings is considered unproductive or wasted. By adjusting meeting culture, businesses can reduce the number of meeting rooms needed while improving productivity, retention, loyalty and satisfaction.
Would you like to know more about meeting room optimization?
Optimizing meeting rooms can lead to significant savings, but also more satisfied employees. Sub-optimal meeting space can lead to frustration, such as employees not finding a meeting room when needed - often despite there being enough total space available.
If you are planning a new office, our planning platform will not only save you a significant amount of money by avoiding unnecessary space, but also make sure that employees get the meeting rooms they need! If you’d like to discuss needs for a specific office project, book a free online 1:1 meeting with us.