Usage dashboard: a smarter way to view your office

Workplace resources are one of the largest expenses for offices and coworking locations, but there’s no easy way to understand in real time how resources like desks are being used – until now. Calven’s usage dashboard gives you a dynamic view of how your office is being used, showcasing key metrics like no-shows and check-ins, to help you understand utilization and monthly efficiency trends.

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Calculating office costs

Office leasing costs are driven by various factors including the geographic location of the office, and the class of the office building. Class A, B, and C office spaces represent different tiers in the commercial real estate market, each distinguished by their amenities, location, and overall quality which, in turn, influences their overall rental costs. 

Depending on location and class, cost per square foot can range from around $20-$80. If each desk and its amenities occupies around 100-150 sq/ft, plus an additional 50-75% in operating costs, that puts the typical desk in a typical office in an average range of $3,000-$21,000 annually.

Those are big numbers, so saving on office space can have a huge impact on the bottom line (as long as it doesn’t impact productivity!). 

When some employees are remote or hybrid, shared desking becomes a compelling solution because it allows for multiple employees to use the same resources. But when teams are on different hybrid schedules and employees have flexibility, how do you make sense of your space usage? We believe one of the best all-in-one metrics to understand usage is cost per visit.

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Why cost per visit?

Cost per visit is a great metric to analyze your workplace spend. The reasons are simple: 

1. It allows you to move the dial either by increasing office attendance or reducing office spend
2. Costs across offices are easily compared when using one standardized metric
3. Organizations can still apply other weighting to the spend if necessary

If you have a main headquarters with high attendance, you should be investing more to create a great experience and foster collaboration at that site. On the flip side, if you have a poorly-attended coworking space because most employees in the area live far away and work from home, even that low spend could be re-evaluated. 

Workplace dashboard metrics are based on a cost-per-desk that you assign per office, in the currency of your choice. 

Take the following scenario:

• Your San Francisco office costs $45 USD per visit
• Your London office is £70 per visit
• The coworking space you have in Sydney costs $120 AUD per visit

Sydney is a lower-cost city than San Francisco, so the spend on that coworking space has room for improvement. Either increase the attendance of the Sydney office, or look to reduce the spend on it. 

Cost Per Visit cuts through arguments on exactly how attended the office should be, and says simply, align spend with usage, making it an extremely valuable metric for the C-suite.

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Highlighting office automations

The dashboard also highlights the performance of Calven’s booking automations – like auto-releasing assigned desks when assignees are out of office, and prompting frequent no-showers to confirm or release their upcoming bookings. These automations free up desks that would go unused, and when paired with the waitlist to re-allocate those desks, they can optimize usage better than ever before.

These office automations have a tangible impact on the efficiency of space in an office. Calven’s office automations have saved over $5 million in real estate costs for our customers during 2024, and are on pace to save significantly more in 2025. 

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Dive deeper with Calven analytics

Each metric on the usage dashboard also links back to Calven analytics, allowing you to push beyond the overview and deep dive into advanced office analytics. 

Calven connects to your workplace systems for real-time data on attendance and space usage, so business analysts don’t have to spend time putting together manual reports – the latest data is always available in Calven for workplace leaders. We can also provide the information via API for organizations requiring additional capabilities. 

To get started, just go to https://backoffice.calven.com and select an office from the locations section in the left sidebar. If you don’t have Calven yet, contact us for a demo to learn more.