Glossary · Space planning & real estate

What is occupancy planning?

Short answer

Occupancy planning is the ongoing process of deciding where people and teams will work across an organization's floors and buildings, and how much space each needs, as headcount and attendance change. Workplace and real estate teams use it to match capacity to real demand, so they neither run out of seats nor pay for idle space.

Also called capacity planning, office capacity planning, seat planning.

How it works

Occupancy planning sits between measurement and design. It takes utilization and attendance data, headcount forecasts and the current stack, then decides how much capacity each team needs and where it should go. Space planning then designs the layouts, and day-to-day occupancy management runs who sits where.

Demand comes from behavior, not headcount. For each team, planners look at attendance on its busiest day, which days it comes in, and which teams it needs to be near. A team of 100 that peaks at 55 people needs a very different allocation from one that is fully in the office.

The plan is a living one. Joiners, leavers, reorganizations and policy changes arrive continuously, so good occupancy planning tracks capacity against forecast demand floor by floor and flags where a team will outgrow its space, or where space can be released, before it happens.

How to measure it

  1. Capacity against peak-day demand, by floor and team.
  2. Forecast demand from headcount plans and expected attendance.
  3. Capacity variance between sites, often an early sign of a consolidation opportunity.
  4. Booked versus used, so no-shows do not overstate demand.

How to run occupancy planning

  1. Record current capacity by floor and neighborhood from accurate floor plans.
  2. Measure demand by team: peak-day attendance, usual office days and which teams need to sit together.
  3. Add what is coming: hiring plans, reorganizations, policy changes and lease dates.
  4. Compare capacity with peak-day demand by floor and team, and flag shortfalls and surplus.
  5. Choose responses: rebalance neighborhoods, share zones on different days, restack or release space.
  6. Hand approved changes to space planning and move management.
  7. Review monthly, and after any change in headcount or policy.

Examples

  • A planner sees that a growing team will outgrow its neighborhood next quarter and moves a smaller team to an adjoining zone ahead of time.
  • A company rotates two teams through one neighborhood on different days instead of giving each its own.

Benchmarks

  • Karger measured desk use continuously through desk booking and check-in at 30 to 40% (its Kadence story calls this both utilization and occupancy), which backed its move to one and a half floors.

    Kadence customer story: Karger

Common mistakes

  • Allocating space by headcount rather than attendance.
  • Planning once a year while demand moves week to week.
  • Treating occupancy planning and space planning as the same job, so no one owns matching capacity to demand.

How Kadence helps

Kadence connects occupancy data to planning. Workplace Insights measures attendance and occupancy from check-ins and presence signals. In WorkOps, team neighborhoods, assigned desks and the Neighborhood Scheduler set where teams sit and on which days. SpaceOps stack planning and seat-level space planning turn demand into floor allocations, and HRIS integration in WorkOps Pro brings in new starters and leavers.

Workplace occupancy · SpaceOps · Office space planning guide

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between occupancy planning and space planning?

Space planning designs a specific layout. Occupancy planning is the ongoing work of matching the portfolio to real and expected demand over time. Space planning produces a floor plan; occupancy planning decides what that floor plan needs to hold.

What does occupancy planning software do?

It combines floor plans, team and headcount data and measured occupancy, shows capacity against demand by floor and team, and lets planners test and publish changes to allocations. Some tools use AI to propose allocations from occupancy data.

What is office capacity planning?

Office capacity planning works out how many people each floor or building must accommodate on its busiest days, now and in the future, and whether the current space can meet that demand. It is a core part of occupancy planning.

How do you plan office occupancy for hybrid work?

Measure each team's attendance by day, size its space to its busiest day plus a buffer, coordinate teams' office days so peaks do not collide, and review the plan whenever headcount or policy changes.

  • Space planning Deciding how office floor area is divided and allocated, from which teams go on which floors to where each desk and room sits.
  • Headcount planning (for space) Forecasting how many people will work in each team and location, and turning that into the office space they will need.
  • Desk ratio (desk sharing ratio) The number of people assigned to a workplace for each desk, set from peak attendance and policy.
  • Peak occupancy The busiest level of use a floor or building reaches in a normal week, which sets the capacity you actually need.
  • Stack planning A floor-by-floor plan of which teams occupy which floors and buildings, used to test moves and consolidations first.

Kadence editorial team · Last reviewed

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