Workplace occupancy analytics can yield a wide range of benefits for employers, including lower occupancy costs, increased productivity, and improved occupant experience. While one might assume occupancy monitoring is primarily for space optimization, there’s a variety of use cases that real-estate, facility management, and HR leaders may want their organization to pursue.
In an occupancy tracking study we conducted, we surveyed leaders in these areas at major enterprises in North America and Europe. When asked to share the degree to which 11 occupancy tracking use cases aligned with their business needs, respondents indicated whether each use case had “high alignment,” “significant alignment,” “moderate alignment,” “weak alignment,” or “no alignment.”
The results revealed the use cases that most strongly aligned with enterprise needs:
See what else we learned from the study in the full 2025 Enterprise Occupancy Report. You can access the entire report without even giving us your email. Read the report.
In the following article, we’ll dig into the findings in more detail and explore how each of these occupancy tracking use cases work at enterprises.
1. Hybrid work initiatives
One third of respondents indicated that the “flexible / hybrid work initiatives” use case was highly aligned with their business needs. Another third said it was significantly aligned, and 29% said it was moderately aligned. Just 4% felt it had weak alignment, and 0% said it had no alignment with their business needs.
In a hybrid workplace, employees usually share a smaller pool of office resources because they’re not all in the office at the same time. On any given day, some employees will work from the office while others work from home. The changing number of occupants results in fluctuating demand for space. Employers must adequately balance the supply and demand for space to ensure everyone has the resources needed to be productive in the office. This means employers need to know how many occupants they have each day and how well each space is utilized.
Occupancy tracking enables employers to analyze patterns in space utilization and demand for space, so they can plan accordingly. As employers modify their hybrid policies (or implement return-to-office mandates), they need ways to measure the effect these policies have on utilization. By tracking occupancy, employers can determine whether their space is aligned with their hybrid initiatives, and evaluate if they need to make changes to increase or decrease utilization or else alter their space allocation.
Depending on the technology an employer implements, occupancy tracking could also be used to monitor compliance with a hybrid policy, either by tracking the number of anonymous occupants in the building from day to day, or ensuring that employees are meeting the specified number of required days in the office.
2. Real-estate planning
“Real-estate planning” (specifically shrinking or expanding) was also highly aligned with firms’ business needs, with one third of respondents saying this use case had high alignment, 29% saying it had significant alignment, another 29% saying it had moderate alignment, and 8.33% saying it had no alignment. Of all 11 use cases in the survey, this was the only one that some respondents said had no alignment with their business needs.
As organizations consider which locations to close, renew, or consolidate, occupancy monitoring helps determine whether a given location has enough space for the current employee population and sufficient room for growth. If a location has significant underutilized space due to low occupancy rates, the organization can find ways to redistribute this underutilization in order to close locations with high occupancy costs.
By adding occupancy data to a predictive modeling solution like Tango Portfolio Strategy, real-estate stakeholders can also forecast the likely impact that real-estate decisions will have on occupancy, based on employee zip codes and projected commute times.
3. Building security management
One quarter of respondents stated that “building security management” had high alignment with their needs. About half (46%) said it had significant alignment, 17% indicated it had moderate alignment, and 13% said it had weak alignment.
While many office-based organizations use badge scanning systems for access control, occupancy data provides a further level of security by providing records of the number of people in the building at a given time, with some occupancy tracking solutions even specifying who is in the building and where. In emergency situations, this information can be vital support for first responders and key to ensuring every occupant’s safety.
4. Sustainability
As with building security management, one quarter of respondents felt “sustainability (water, energy, waste, etc.)” had high alignment with their business needs. More than one third (38%) said it was significantly aligned, about one fifth (21%) said it had moderate alignment, and 17% indicated that it had weak alignment.
Understanding occupancy can help workplaces manage their resources more efficiently by ensuring that infrastructure like lighting and HVAC systems only operates when spaces are being used. By tying resource consumption to occupancy levels, employers can reduce waste and help their regular operations support sustainability goals.
5. Space optimization
Just under one fifth (17%) of respondents indicated that “space optimization” was highly aligned with their business needs. One quarter said it had significant alignment. And 42% said it had moderate alignment, with an additional 17% saying it had weak alignment.
Space optimization is essential for companies that want to maximize productivity and improve the occupant experience—and you can’t optimize your space without occupancy data. To ensure you’ve correctly allocated your office space, you need to track how many people use each space throughout the day. When your peak occupancy levels are too high in particular spaces, underutilized spaces may represent opportunities to increase your allocation to these high demand areas and make occupancy levels more sustainable.
Learn more about the state of workplace occupancy monitoring
In The 2025 Enterprise Occupancy Report, we surveyed North American and European enterprises from five different industries about their experience with occupancy tracking. Each of our respondents had significant influence over the organization’s adoption of occupancy tracking technologies, and shared insights including their greatest barriers to investing in occupancy tracking, their organizational priorities, and how their priorities align with use cases for occupancy tracking.
You can access the entire report for free—we won’t even ask for your email.