In short: With hybrid work you don't need a desk for every employee, but enough desks for the busiest day. If people work from home one or two days a week, each of them is in the office three or four days out of five, and on an ordinary day 60–80 per cent of them are there. Count how many come in on the busiest day, add a few desks to spare, and allow about 12 m² per desk plus meeting rooms and a kitchen.
How many desks do you need?
Start with how many people are actually in the office, not how many you employ. In Norway, one or two days a week at home appears to be the new normal, according to a nationally representative survey of 3,633 employees published in MAGMA in 2023. That leaves many desks empty on an ordinary day.
The days are not all the same, though. Many offices are fullest in the middle of the week, and if teams have fixed office days, those days get busier still. So plan for the busiest day, and add a few desks for visitors, new hires and days when more people than usual come in.
Many businesses manage by a ratio of employees to desks. Internationally, more than 60 per cent of the organisations in figures from the property adviser CBRE aim for at least 1.5 employees per desk.
A worked example
A company with 30 employees counts for a few ordinary weeks and finds there are never more than 24 people in the office at once. With 2 desks to spare it needs 26 desks, one per 1.15 employees. At 12 m² per desk and 3 m² of shared space per employee (see how many square metres per employee you need), it works out like this:
| Calculation | A desk for everyone | Desks for the busiest day |
|---|---|---|
| Desks | 30 | 26 |
| Space for the desks | 360 m² | 312 m² |
| Meeting rooms, kitchen and other shared space | 90 m² | 90 m² |
| Total floor area | 450 m² | 402 m² |
| Rent and common costs per year (NOK 4,100 per m²) | NOK 1,845,000 | NOK 1,648,200 |
The company saves about NOK 197,000 a year, and nobody is left without a desk on the busiest day. The shared space is the same in both cases: when people come in to meet, the meeting rooms are needed just as much. See what an office costs in Oslo.
How many meeting rooms do you need?
There is no Norwegian norm for the number of meeting rooms. With hybrid work the office is used more for meetings and working together, so the shared space should not shrink as much as the number of desks.
Look at how big your meetings really are. When the sensor company Density measured the use of 60 meeting rooms over six months, only one person was in the room 36 per cent of the time, and 85 per cent of meetings had fewer than seven people. Many offices therefore need more small rooms and phone booths for video calls, and fewer large meeting rooms.
What does the Norwegian state's space norm say?
New state office buildings in Norway follow a norm of 23 m² gross floor area (BTA) per employee, set by the Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation in 2015. Gross floor area includes walls, corridors, stairwells and technical rooms, so the figure is higher than the space in the example above. The norm applies only to state building projects, not when the state leases private offices.
In practice, state employees have 27.8 m² each on average, according to Altinget. Statsbygg, the state's property agency, wants to get down to 18 m² per employee and considers 18 m² spacious in the rental market.
How to find out how much space you use
- Count in ordinary weeks. Note how many people are in the office each day for two to four weeks outside the holidays.
- Look at meeting room bookings: how often the rooms are in use, and how many people sit in them.
- Use your access cards if you have them. They can show how many people are in each day without anyone seeing who.
- Ask about fixed office days. Shared days for a team make the busiest day busier.
- Think about growth: how many more of you will there be in two or three years?
When can you move to something smaller?
The floor area is usually fixed in the lease until it runs out. Start looking at alternatives well before the lease can be ended or is due for renewal, so you can negotiate for less space or move. Some sublet part of their premises, but subletting usually needs the landlord's consent.
If you only need extra space on the busiest days, a few desks in a coworking space can take the peaks. See the difference between coworking, shared offices and business centres.
Homni finds offices of the right size, including ones that are not advertised, and it is free for tenants. Tell us what you need.
