How Logitech used webcams in conference rooms to collect data on how employees use the office

In 2022, as keyboard and software maker Logitech was nearing the end of a lease on its U.S. headquarters in Newark, Calif., company leaders were confronted with a question that has eluded many organizations: how to redesign an office for a hybrid workforce.

The company had already reconfigured its global headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, rearranging furniture and moveable walls it had previously installed. It followed that up in Cork, Ireland, with a newly built office spanning four floors where it experimented with various seating arrangements, meeting room configurations, and design labs. The team found from monitoring the Cork office, for instance, that shrinking to one floor as opposed to four provided employees greater opportunity to run into one another and collaborate across teams.

When it came time for the company to move and downsize its U.S. office from Newark to San Jose, it took lessons from its overseas bases, specifically data on how employees use the space and engage with one another.

Considering that Logitech sells products to help people connect virtually, the company places more value on what gets done rather than where it gets done, says head of people and culture Kirsty Russell. Logitech hasn’t mandated a return to office; instead, it encourages what it calls gravity days—coordinated days for in-person work within teams. Its new offices serve as a living lab, Russell says, essentially a space to experiment and track how people work in a hybrid setting, leveraging data from webcams and space management software to determine room usage like the number of people in a room and how often rooms are booked.

David Houseman, head of workplace experience, says his team expected employees to use small rooms for one-on-one meetings and larger conference rooms for collaborative meetings. But the company found that virtually every room was used for video calls regardless of size or function. That’s because Logitech didn’t have the right mix of large and small conference rooms and spaces for calls and more intimate meetings. It learned that small, private spaces where people could take a quick call or connect with colleagues from different geographic offices were in high demand in a hybrid environment.

Logitech’s new San Jose office has one-third the number of desks and one-third the square footage because more employees work remotely, Houseman says. The company opted for hot desking, expanded the size of  communal areas, and left 20% of the office space empty, allowing for flexibility if Logitech wants to change the office to meet new employee needs.

The office is outfitted with six soundproof meeting pods that are equipped with video conferencing capabilities. The pods have been so popular that the company ordered six more.

“It’s a living, changing environment,” Russell says.

Hybrid employees at Logitech work in-office two or three days a week on average, she adds. Office attendance wasn’t closely tracked before the pandemic, but the company says utilization and occupancy were high. When the San Jose office opened in September, attendance based on badge swipes was roughly 20%. That number has grown to roughly 30% in six months, and Houseman expects it to increase as the company continues to learn from employees’ office usage and invest in the workplace setup.

“We get feedback on a regular basis,” Houseman says. “Our employees are not shy about telling us what they think.”

One example was the company’s decision to create a hyper-focus room that operated like a library, a space where people might do head-down work. But employees rarely utilized that space, opting to work from home or in private pods and meeting rooms instead. His team shifted course, turning that room into one for learning, development, and training meetings, which employees had long requested. It's now booked three days a week, according to Houseman.

In addition to rethinking the physical workspace, Russell says her team challenged Logitech’s managers over six months to evaluate how their teams work in a hybrid model. To assist in this endeavor, Russell’s people and culture team offered workshops that provided tips and tools to identify whether teams are burned with meetings, how best to work asynchronously, and how to squeeze the most out of in-person office attendance.

“We’ve seen [managers] cut down on meetings, adapt to this new way of working, and have success reorganizing their teams' needs,” Russell says. “The definition of the workplace has changed. The office is still a big part of it, but we can’t forget about our remote workers.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com