Office space standards, how many square metres per employee.

"How many square metres per person" is one of the first questions in office planning. The answer depends on the type of company, the working pattern and whether you are counting peak occupancy or average daily attendance. Working through this calculation belongs before the lease is signed, not after.

Baseline desk standards

International practice uses a few reference points. A single open-plan desk needs 8-12 sqm of gross leasable area, including its share of corridors, meeting rooms and support space. A closed office for a manager needs 15-25 sqm, and one for an individual contributor needs 10-14 sqm.

Most class A and B business centres in Tashkent quote a loss factor of 10-18%. That means only 82-90 sqm of every 100 sqm leased is actually usable floor space. Build that into any calculation.

Calculating for a hybrid format

A hybrid format, where part of the team works from the office in shifts, can cut floor area by 20-40% without losing comfort. The key figure here is the desk-sharing ratio, also called the occupancy ratio.

Take a company of 100 people on a hybrid pattern of three days out of five.

• Peak simultaneous attendance - around 70 people, allowing for sick leave, travel and off-site meetings.
• Desk count - 60-65 at a desk-sharing ratio of 1.07-1.10.
• Open-plan desk allowance - 10 sqm.
• Working area - 600-650 sqm.
• Meeting rooms, kitchen, reception, storage and plant rooms - a further 30-35% of the working area.
• Total - 800-900 sqm of leasable area.

The same 100 people on a full five-day pattern with no hot desking would need 1,100-1,300 sqm.

Meeting room allowances

Meeting rooms are the scarcest resource in most offices. The standard rule of thumb is one meeting room for every 8-12 desks. Under a hybrid pattern, demand for meeting rooms does not fall in line with the drop in desk numbers. If anything, people come into the office specifically for face-to-face meetings.

A typical set for a 60-desk office looks like this.

• Two or three small rooms for 2-4 people (focus rooms or phone booths), 4-8 sqm each.
• Two medium rooms for 6-8 people, 14-20 sqm each.
• One large meeting room or boardroom for 12-16 people, 30-40 sqm.

Fitting every room with a booking system cuts by 35-40% the number of rooms reserved and never used.

Break-out and collaboration space

The WELL and BREEAM standards recommend setting aside at least 10% of total floor area for informal communication and break-out space. In practice, successful offices push that share to 15-20%. A kitchen and dining area for 60 desks needs at least 30 sqm, based on one seat for every three staff on a rotating basis.

Plant and support rooms

A server room or IT cabinets, archive storage, a coat room, a driver's rest area, a security post - this is all floor space that is easy to forget in the first calculation and that shows up as a shortfall once design is under way. Depending on the sector, support rooms take up 8-15% of total leasable area.

Common mistakes in space calculations

Calculating from desk count alone, without allowing for meeting rooms and collaboration space, leaves an office feeling cramped within the first month. The opposite mistake, calculating from full headcount without applying an attendance factor, leads to paying for more space than is needed. Another common mistake is ignoring headcount growth. A company planning to grow 20% a year should take space with room to spare, or build an expansion option into the lease.