How Much Office Space Does Your Team Need? A Hong Kong Hybrid-Work Worksheet

Start with the highest realistic number of people who will be in the office at the same time across the agreement term. Not total payroll, and not a square-metre-per-person ratio. Then layer on fixed seats, meetings, privacy, storage, visitors and layout before testing a single room.

The same 40-person company can reasonably need 24 workpoints, 40 workpoints, or more than one suite. What moves the answer is whether attendance is coordinated, whether particular roles need permanent desks, whether confidential calls overlap, whether hires are planned, and whether an internal meeting room eats desk positions.

Use the framework below alongside live operator proposals. It produces a search brief and tests candidate rooms. It does not certify current availability, legal occupancy, fire safety, workplace health, or suitability for a particular employer.

Ask an operator what a room "fits" and the answer may be a different number from the one your team needs.

These can all be the same figure. Assume they are and you will sign for the wrong room.

IWG's global terms show the distinction unusually clearly. They define hybrid working as registering more people for access than the specified maximum occupants, prohibit simultaneous occupancy above that maximum, and apply a supplemental fee for additional registered individuals. That is one operator's current contract structure rather than a market rule — but it is the shape of the question to put to every operator: how many can be registered, how many can be in the room at once, and what the second number costs on top of the first.

A single company-wide attendance percentage hides the day that actually drives the requirement.

Suppose every team reports attending "about 60% of the week". If they pick different days, the office fills evenly. If they all pick Tuesday to Thursday, the midweek peak approaches the full roster — and a monthly average will never show you that collision.

It also misses the people who cannot rotate through unassigned desks: a receptionist, an equipment-based employee, an office manager, anyone with a dedicated secure setup. They need a fixed workpoint on quiet days too.

So build the model by team and by weekday. Use the attendance policy where one exists; otherwise use booking data, access-control records or carefully sampled observation. No particular technology is required — a credible manual attendance log is better evidence than an unsupported market average.

And resist importing a generic "employees are in three days a week" statistic. The question is not how many days the average employee attends. It is which people are in the room together at the peak.

Size for the period the room has to work, not for move-in day.

Record the intended agreement start and end dates; current headcount by team; hires that are approved or genuinely likely inside that horizon; known transfers, departures or project-team changes; roles needing fixed workpoints; and any break, expansion or room-change mechanism that could make a staged plan viable.

Aspirational hiring is where these models inflate. Attach an owner and an evidence note to the hiring input, so the brief can be revised when the plan changes rather than quietly carrying an extra six desks for two years.

Where uncertainty is genuinely high, run two scenarios — committed hiring and accelerated hiring — instead of hiding both inside one padded number.

For each team and each working day, estimate the on-site share of people who do not already hold fixed seats.

The worksheet uses:

Team attendance for a day = fixed-seat roles + rounded-up attendance among the team's remaining end-horizon headcount

It adds the teams for each weekday and takes the highest:

Base peak attendance = highest Monday-to-Friday total

Then it applies a contingency you select, and caps employee workpoints at the end-horizon roster:

Required employee workpoints = the greater of fixed seats and buffered peak attendance, capped at end-horizon headcount

The contingency is your input, not our recommendation. It can absorb attendance volatility or weak evidence. It should not quietly absorb unmodelled visitors, contractors or growth — record those on their own lines.

A fictional company: 28 current employees, six planned hires, eight fixed-seat roles. Its team-by-day assumptions total 21 on Monday, 28 on Tuesday, 30 on Wednesday, 28 on Thursday and 20 on Friday. Wednesday is the base peak.

At a 10% contingency the model returns 33 employee workpoints, against an access roster of 34.

That is not "a 33-person office". The room still needs at least 33 practical workpoints, an allowable simultaneous occupancy of at least 33, an access arrangement covering 34 users, and all the rooms and support spaces below. Four separate tests, and a marketing capacity of 33 satisfies exactly one of them.

The figures are illustrative — not a Hong Kong benchmark, and not a recommendation for a 34-person business.

Step 3: turn work activity into space functions

Desk count is one line in the brief. Complete the rest before requesting proposals.

Fixed and assigned workpoints. List the roles that genuinely need a stable desk, and separate a real requirement from a preference. Note specialist screens, secure storage, accessible furniture, printing and technical equipment that make rotation impractical.

Confidential calls and focused work. Count simultaneous demand rather than daily volume. Ten private calls spread across a day may need one booth; three overlapping client calls need three suitable spaces, unless they can happen inside private rooms. Check the acoustics and the actual booking policy — a booth listed as a centre amenity is not a booth that is free when you need it.

Meetings. Keep internal rooms inside your own suite separate from shared bookable rooms elsewhere in the centre. For shared rooms, verify the sizes and locations available to your product; included credits or hours and the price beyond them; booking window, duration limits and cancellation or no-show rules; realistic availability at your peak times; visitor check-in and access; and privacy, screens, video equipment and network requirements.

The Executive Centre's Hong Kong private-office page describes shared call booths and discounted pay-per-use meeting rooms. WeWork describes optional interior meeting rooms and phone booths among shared amenities. Two operators, two quite different arrangements — both filed under "meeting space available", and neither proving a room will be free at 10am on a Tuesday.

A generic meeting-rooms-per-employee ratio cannot answer this question on its own. Enter how many rooms of what size you need at the same time, then test the centre's shared supply against your real diary.

Private cabins and internal rooms. A manager cabin, secure interview room, project room or internal meeting room consumes area that would otherwise hold desks. Ask for a marked floor plan showing the proposed configuration, then recalculate practical workpoints with those rooms in place.

Storage, equipment and support space. Record lockable files, samples, stock, IT or server equipment, printer stations, waste handling, pantry needs and incoming deliveries. Where equipment is material, confirm power, cooling, cabling, load, access and operator approval. "Storage available" means nothing without location, capacity, exclusivity and fee.

Visitors and waiting. Visitor seats are not employee workpoints. Record the simultaneous visitor peak, the confidentiality requirement and the reception route, and confirm whether guests count towards the room's occupancy limit and whether a host must be present.

For some teams a single contiguous room is non-negotiable. Others work perfectly well across adjacent rooms, or a larger room plus a smaller secure one.

The Executive Centre states that its standard private offices are generally available for one to 30 people, with larger requirements using a tailored enterprise solution or multiple private offices — useful evidence that a multi-room answer is a real product structure, and no evidence that a suitable combination exists at any given centre.

Decide in advance whether split suites are acceptable at all; whether the rooms must be adjacent or at least on one floor; which functions have to stay together; whether the team can share reception, pantry, booths and meeting rooms; how access, visitor arrival and internal communication work across rooms; and whether a room can be added or given back mid-term.

A split can solve capacity and confidentiality at once. It can also fragment the team and duplicate charges and access requirements. Test the operating model, not the combined desk total.

"Internal" usually means no external window, but the actual condition needs inspecting: some internal rooms have borrowed light or corridor glazing, and some window rooms have glare, heat or a wall three metres away.

Pick one of three positions for the brief:

• external window required for all regular workpoints;
• a mixed solution is acceptable;
• an internal room is acceptable if lighting, ventilation, acoustics and workstation conditions pass inspection.

This is not only about preference. Hong Kong's Occupational Safety and Health Ordinance covers offices, and GovHK's guidance for office workers directs employers to assess ventilation, lighting and workstation design, recommending properly designed computer workstations and lighting of 300–500 lux for computer work. A room's stated pax capacity establishes none of that, and it does not replace the employer's own assessment.

For every candidate, record which level of evidence you actually have:

1. Exact room — a current room number or suite, with dated availability and layout evidence;
2. Suite range — a product configuration still awaiting an exact room;
3. Centre range — a centre-level marketing statement, fine for discovery and useless for capacity approval.

The difference is visible across operator materials. Some availability schedules list room numbers with a "Capacity (Pax)" figure per office. Others give a single centre-level band such as "1–25 desks" spanning several locations. Both are legitimate for their purpose. They are not interchangeable evidence for an exact-room decision.

For a real candidate, obtain the room or suite identifier and source date; current availability or hold status; operator-stated maximum simultaneous occupancy; billable seats and quotation basis; permitted registered users and any hybrid supplement; a dimensioned or otherwise clear floor plan; practical workpoints after your layout; internal rooms, cabins, booths and storage marked on that plan; internal or external position; power, data, HVAC and equipment constraints; any linked room a split solution depends on; and written confirmation of every change between proposal and final agreement.

A centre range is an open item, not a pass. So is a missing floor plan, and so is a missing practical-capacity figure.

An operator may genuinely be able to install a stated number of desks in an open-plan room. You may then replace some of those positions with a meeting table, a manager cabin, storage, wider circulation or specialist equipment.

That does not make the operator's number wrong. The two numbers answer different questions: billable capacity explains the quoted product and its commercial basis, practical capacity tests whether your configuration works. Keep both visible in the comparison, and never let one quietly overwrite the other.

The workbook does not rank offices out of ten. It applies hard filters, and an option passes only when:

• operator maximum occupancy is at least the required peak;
• practical workpoints are at least the required workpoints;
• the access arrangement covers the end-horizon roster;
• required private cabins and internal rooms are present;
• meeting, confidential-call, storage, equipment and room-position needs all pass;
• any split-suite dependency is confirmed;
• the exact layout or floor plan has been verified.

A known requirement that fails means the option fails. Missing evidence, or an answer that says "confirm", leaves the result open. A marketing claim, a centre-level range and an attractive photograph close nothing.

Use the Hong Kong private-office catalogue to discover buildings, districts and operators and start a shortlist. What you should not do is read its capacity field as a normalised exact-room measure.

We audited our own data on 9 August 2026 and found capacity missing for many published Hong Kong serviced-office rows. Where it was present, the underlying source might be an individual room's pax figure or a centre-level range — the field does not distinguish them. The catalogue also has no structured fields yet for practical workpoints, access roster, internal meeting rooms, cabins, room position, storage or capacity-source level.

That is why this worksheet is scenario-based. It does not claim its output matches rooms currently in our catalogue, and it does not publish a "typical price by team size". Availability, layouts and quotations have to be requested against your actual brief.

This is a procurement and briefing tool, not an occupancy certificate or a design approval.

The Buildings Department's Code of Practice for Fire Safety in Buildings covers occupancy and escape-route considerations in building design, and the Labour Department addresses workplace safety, health and workstation risk separately. A spreadsheet built on attendance cannot determine compliance with either.

The operator and, where appropriate, a building professional, the employer's safety representative or another qualified adviser confirm lawful use, maximum occupancy, escape routes, partitions, alterations and workstation conditions for the exact proposal. If the spreadsheet returns a bigger number than the operator's stated maximum, the operator's maximum wins.

A shortlist is ready for quotations when it states:

1. agreement dates and planning horizon;
2. current and end-horizon roster by team;
3. weekday attendance assumptions, and who owns the evidence;
4. peak simultaneous attendance;
5. fixed-seat count and required employee workpoints;
6. access credentials required;
7. private cabins and internal meeting rooms;
8. simultaneous confidential-call spaces;
9. whether shared meeting rooms are acceptable, and the demand you tested;
10. storage, equipment, visitors and support space;
11. internal and window-room tolerance;
12. one-room or split-suite rules;
13. open items still needing a floor plan, a viewing or written operator confirmation.

Send us your roster by team, attendance pattern, fixed-seat roles, hiring plan and agreement dates. We will turn that into a workpoint and access brief, put the capacity questions to operators in writing, and come back with rooms tested against your numbers rather than against their own marketing capacity.

Compare private offices in Hong Kong

Roster size alone cannot answer it. Model end-horizon attendance by team and weekday, add fixed seats, apply a justified contingency, then test meeting, privacy, storage and layout requirements. Two teams with identical rosters can produce very different briefs.

It depends on your attendance policy and the operator agreement. Where everyone may attend, the access roster can equal end-horizon headcount even though simultaneous occupancy is lower. Confirm included credentials, registration rules, hybrid supplements and the maximum permitted in the room at once.

Not necessarily. Ask whether the figure means maximum simultaneous occupants, installed desks, billable seats, practical seats after layout, a room range or a centre-level range. Those are six different answers.

Work from simultaneous demand and meeting type, not an employee ratio. Internal rooms, shared bookable rooms and phone booths solve different problems — and shared-room availability at your peak times needs testing before it counts.

Only for what they can reliably support. Check acoustics, availability, booking policy, duration limits and confidentiality. A shared booth handles an occasional call and fails repeated or sensitive concurrent work.

Not as the primary answer. Area helps an architect test a layout, but a universal ratio captures none of attendance coordination, fixed seats, internal rooms, circulation, equipment, or the gap between gross and usable area. Exact-room layout and capacity evidence still decide it.

That is a client requirement and a workplace-condition question, not an automatic answer either way. Inspect the room and test lighting, ventilation, acoustics, workstation design and the team's tolerance. Where external windows are genuinely required, record it as a hard filter.

No. It produces a demand brief. Operator limits, fire and building requirements, workplace health and any alterations all need separate confirmation for the exact space.

The right private office is not the one whose marketing capacity matches your headcount. It is the option that carries your highest realistic simultaneous attendance, your fixed workpoints and your growth — after the meeting, privacy, storage and layout choices have been applied.

Keep roster, access, peak attendance, operator maximum, billable seats and practical workpoints as six separate numbers. Build the peak by weekday. Make the uncertainty visible. Then insist on exact-room evidence before anything passes.