In a flex office, workstations, meeting rooms, and zones are shared by everyone and booked according to the task at hand. The concept saves space for individual workstations and frees them up for other uses. It adapts the office to the actual working methods of your employees.
In a flex office, there are no personally assigned desks. Workspaces, meeting rooms, and zones are shared and booked or occupied spontaneously depending on the activity.
The aim of the flex office concept is to provide the best possible workspace for different tasks.
A flex office space works best with booking software that allows all employees to book office resources fairly.
What is Flex Office space?
The term Flex Office refers to an office or workplace concept that can be used in a variety of ways. It is characterized by the fact that the range of individual workstations, rooms, room dividers, and media technology is geared toward the working methods of the users. The aim of Flex Office is to accommodate people's working methods.
The main meaning is the internal Flex Office: employees no longer have a personally assigned desk, but instead choose their workplace depending on the task at hand. This principle is also known as desk sharing or activity-based working.
Another important meaning is the external Flex Office: this refers to office space or workstations that can be rented at short notice and are already fully equipped. This category includes coworking spaces and so-called managed offices.
Flex Office (internal)
Flex Office (external)
Definition
Workplace concept without fixed desks in your own company (desk sharing / activity-based working).
Fully equipped office space from external providers that can be rented at short notice.
Typical use
Medium-sized and large organizations with hybrid working models, i.e., constantly switching between working from home and working in the office.
Start-ups, project teams, companies in expansion or transition phases.
What are the advantages of a flex office?
The advantages can be divided into four areas: space efficiency and costs, workplace experience and productivity, sustainability, and scope for ongoing changes and adjustments.
The advantages can be divided into four areas: space efficiency and costs, workplace experience and productivity, sustainability, and scope for ongoing changes and adjustments.
The internal flex office concept adapts the use of individual workstations, meeting rooms, and team zones in the office to the actual demand of the workforce.
Instead of providing each employee with a permanent desk, workstations, rooms, and zones are planned to suit the respective working style, i.e., concentration, collaboration, or communication.
Space efficiency and cost reduction
The greatest advantage of the flex office concept lies in the targeted redistribution of office resources.
Instead of providing each employee with their own permanent desk, you can reduce the number of individual workstations and instead create spaces that better reflect actual usage:
Zones for teamwork
Additional meeting rooms
Areas for physical and mental balance, such as relaxation rooms or sports rooms.
The basis for this is actual demand: many companies find that half of their individual workstations in traditional offices remain empty. According to the JLL Global Occupancy Planning Benchmark 2025, the average utilization rate worldwide is only around 54 percent.
You can control the use and fair distribution of the office resources you have created using booking software. Employees can use it to make binding reservations for the workstations, rooms, or zones they need in advance.
With the office insights feature integrated into PULT, you also receive precise occupancy data. You can see which room types are in high demand and which are hardly used. Underutilized areas can be reduced and the space freed up can be used for zones that are in high demand.
Employee satisfaction and productivity
A flex office increases satisfaction because your employees can choose their workplace independently and based on their daily tasks. So instead of sitting at the same desk all day, they decide on a case-by-case basis:
for quiet and concentrated work in quiet zones,
for teamwork in open-plan zones for collaboration,
or for customer and project meetings in acoustically shielded zones or meeting rooms.
According to the Gensler Workplace Survey 2025 and the Leesman Index 2025, employees who work in offices of this type rate their productivity as 8 to 12 percent higher than in static office formats.
The studies also show that it is important to match the type of work with the type of workplace. Those who have quiet areas for concentrated work and rooms and zones equipped for teamwork find the office to be conducive to performance and motivating.
Sustainability and ESG compliance
A study by Instant Group 2024 shows that a workspace in a flex office system generates up to 40 percent less CO₂ emissions than a permanently occupied space in a traditional office.
For companies with ESG targets, such as Scope 3 reduction, the flex office thus makes a direct contribution to environmental reporting and certification eligibility.
Market analyses by JLL and CBRE show that ESG-compliant and space-efficient concepts are now among the most important selection criteria in office planning
What are the disadvantages of a flex office?
Flex office solutions come with a number of challenges: a lack of personal connection, increased background noise, additional organizational effort, and data protection issues.
However, these issues can be easily resolved by involving your employees in the idea process on the way to a flex office, taking their working methods into account, and finally ensuring resilient structures with selected office equipment, high-quality offers, and the right software.
Loss of personal connection to the workplace
When fixed desks are eliminated, employees may feel that they no longer have their own space. This feeling is understandable, but can be mitigated by creating substitutes for personal connection:
Lockers or lockable rolling containers provide space for personal items.
Daily personalization: Employees can set up their own belongings at their workplace for the duration of their working day.
Attractive common areas such as lounges, team areas, or quiet zones create new places of identification.
Background noise and concentration
Open-plan areas or frequently changing workstations can lead to more noise pollution and movement in the room. This particularly affects activities that require a high level of concentration.
You can remedy this with a clear spatial layout and acoustically effective furnishings:
Quiet zones for concentrated work, separated from team and communication areas.
Phone booths or small meeting rooms as retreats for conversations and video conferences.
Supplement these structural measures with simple rules of conduct: conversations or phone calls should take place in designated areas. This ensures that the office remains a place where concentrated work is possible, despite changing usage.
Organization and availability
When working in a flex office on a daily basis, employees sometimes worry that they will not be able to access a free workspace. They shy away from conflicts over seats and rooms.
With the PULT flex office management, your employees can reserve their workstations, meeting rooms, or team zones in advance. This ensures fairness and predictability, especially in larger teams or on days with high attendance.
In addition, automatic check-ins and no-show rules help to free up unused spaces.
Data protection and co-determination
Systems for booking or usage evaluation inevitably collect data. It is important that this data is limited to what is necessary and processed in accordance with the law.
In PULT, usage data is evaluated exclusively in aggregated and anonymized form.
It is not possible to draw conclusions about individual persons. This means you are working in compliance with the GDPR and can easily coordinate the introduction with the works council.
Manage your flex office with PULT
The concept of the flex office thrives on the conscious and targeted use of workspaces and rooms. For this to succeed, employees need to know which spaces and areas are available to them and when. Workplace booking and flex office software form the binding basis for this.
Such a booking system shows which spaces, meeting rooms, or project zones are available. Your employees can plan their working day and see when colleagues are in the office and where they will be sitting.
PULT gives you a realistic picture of actual usage: When is the office at full capacity, which areas remain empty at times, which rooms and zones are in high demand? This data provides you with a basis for adjusting your flex office offerings and refining your space planning.
PULT Workplace and Room Booking: Make binding reservations for desks, meeting rooms, project zones, and parking spaces directly via desktop or app.
PULT Presence: Automatic attendance tracking via the company Wi-Fi to compare actual usage and booking data.
Weekly Planner: Overview of who is in the office and when, and easy coordination of joint team days.
Office Insights: Evaluate utilization and attendance in real time to control cleaning cycles, energy consumption, and room allocation.
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Distribute and book workstations, rooms, and zones fairly. With PULT.
How can I prevent individual employees from not finding any free spaces?
Through a fair booking system and the rules stored in it. In the PULT booking software, your employees can make binding reservations for the spaces they need in advance.
How can I convince employees to use a flex office?
Involve them in the planning process and ask them about their reservations and their desired equipment and services. Once they feel that they can help shape the flex office, their resistance will decrease. Your goal should be to use the flex office primarily to provide the resources your team needs to do their work.
How can I use PULT in my company?
PULT can be introduced without any structural changes. You receive software that employees can use to book workspaces, rooms, and zones, and you can view and control utilization. PULT works on PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and terminals.
What is the difference between Flex Office and desk sharing?
Desk sharing is the underlying concept of shared workspaces. A flex desk office uses this concept and extends it to rooms and zones in order to make the entire office space available to every employee on a fair basis.
At PULT we're designing the future of the hybrid workplace for companies and their employees. Focused on SME and mid market customers in Eruope, I'm working on everything from Customer Discovery to Onboarding. I'm very passionate about new work and moved to Hamburg in 2024 even though I'm originally from France.
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Office Insights
The Paperless Office: A step-by-step guide from piles of paper to a digital workflow
The paperless office describes an ideal state in which documents, approvals, and internal processes are handled without a parallel analog system. However, many attempts at digitization result in duplicate records, a situation that can be avoided.
A paperless office can only be achieved when processes and documents are transformed together. However, parallel structures undermine both the concept and the benefits.
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For legally compliant archiving in accordance with GoBD, retention periods of 6 and 10 years apply. Digitally archived documents must be stored in a manner that ensures they are complete, unalterable, and can be reconstructed at any time for audit purposes.
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Implementing a paperless office: Assess the current situation, prioritize appropriate processes, select software, involve the team, and evaluate the results after 90 days.
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PULT digitizes room reservations, desk bookings, and visitor management in a completely paperless manner and integrates directly with MS Teams, Slack, Personio, and HiBob—as part of a paperless office management system.
What distinguishes a truly paperless office from a digital filing system?
Going paperless starts with ensuring that a process—such as approving a vacation request or processing an incoming invoice—runs from start to finish without any physical documents. If, on the other hand, you simply scan a document and forward the PDF via email, you’ve eliminated the paper, but not the process.
Document vs. Process: What's the Difference?
Document digitization converts a paper document into a file. Process digitization redesigns the workflow behind it: Who submits the request, and where? Who approves it, and how? Where is the result stored in an audit-proof manner and immediately retrievable? Only when both are combined can a paperless office without parallel structures be achieved.
What aspects of office work can be made paperless?
As a general rule, almost all processes that have been handled on paper up to now can be digitized:
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Inbox: digital inbox with automated forwarding.
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Invoice Processing: Digital Incoming Invoices with Accounting Integration.
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Contracts and Documents: DMS with full-text search and access rights.
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HR documents: digital personnel file, electronic time tracking.
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Visitor Management: Digital check-in processes instead of paper lists, as with visitor management using PULT.
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Room and desk reservations:Reservation systems instead of notice boards and in-person reservation arrangements.
Digital booking of rooms and seats in PULT, with automatic check-in and AI-powered meeting room management.
What legal considerations do I need to keep in mind when setting up a paperless office?
The key legal pillars of the paperless office in Germany are the GoBD, document retention periods, and the e-invoicing requirement.
GoBD and Audit-Compliant Archiving
A digitally archived document is considered GoBD-compliant if it meets three principles:
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Completeness: No document may be missing or deleted without verification.
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Immutability: Subsequent changes must be prevented or fully logged.
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Traceability: Every access can be reconstructed by auditors.
Retention periods apply regardless of format: 10 years for accounting documents, balance sheets, and tax-related business correspondence; 6 years for other business correspondence. A GoBD-certified document management system (DMS) then technically implements these requirements.
E-Invoicing and Other Digitalization Requirements
Starting in January 2025, all B2B companies in Germany must be able to receive e-invoices. The requirement to send e-invoices will take effect in 2027 for companies with annual revenue exceeding 800,000 euros, and in 2028 for all companies.
Beforehand, the general processing of invoices should already be fully digitized so that the transition to e-invoicing can then be made with comparable ease.
What software do I need for a paperless office?
Setting up the right software infrastructure for a paperless office means making a decision for each category and finding the best tools for hybrid work for the company. Four categories cover the majority of paper-related processes:
Category
Tools (Examples)
What is it for?
Document Capture & DMS
DocuWare, ELO, M-Files
Audit-compliant archiving, full-text search, access rights
Digital Signature
Skribble, DocuSign
Legally valid signature without a printout
Invoice Processing
DATEV, Lexware, Candis
Incoming invoices, accounting integration
Office Management
PULT
Room booking, desk booking, visitor management, and parking management, integrated with Microsoft Teams, Slack, and HR systems
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How do I implement a paperless office step by step?
To move toward a paperless office, first map out the processes taking place in your office, review and streamline the most important ones, select the appropriate software, and then work with your team to implement the now-digital process.
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Assess the current situation. Document all paper-based processes, including the steps involved: who does what, when, and using what medium?
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Prioritize processes. Start with the area that offers the greatest time savings. This typically involves incoming invoices or HR processes, as they are time-consuming and prone to errors.
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Consolidate your tool stack. A few comprehensive platforms are better than a multitude of individual tools, because data interfaces remain the most common source of errors. Choose tools that communicate with each other.
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Involve the team before rolling out the tool. Employees won't use tools they know nothing about and don't see as benefiting them personally.
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Evaluate after 90 days. What usage rates have the tools achieved? Where are there still media breaks? What needs to be revised?
How to Keep Your Office Paperless for the Long Term
Your employees will follow the digital processes as long as there is no reason to deviate from them. Therefore, the processes—and especially the software—in the paperless office must offer them everything that was previously possible on paper and even go beyond that.
With PULT, you can manage all aspects of your office operations: room reservations and automated meeting room management, presence detection, office usage analytics, visitor reception, and more:
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Visitor Management
Organizing an Event: Checklist, Permits & Legalities 2026
If you organize an event, you now bear more legal responsibility than you did just a few years ago. New requirements for safety documentation, GDPR obligations regarding participant data, and changes to liability rules mean that event planning has become a task where relying on an outdated checklist can quickly become costly.
Public events involving a large number of people are subject to a require a permit in Germany: Depending on the state and the type of event, applications must be submitted to the relevant authority at least 12 weeks in advance
Since the stricter requirements took effect in 2025/2026, event organizers must actively maintain their safety documentation: In the event of a claim, anyone who cannot provide complete documentation bears the burden of proof, regardless of whether there was any fault
The GDPR applies to participant data when organizing an event, and specifically to event photos and video recordings as well: Without explicit consent or a documented exception, substantial fines may be imposed.
Event management feature: With PULT, companies can coordinate corporate events, room scheduling, and attendee management all within a single system, directly integrated with Personio, HiBob, MS Teams, and Slack.
What permits do I need before organizing an event?
As soon as you start planning an event in Germany, you’ll encounter a complex web of regulations that vary depending on the state, the type of event, and the number of attendees. The key regulations include the Public Gathering Venues Ordinance, GEMA, and guidelines from the public order office.
Your city or town’s Public Order Office: The first point of contact for public events. The Public Order Office generally approves the event and coordinates with other authorities as needed. Private corporate events with a fixed guest list held at an approved venue do not require a separate permit from this office
Department of Streets and Green Spaces (also known as the Department of Civil Engineering or the Department of Urban Planning, depending on the city): You can apply here for a special use permit for events on streets, squares, or in parks. The exact name of the agency varies by municipality. The quickest way to find the right contact is to search for “special use permit for events” on your municipality’s city portal. Many municipalities now bundle this application in the Servicekonto Deutschland
Business Licensing Office: If you sell food or beverages, you need a temporary permit under the restaurant regulations of the respective state. This is a separate application, independent of the event permit.
Three additional points that often come up too late in the planning process:
GEMA: You must register music that includes GEMA-licensed tracks in advance at gema.de, whether performed live or played from a recording. The fees depend on the size of the event and the venue area.
Regulation on Public Gathering Places (VStättVO): For events with 200 or more people, the relevant building authority will verify whether the venue is licensed as a public gathering place. Clarify this in advance with the venue’s landlord, because as the organizer, you are jointly liable if the operating permit is missing or has expired
Fire Department and Public Health Department: For events featuring stage setups or food service, the Public Order Office often requires a fire safety plan and a hygiene plan. Make sure to get written confirmation that this applies to your event.
For all applications for which your municipality offers an online portal, the following applies: The Servicekonto Deutschland consolidates many of these forms. Start the application process at least 12 weeks before the event.
What has changed for events as a result of new safety regulations and the reversal of the burden of proof?
DGUV 115-002 sets forth safety requirements for event and production technology and applies to all events where technical equipment such as stages, lighting, or sound systems is set up. Starting in 2025/2026, authorities and courts expect event organizers to actively maintain their safety documentation rather than compiling it only upon request.
This means that risk assessments, evacuation plans, protocols for briefing service providers, and participant lists must be fully documented. If you cannot present complete documentation in the event of a claim, the burden of proof falls on you. A structured documentation system in place before the event should therefore be considered a requirement that you must comply with.
How do I comply with the GDPR when organizing an event?
As soon as you register participants, you are processing personal data and therefore need a legal basis under Article 6 of the GDPR. For corporate events, this basis is generally derived from legitimate interest. In this case, the data may not be used for purposes beyond the event and must be deleted after 90 days at the latest. The only exception to the deletion period is tax-related retention requirements.
Things get more complicated when it comes to event photos and video recordings:
Portraits and identifiable individuals: Publication is prohibited without express consent, even in the case of seemingly harmless group photos
Panoramic photos of large crowds: In such cases, a legitimate interest may apply, provided that individuals are not recognizable.
Online events and recordings: If you record events or meetings , you must inform participants in advance and obtain their consent. Starting a recording without prior notice is a violation of the GDPR.
When registering, provide a consent form that explicitly asks for permission to take photos and record videos. The same rules apply to hybrid events—that is, formats in which some participants join remotely—with the addition of recording requirements under data protection law.
Organizing an Event Step by Step: The Checklist
What tools can help with organizing events?
When it comes to organizing your event, three categories of tools cover the most important planning areas: tools for checklists and risk analysis, online portals for submitting official applications, and office management platforms for room scheduling and attendee management.
Checklists, AI: Use our event checklist and consult an LLM (Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, etc.) to research the local and municipal requirements or guidelines specific to your state, as these cannot be summarized in a single, universal list.
Online permit portals: The Servicekonto Deutschland and municipal application portals allow users to submit permit applications via browser-based forms. However, availability varies by state.
Office management platforms with event features: A direct link between event planning, room management, and attendee management saves you the hassle of back-and-forth coordination.
PULT combines room booking, guest management, and catering into a single platform. You can book rooms, filter by capacity and amenities such as projectors or whiteboards, reserve areas on the interactive office map for your event, and add catering directly during the booking process.
Rooms, catering, parking, and guest workstations—all in one booking.
Guests check in at the kiosk, and the host immediately receives a notification in Slack or Microsoft Teams.
At the reception desk, guests sign NDAs, photo release forms and receive a visitor badge and privacy notices.
In an emergency, PULT generates an Emergency Export of all currently present individuals at the push of a button.
The weekly planner shows in advance how many employees will be in the office on the day of the event, so that room planning and space utilization can be coordinated.
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Office Insights
Workforce Analytics: Definition, Key Metrics, and EU-Compliant Implementation by 2026
Workforce analytics refers to the analysis of personnel data to manage headcount, productivity, and workforce planning. HR teams use this method to support personnel decisions with data. Starting in August 2026, the EU AI Regulation will tighten requirements for AI-powered HR analytics and mandate specific structures.
Workforce analytics is the quantitative analysis of HR data—such as turnover, absenteeism, headcount, and office utilization—to derive actionable recommendations for workforce planning.
Key metrics for workforce planning analytics include turnover rate, time-to-hire, absenteeism rate, office attendance, and team-level productivity metrics.
The EU AI Regulation classifies many HR analytics systems as high-risk AI starting in August 2026, imposing obligations regarding disclosure, human oversight, and data protection impact assessments.
PULT provides the data foundation for workforce analytics in hybrid teams—including attendance, desk utilization, and room bookings—and thus complements traditional HRIS systems such as Personio or HiBob.
What is workforce analytics, and how does it differ from people analytics?
Workforce Analytics focuses on the quantitative aspects of the workforce. It centers on headcount, productivity, turnover, and workforce structure in medium-term planning. People Analytics takes this a step further and also examines behavior, engagement, and collaboration based on qualitative data. HR Reporting, on the other hand, provides only retrospective reports without a forecasting component.
In day-to-day work, these two areas are closely intertwined. When you implement your own workforce analytics, you create the data foundation for people analytics and the overarching workplace management.
Which metrics are suitable for workforce analytics?
Workforce Analytics uses metrics such as turnover rate, time-to-hire, absenteeism rate, office utilization, headcount trends, and others, which are regularly collected and analyzed. Together, these metrics provide an overview of how the workforce is evolving and which areas of the company are over- or under-staffed.
What tools are suitable for workforce analytics?
Workforce analytics tools can be divided into three layers. An HRIS layer as the data core (Personio, HiBob, Workday), an analytics layer for evaluation (Visier, Tableau, supplementary HRIS modules), and an office layer for attendance and space data in hybrid setups. The right combination depends on company size, data architecture, and EU compliance status.
When making your selection, consider the following five points:
Hosting region: EU hosting with a data center in Germany or elsewhere in Europe.
API Capability: Interfaces with HRIS, time tracking, and office management systems to eliminate data silos
EU AI Act Status: The provider documents whether and how its tool falls under the category of high-risk AI
Level of detail: Customizable KPIs and freely configurable dashboards
What does the EU AI Regulation 2026 require of HR analytics systems?
According to Annex III of the EU AI Regulation, an HR analytics system is considered high-risk AI as soon as it automatically supports personnel decisions. These include recruitment, promotion, termination, and performance evaluation. As a result, many workforce analytics functions are subject to strict requirements as soon as algorithms independently generate recommendations for or against individuals.
What requirements will apply to HR analytics systems as of August 2, 2026?
The high-risk classification gives rise to four key obligations for new systems:
Risk Management and Technical Documentation in accordance with Articles 9 through 11 of the EU AI Regulation
Human oversight for every decision involving personal data, not just at a later stage
Data Protection Impact Assessment pursuant to Article 35 of the GDPR, plus a Fundamental Rights Impact Assessment pursuant to Article 27 of the EU AI Act
Co-determination by the works council pursuant to § 87(1)(6) of the Works Constitution Act (BetrVG) in connection with any introduction or adjustment
How can I ensure that my workforce analytics setup remains compliant?
You can ensure compliance by clarifying your data architecture and processes before purchasing a tool. This involves five key points:
EU Hosting: Servers located in the EU, documented data processing.
Purpose limitation: You must document in writing which data you are analyzing and for what purpose.
Human final decision: No algorithm makes the final decision regarding hiring, termination, or promotion.
Disclosure: You proactively inform employees about what data is collected and how it is analyzed.
Involve the works council: A works council agreement fulfills the requirement for employee participation.
How to Build a Future-Proof Workforce Analytics System
Workforce Analytics provides you with a quantitative overview of your workforce, from headcount forecasts and turnover to office utilization.
Starting in the fall of 2026, the EU AI Regulation will require specific frameworks for high-risk AI, documentation, and human oversight. With PULT, you can meet these requirements while still gaining reliable data for your workforce planning and site strategy.
PULT Workplace Analytics provides real-time attendance, desk, and room data as a data source for workforce analytics.
Native integrations with Personio, HiBob, Microsoft Teams, and Slack, so all your HR data is centralized in one place.
EU hosting and ISO 27001 certification as the basis for your GDPR and EU AI Act documentation.
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