Flex Office: Simply explained, advantages, management

Flex Office: TL;DR

• 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.

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.
• Sound-absorbing materials, plants, and textile room dividers noticeably reduce noise pollution.

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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