The advantage of using heads is that this figure is easier to understand (you are sharing a desk with such and such number of colleagues)What is a good ratio?The question of what constitutes a good ratio remains. The easy answer is that a ratio of around 0.7 tends to work fine for most organizations. It is probably the most widely used ratio in practice. The logic behind it is that it seldom happens that more than 70% of the staff are in need of a desk at the same time. It is thus a safe ratio that still offers space savings with only a small risk of desk shortages. Risk-averse organizations may go for a ratio of 0.8, while the more daring ones may opt for 0.6. Some organizations even go for a ratio of 0.5 or 0.4 workspaces per employee. Before the Covid-19 outbreak, such ratios were seen asYou dont want people to be worried about the rather tight. But it is quite likely that working from home willavailability of good workstations. It is therefore become a much more common practice. In that case, acrucial to design for the most frequently occurring occupancy level rather than the ratio of 0.5 or 0.4 workstations per person may very well beaverage level.feasible. Using occupancy dataTo be able to make an informed decision about the sharing ratio, it is best to get a detailed insight into workspace occupancy levels in the existing office (see page 42). The lower the occupancy levels, the higher the potential for sharing. One should be careful, however, when interpreting occupancy data. When average occupancy is around 40% (which it often is), there is a temptation to slash 60% of the desks. But this will result in a serious shortage of workstations at peak moments. So it is best to look at average, peak and modal occupancies (the occupancy levels that occur most frequently). 64