Before You Redesign Your Office, Do You Need a Workplace Consultant?

What does a workplace consultant do?

A workplace consultant sits at the point where business strategy, people and the built environment intersect. Their work starts before a floor plan is developed, using research, data and organisational insight to understand what the workplace needs to achieve and how space can support it. 

For an organisation considering a new office, reviewing its portfolio or responding to changing ways of working, that analysis can shape decisions worth millions of dollars. 

Where does a workplace consultant sit in the process? 

An architect, interior designer and project manager each bring a distinct discipline to a workplace project. A workplace consultant operates earlier in the process, establishing the evidence and strategic direction that those disciplines can then respond to. The distinction is less about who designs the workplace and more about how the brief itself is established. 

A designer can draw on years of experience to understand common workplace requirements. They may know, for example, how different organisations typically allocate meeting rooms, what workplace settings support collaboration, or where acoustic treatments tend to be effective. Those are valuable insights, but they are informed by patterns across projects. They do not necessarily explain what your organisation needs, how your people use space today, or where the assumptions behind your current workplace have stopped matching the way the business operates. 

That is where workplace strategy adds depth. Through research, data analysis, stakeholder engagement and observation, a consultant builds an organisation-specific understanding of the workplace before spatial solutions are developed. PMG’s scope includes workplace audits, human geography planning, utilisation and occupancy studies, persona modelling, user-experience journey mapping, stay-versus-go modelling and portfolio analysis. 

The result is an evidence base that gives the design process a much more precise starting point. It can reveal how space is being used, where demand is concentrated, how different teams interact with the workplace and which requirements are likely to change as the organisation evolves. 

What does a workplace consultant analyse? 

The research phase is where much of the discipline’s value sits. A workplace consultant might begin by examining occupancy data, headcount, organisational structures, work patterns, property costs and existing space allocations. That quantitative picture is then tested against qualitative information gathered through interviews, workshops, surveys, observations and stakeholder engagement. 

Neither source tells the whole story on its own. An occupancy study may show that a meeting room is rarely booked, while observation reveals that employees avoid it because its location makes confidential conversations uncomfortable. A utilisation report might suggest there is sufficient desk capacity, while employee feedback identifies particular days when teams struggle to sit together. 

The consultant’s expertise lies in interpreting these different signals and understanding what they mean for the organisation. Workplace benchmarks can provide useful reference points, but they cannot explain every organisation. Research from Leesman identifies common workplace activities that matter across its dataset, while also finding that the importance of those activities varies by sector, organisation and department. That reinforces the need to establish the specific workplace requirements of each organisation before translating them into a spatial model. 

PMG’s Gallagher project demonstrates this approach in practice. Its workplace strategy involved a national review of existing spaces, executive collaboration, site observations and data analysis, which informed a tailored workplace blueprint and the eventual organisation of the workplace around neighbourhoods designed for specific teams and activities. 

A workplace consultant turns organisational complexity into workplace decisions 

Most organisations are dealing with several variables at once. Headcount may be changing. Hybrid working may have altered attendance patterns. Teams may have different requirements. A lease event may be approaching while the business is also considering growth, consolidation or changes to its operating model. 

A workplace consultant brings these variables into the same decision-making framework. 

This can involve scenario modelling that tests different futures before a commitment is made. 

• What happens if headcount grows by 15%? 
• What if attendance patterns change? 
• What happens to the portfolio if two teams consolidate? 
• Would relocating create operational advantages that outweigh the cost? 
• Could an existing workplace accommodate projected growth with a different spatial model? 

Each scenario can affect the amount of space required, the location and configuration of the workplace, the property portfolio and the cost of delivering it. Testing those variables before a decision is made gives leadership an opportunity to understand the implications of different options while there is still room to change direction. 

The consultant’s role is to examine those competing objectives together. Space efficiency, employee experience, growth, cost, culture and property strategy can pull a decision in different directions. Good workplace strategy gives leaders a way to understand those trade-offs before they become embedded in a lease, portfolio or design brief. 

Testing the assumptions behind a workplace 

Every workplace strategy starts with assumptions. The challenge is determining which ones are supported by evidence. 

A business may assume that every employee needs an individual desk. Leaders might believe collaboration is the primary reason people come into the office, while employees describe a more complicated mix of activities. Testing those assumptions routinely changes the direction of a project. 

The data organisations already collect needs careful reading. JLL’s 2026 Global Occupancy Planning Benchmark Report, a global survey of 84 organisations, found that badge swipe data remains the most common method of tracking utilisation, cited by 92% of respondents, while only 7% rate their data capability as excellent. JLL points out that building-level badge data counts arrivals. Knowing which seats and collaboration spaces get used takes space-level measurement from reservation data or sensors. 

That distinction gives workplace consultants an important analytical role. They are not simply collecting information for a report; they are determining which evidence is relevant, where different findings intersect and what the organisation can reasonably infer from them.