Work Space Calculator

More people than desks?
Running out of space?
Planning for growth?
Too much space after a restructure?

A free office space calculator and desk sharing calculator

The Work Space Calculator is a free office space planning tool. Enter your current people, desks and floor area, then your expected growth, and it works out how much space you actually need, whether your current footprint still fits, and whether desk sharing is a viable way to ease the pressure.

It works as both an office space calculator and a desk sharing calculator. It tells you how much space you need, and it tests what happens to your desk count and your footprint at different desk sharing ratios. You get a clear comparison of your options, with an indicative fit-out cost in your city, in about five minutes.

No sign-up is needed to run it. You can email the results to yourself at the end.

Who should use this calculator

Use it if you recognise any of these four situations:

More people than desks, and you need to act now
Running out of space, and you are weighing up your options
Enough space now, but you are planning for future growth
Surplus space after a restructure or downsizing, and you want to right-size

It is built for the people who have to solve these problems: facilities and workplace leads, property and real estate managers, office managers, operations and people teams, and business owners. It is useful whenever a lease event, an office move, a fit-out, a restack or a headcount change puts your space under question.

What it calculates

From a few simple inputs, the calculator works out:

The number of desks you need for your people today, and after growth
Whether those desks fit inside your current floor area
How much extra space you would need to take, or how much you could release
The desk sharing ratio required to avoid taking more space
Your density in square metres per desk, with a warning if it falls below the practical floor for Australian offices of around 10 sqm per desk
An indicative fit-out cost in your city
The annual property cost impact, when you enter your rent and outgoings

You can count people as headcount or as full-time equivalent (FTE), so the numbers match how your organisation actually plans.

The tool then compares up to five strategic options side by side:

Maintain your current way of working and add desks into your current space
Maintain your current way of working and take more space, or reduce your footprint
Adopt desk sharing but stay in your current space
Adopt desk sharing and take more space
Adopt desk sharing and reduce your footprint

The five-stage process

Tell us your workplace problem
Understand what it means
Choose an approach
Tailor your option
Compare the outcomes

Stages 1 and 2 matter most. Sometimes you think the problem is one thing when the numbers say it is another. Playing the problem back to you before you choose an option is a useful checkpoint.

Example scenario

An organisation has 296 people and 276 desks. They are 20 desks short today, with 10 more people expected in the short term, which takes them to 30 desks short. They occupy 5,153 sqm, which at 276 desks is a generous 18.7 sqm per desk.

Running these numbers through the calculator shows the options clearly. Taking more space to add 30 desks would mean roughly 560 sqm of extra floor area and a full fit-out cost. But at 18.7 sqm per desk there is room to work with. Adding the 30 desks into the existing footprint takes density to 16.8 sqm per desk, still comfortably above the 10 sqm floor. That option avoids the extra rent and avoids a full fit-out, since the desks can be retrofitted into the current space for far less.

The calculator surfaces that trade-off in minutes, with the desk counts, the space figures, the density and the cost impact laid out next to each other.

Desk sharing ratio explained

A desk sharing ratio is simply the number of desks expressed as a percentage of your people. If 10 people share 8 desks, that is an 80% ratio. Most desk sharing organisations sit somewhere between 70% and 80%.

The lower the ratio, the more sharing, and the fewer desks you need. The calculator uses this to test whether sharing solves your space problem:

100 people at a 1:1 traditional setup need 100 desks
100 people at an 80% desk sharing ratio need 80 desks
100 people at a 70% desk sharing ratio need 70 desks

Tightening the ratio from 80% to 70% releases 10 desks, which can be enough to stay in your current space or even reduce your footprint. The calculator lets you set the ratio and see the effect on desks, space and cost straight away.

It also reflects how you work today. You can tell it you are traditional (one person to one desk), mixed (mostly traditional with some hot desking), or already desk sharing at a set percentage, and it tailors the options from there.

Growth planning

If you have enough space today but more people coming, the calculator plans the runway. Enter your expected growth as a percentage or as an absolute number of people, and it works out the future desk and space requirement so you can see how long your current footprint lasts.

If you have both an immediate shortfall and a longer-term growth question, run the calculator twice, once for the problem in front of you now and once for the growth horizon. Two clean results are easier to act on than one merged figure.

Frequently asked questions

How much office space do I need per person?

It depends on your density and how you work, so there is no single number that fits every office. The calculator works it out from your actual people, desks and floor area rather than applying a generic rate. As a guide, density below around 10 sqm per desk is tight for Australian offices, and the tool flags it when a scenario crosses that line.

What is a desk sharing ratio?

It is the number of desks as a percentage of your people. An 80% ratio means 8 desks for every 10 people. Most organisations that share desks land between 70% and 80%.

Is this an office space calculator or a desk sharing calculator?

Both. It tells you how much space you need, and it tests what different desk sharing ratios do to your desk count, your footprint and your cost.

Can it plan for future growth?

Yes. Enter your expected growth as a percentage or as a number of extra people, and it calculates the future desk and space requirement.

Does it estimate fit-out cost?

Yes. It gives an indicative fit-out cost based on your city, plus the annual property cost impact when you enter your rent and outgoings. These are planning benchmarks, not formal quotes.

Do I need to use headcount or FTE?

Either. You can count people as headcount or as full-time equivalent, so the result matches how your organisation plans.

Is it free?

Yes. The calculator is free to use, no sign-up required, and you can email the results to yourself.

Ready to find your answer

Run your numbers through the calculator above to see your options, your costs and your density in one place.

For a deeper plan, Work Future helps organisations turn these numbers into a real workplace strategy. See our services, or visualise your floor plan with Work Stack, our block-and-stack planning product. New to the term? Read what block-and-stack planning is.