3 Ways Sensors Can Optimize Your Office Space and Reduce Costs
Organizations are succeeding in their return to office quest. According to the XY Sense Workplace Utilization Index, global utilization reached 43% during Q2 and Q3 2025 and has entered a state of slow, yet steady growth. So problem solved, right? Well…not exactly.
Getting people back into the office was a necessary first step for a lot of organizations. Now it’s on to step two: optimizing the office space to enhance both employee experiences and real estate utilization. How do you do that? A good place to start is by installing sensors in your office.
What kind of sensors do you need, and how do you select the right ones?
There are two types of sensors commonly used in the workplace: occupancy sensors and environmental indoor air quality (IAQ) sensors. Both are designed to help organizations better understand their office environments, but they are completely different in what they have to offer.
Occupancy Sensors
Occupancy sensors are IoT-connected devices that can help organizations actively detect the presence of people within specific rooms and spaces throughout the office. With this information, organizations can better understand how their offices are used and how they can adapt their space to better suit the needs of their employees.
When it comes to occupancy sensors, there are several types for you to choose from, each with their own set of pros and cons.
|
Sensor type
|
How it works
|
|---|---|
| Radar | High-precision presence, micro‑motion detection, strong privacy profile, operates effectively in all lighting conditions. |
| Passive infrared (PIR) | Detects heat motion; low cost but less sensitive to micro‑movements. |
| Camera-based vision | Detects heat motion; low cost but less sensitive to micro‑movements. |
| Acoustic/ultrasonic | Motion/proximity cues, with variable accuracy in noisy environments. |
| Network/bluetooth presence | Useful for coarse-grain signals; limited real occupancy fidelity. |
While the type of sensor is vitally important, there are several other considerations to keep in mind when selecting occupancy sensors for your office.
- Reliability of data. If you’re going to make an investment to understand space utilization, you need sensors that deliver highly accurate and sensitive measurements of movement. Otherwise, you will be prone to triggering crucial operations like activating the room system or booking the space at inopportune times.
- Ease of installation and deployment. There are two core considerations to make in terms of how you deploy your sensors: install method and power source. The former typically comes down to peel-and-stick adhesive or a fixed, screw and bracket mount while the latter is a choice between battery power or a wired connection. The quicker you can get yours up and running, the quicker you can capture your occupancy data and begin acting on the resulting insights.
- Ease of management. Once you install sensors in your office, everything should be hassle-free. Configuring device settings and pushing software updates should be quick and painless. Accessing, understanding, and sharing the data you generate should be a breeze. The smaller the learning curve, the quicker your devices can impact the way you operate.
- Actionable insights and integrations. Accessing your data is one thing, but making sense of it is another. The easier your solution makes it for you to understand your data and then act upon it, the easier it is for you to improve efficiencies to your room systems or environments.
Environmental IAQ sensors
Environmental IAQ sensors are connected devices that detect, measure, and analyze chemical and physical properties of the air in your offices to monitor for pollutants, safety hazards, and comfort levels. This helps organizations keep their spaces healthy so people can work comfortably and efficiently.
But what should you be looking for in IAQ sensors? Here are several considerations to keep in mind.
Breadth of metrics monitored. To gain a full understanding of your office’s air quality, make sure your sensors can monitor everything from CO2 levels to particulate matter to volatile organic compounds for health purposes, along with temperature and humidity readings for comfort.
Certified accuracy and reliable data. Sensors with a RESET certification ensure they are accredited for high-performance, continuous, real-time monitoring of air pollutants, meeting strict data accuracy and reporting standards.
Actionable insights and integrations. See above.
How Logitech Spot raises the bar for sensors
With these parameters in mind, Logitech developed a sensor to meet the needs and high expectations of organizations. Enter Logitech Spot, the first dedicated office sensor to combine both presence and environmental detection in a single device.
This sensor uses low-power radar to detect presence and micro‑movements without cameras. This enables organizations to monitor when a variety of spaces are being occupied (meeting rooms, lounges, flexible spaces, phone booths, etc.) with a high degree of accuracy and use that data to create smarter automations.
What makes Logitech Spot unique, though, is its ability to measure environmental data such as volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, temperature, humidity, and CO2 levels. These measures help organizations gain a comprehensive understanding of air quality and room health to better take actions to ensure a safer and more productive working environment for occupants.
Spot can be installed in seconds via adhesive or easily mounted to the wall if you prefer a more secure fit. No need for wires or cables either as the sensor can run on batteries for up to four years. Once installed, you can quickly pair them to other Logitech devices such as Tap Scheduler in rooms without video or Rally Bar or Tap IP in rooms with video, as well as use the dedicated LoRaWAN gateway to connect sensors across an entire site.
What makes the experience so seamless is your ability to see everything from your data to your device-level settings in easily digestible dashboards via either Logitech Sync (Sync Insights) or other compatible workspace platforms. This makes all of your data highly visible, easily digestible, and quick to act upon.
Easy to install? Check. Quality data? Check. Actionable insights? Check. Now that we’ve checked off those boxes, let’s move on to the most important question: how can Logitech Spot help you optimize your office space and reduce costs? We’ve broken down the answer into the following three benefits:
Improved space utilization
Anyone who has worked in an office has experienced the pitfalls of meeting booking systems. All too often, the calendar we rely on to tell us which meeting rooms are available does not accurately reflect reality. Instead, ghost meetings that never happen, no-shows that tie up rooms, and random drop-ins that never make it onto the calendar go unchecked, leaving employees frustrated and management with no sense of how rooms are actually being used.
Logitech Spot can help solve this issue by pairing with a scheduling panel (Logitech Tap Scheduler in rooms without video or to Rally Bar or Tap IP in rooms with video) and room booking services (e.g., Logitech Room Booking). By pairing these devices, you can understand in real time whether rooms are occupied or not.
This data enables you to enact presence-driven auto-book and auto-release automations*, effectively eliminating the frustration of ghost meetings and no-shows. As a result, you can monitor space utilization with greater precision while employees can more easily locate available rooms for meetings without any wasted motion.
*Logitech booking automations, wayfinding, and Sync Insights require an additional service license.
Heating and cooling efficiency
Occupancy sensors are essential for optimizing your office space, but they can also pay dividends when it comes to energy efficiency. Just as you can use presence detection to automatically book and release rooms, you can also use it to automate your office management system.
On average, heating and cooling account for 39% of energy used in commercial buildings in the United States, making them some of your costliest overhead expenses. Spot can help you reduce that figure by monitoring the occupancy patterns and environmental health within your offices. Then, through Sync Insights*, you can easily see which spaces are being overheated or overcooled for their occupancy or for the seasonal weather outside.
Equipped with these insights, you can either make adjustments to building heating and cooling, or you can integrate these datasets via APIs* to automate building controls. According to Schneider Electric's 2025 study, demand-based control has shown to reduce energy use in buildings by an average of 22%.
While presence detection alone can drastically reduce your office’s energy consumption, Spot can take this even further with its environmental sensing capabilities. By offering insight into both air quality and room climate, you can actively make adjustments to HVAC and ventilation systems that help keep employees comfortable and full of energy.
Lower maintenance and infrastructure costs
Sensors are meant to simplify and streamline your office environments, not add complexity. So you need devices that not only produce accurate, reliable data, but make it easy to understand and act upon that data. Spot is as reliable as they come, as its radar sensor detects presence via micro-movements with a high degree of accuracy, and its IAQ sensor is RESET certified for workplace wellbeing.
In addition, Spot is designed to integrate seamlessly into the existing ecosystem of Logitech video bars, room systems, and other enterprise devices. So you can provision, manage, and update your Spot devices in Logitech Sync, just as you do other Logitech devices and spaces. This makes it easy to access your data and insights, while also enabling you to export it to partner dashboards like Teams, Zoom, and others. This results in fewer total dashboards and integrations to manage your fleet of video collaboration and sensing devices.
Lastly, Spot is incredibly easy to install. So, whether you’re looking to add sensors to new rooms or move existing sensors to new locations, you can do so without any downtime at little to no cost to your organization—not only in terms of physical installation, but software integration. In essence, it futureproofs your organization against inevitable changes in office footprint and policy.
The modern office is no longer a static environment—it’s a dynamic ecosystem that evolves alongside employee expectations, workplace policies, and organizational goals. To stay ahead of the curve, you must pay close attention to how your office spaces are being utilized and adapt accordingly. Without reliable insights into employee needs and usage patterns, it’s impossible to make informed, impactful changes.
Occupancy sensors can provide the watchful, yet private, eye you need to stay up to date on workplace trends and behavior. By embracing tools that monitor and adapt to usage patterns and employee preferences, your organizations can ensure offices remain productive, sustainable, and aligned with the needs of a changing workforce.
Don't leave your office optimization to guesswork. Get started with Logitech Spot today and start seeing measurable results in space utilization and cost savings.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do occupancy sensors reduce energy costs in office buildings?
HVAC is the primary driver of building operating costs, accounting for 39% of total energy consumption, on average. Occupancy sensors can help mitigate those costs by telling you when office spaces are vacant and, thus, when you actually need to be using these utilities. By establishing demand-based control, you can shave a significant amount off of your operating costs.
What are the main benefits of using occupancy sensors for space optimization?
The right occupancy sensors provide you with the insight you need to right-size your facilities, streamline your room bookings, minimize maintenance, and deliver granular usage data—all while preserving privacy.
Are there privacy concerns for how occupancy sensors can be used in the workplace?
There will always be employee concerns around privacy, but as long as your sensors are detecting presence rather than identifying individuals, you can assuage concerns around improper use. Radar sensors, like that used by Logitech Spot, provide presence signals without images or identity, making it well-suited to privacy-sensitive environments.
YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN
Browse Categories:
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR BUSINESS NEWSLETTER
GET CONNECTED
