Flex Office, Remote Work, Coworking: How to Rethink Your Square Meters for 2026

The traditional office is no longer the norm. Between remote work becoming structural, the development of flex office, and the rise of coworking solutions, the use of square meters is now completely being questioned.

In 2025, the value of a square meter is no longer measured only in cost or surface area, but in real utility, employee experience, and contribution to collective performance.

So, how to adapt your real estate strategy to these profound evolutions? What levers to activate to optimize your spaces while responding to new employee needs? Here are the keys to transforming your offices into true strategic assets.

1. From ownership to usage: changing logic

The first transformation is above all cultural.

For decades, corporate real estate has been based on a simple logic: one office = one person. The number of square meters leased or owned depended directly on the number of employees, with individual workstation assignment.

But this equation has exploded:

Employees are now present on average 2 to 3 days per week at the office.

Work modes are hybrid, asynchronous, and decentralized.

Teams are sometimes distributed across multiple sites, even multiple countries.

Productivity no longer depends on a single location, but on a complete work ecosystem.

We must therefore shift to a real usage logic, asking:

Who comes to the office? When? To do what? With whom?

It's this transition — from theoretical surface to effective utilization — that allows rethinking spaces in an agile, sustainable, and economically relevant way.

2. Measure occupancy to manage transformation

To manage well, you need reliable data.

No relevant real estate strategy without concrete usage measurements.

This involves:

Installing presence sensors (anonymous) that allow tracking workstation, room, or common space occupancy.

Using intelligent booking tools (rooms, offices, zones), capable of generating usage statistics.

Field observations or internal surveys, to better understand activity typologies (concentration, collaboration, meetings, calls...).

Analysis of peak attendance, saturated spaces or conversely underutilized ones.

This data allows visualizing imbalances, identifying waste or capacity tensions, and adjusting spatial configuration according to real — not assumed — usage.

Note: this data is also a lever for dialogue between real estate, HR, and management departments, to objectify decisions.

3. Segment needs by profile or activity

Not all employees work the same way.

This is why a "uniform" fitout strategy is often counterproductive.

In 2025, the most performing companies adopt a segmented approach, based on fine analysis of profiles, usage, and business routines.

Examples of user typologies:

A 100% remote freelance developer: occasional need for a quiet, well-equipped hub.

A project manager: need for hybrid meeting rooms and dynamic collaborative spaces.

A flex office controller: need for a stable, well-soundproofed concentration space.

An innovation team: need for modular creativity rooms, accessible at any time.

The challenge is to propose a diversity of spaces adapted to these uses:

concentration bubbles, project spaces, silent open space, informal exchange zones, phone booths, hybrid places...

This diversity isn't a luxury: it's a condition of efficiency in work mode hybridization.

4. Adopt a modular and reversible approach

In an uncertain economic environment, marked by geopolitical instability, rapid evolution of business models, and changing employee expectations, freezing fitouts for 10 years no longer makes sense.

Winning companies in 2025 are those that design their spaces as modular platforms, capable of evolving.

Concretely, this means:

Wheeled furniture, removable partitions, adjustable workstations according to activities.

Hybrid spaces that change function according to time or day (meeting room in the morning, coworking in the afternoon).

More flexible real estate contracts: flexible leases, on-demand coworking solutions, temporary availability.

The ability to quickly reallocate spaces in case of growth, merger, partial relocation.

This modularity allows testing uses, adjusting them, without taking irreversible risks — a major strategic asset.

5. Integrate off-site solutions: coworking and third places

Facing the impossibility of centralizing everything, and the desire to bring the office closer to home, more and more companies hybridize their real estate footprint.

They integrate into their strategy:

Coworking space subscriptions (WeWork, Morning, Deskeo...), often located in major cities or international hubs.

Proximity third places (connected cafes, fitted public spaces, shared places), to respond to occasional needs or avoid long commutes.

Satellite offices or regional hubs, implanted in employee residential areas.

This "off-site" logic allows:

Reducing headquarters surfaces,

Offering more flexibility to employees,

Accelerating adaptation to company territorial evolutions.

It also contributes to reducing carbon footprint related to home-work travel.

6. Involve HR and employees in decisions

Real estate isn't a matter of square meters: it's a matter of usage.

Succeeding in space transformation therefore requires involving the first concerned: employees.

Steps not to neglect:

Organize co-design workshops, associating HR, real estate, IT, and business units.

Conduct internal barometers to identify expectations, barriers, habits.

Clarify living rules in new environments (flex charter, noise management, shared tools...).

Train teams in good appropriation of places and associated digital tools.

Tip: use a tool like Stackfit

The Stackfit tool, for example, allows visualizing possible implantations, testing different assignment scenarios, simulating flows or occupancy densities. It promotes collective decision-making during collaborative workshops and allows making the project readable by all.

It's a powerful lever to move from intention to action... while limiting resistance.

Bonus: integrate CSR approach into real estate strategy

In 2025, an empty or underutilized square meter is also an unnecessary environmental cost.

Rethinking your spaces also means contributing to:

Reducing energy consumption

Limiting travel

Favoring more sober usage

Integrating sustainable and local materials

Real estate projects must now fit into a global CSR logic, with specific indicators.

Conclusion: fewer square meters, more value

In 2025, surface area is no longer an end in itself, but a means serving efficiency, collaboration, and well-being.

It's not just about making savings, but creating more value with less surface area. This requires an integrated, agile, co-constructed approach — at the crossroads of HR, real estate, digital, and management.

For real estate departments, this is a unique opportunity to move out of the "square meter manager" role and position themselves as strategic actors in company transformation.