The smarter way to manage offices in a hotter world

If the past few months are anything to go by, extreme heat is becoming part and parcel of the British summertime.

As temperatures continue to rise, employers are under growing pressure to make sure workplaces can cope with the hotter conditions.

The challenge is understanding the smartest way to adapt, because the cost of leaving it to guesswork and getting it wrong is significant.

The UK’s June 2026 heatwave is estimated to have resulted in 24 million lost working hours and a cost to the economy of £1.15 billion in lost productivity .

Those figures show the direct impact workplace conditions can have on business performance.

At the same time, hybrid working adds another layer of complexity, having fundamentally changed how offices operate.

Attendance is far less predictable than it once was, so it’s harder to know where and when things like cooling, ventilation and workspace capacity are needed most.

Aside from the summer heat, organizations need workplaces that perform well in every season and adapt to constantly changing occupancy and environmental conditions.

They need to understand how people move through the office.

Things like which desks they check into, which meeting rooms fill up, where teams collaborate and which spaces are regularly ignored.

Doing so requires a real-time understanding of how buildings are being used.

This is where sensor technology and workplace usage data comes in, turning assumptions into evidence and giving organizations the insight to make smarter workplace decisions.

Building-wide averages can hide local problems Many offices are still managed around a relatively fixed idea of how a building should operate.

Cooling and ventilation systems may follow predetermined schedules, while individual spaces are managed according to their maximum capacity, rather than how they’re being used in the moment.