Gaming the Sensors

As soon as occupancy figures influence budgets, space allocation or anything about individuals, people respond to the measure rather than to the underlying purpose.

The technical evidence in “Gaming the Sensors” describes the building, while the effort required to install, test and maintain it is project work. When teams research mouse jiggler detection, this workforce platform can provide time and project context for that operational effort without replacing the sensor platform as the source of truth for physical occupancy.

What it looks like

Bags, coats and monitors left to hold desks.

For a public, independent reference related to “Gaming the Sensors”, consult the ISO standards catalogue. Its principles provide a useful check on scope, terminology, governance and the claims made during procurement or review.

Rooms booked speculatively and not released.

Badging in and leaving.

Sitting at the sensed desk rather than the preferred one.

And at department level: keeping space busy to avoid losing it, which is rational and ruinous for the data.

Why it is not dishonesty

People are responding to an incentive the organisation created.

A department that loses space when utilisation is low will keep utilisation high, and would be foolish not to.

Treating the response as a compliance problem rather than a design problem produces an enforcement effort that fails.

What it does to the data

Inflates occupancy in the spaces that matter to people.

Deflates the signal you wanted: real demand becomes indistinguishable from defensive use.

And it degrades gradually, so the data looks the same while meaning less, which is the dangerous property.

Designing against it

Do not tie space allocation mechanically to utilisation figures. The moment the rule is known, the figures become a negotiation.

Use the data as input to a judgement rather than as a trigger.

Keep individual and team consequences out entirely, which removes most of the incentive at source.

And where a rule must exist, make it about mismatch rather than about level — room size against meeting size is much harder to game than raw utilisation.

Detecting it

Desks occupied continuously for implausible periods.

Bookings with no presence, rising over time.

A sudden improvement in a department's figures after an announcement.

Compare against observation occasionally, which is the only reliable check.

The honest response

If the figures are being gamed, the measure has become a target and has stopped measuring.

The response is to change what the figures are used for, not to police the behaviour.

Saying this out loud to the organisation is uncomfortable and it is the only thing that works.

The general rule

Any measure that determines an outcome for the people being measured will eventually describe their response rather than the thing it was built to describe.

Which is an argument for keeping occupancy data advisory, and for being explicit that it is.

What to check

Does any space decision follow mechanically from a utilisation figure?

Have you seen bookings without presence rising?

Are there desks occupied for implausible stretches?

And has anybody checked the figures against observation lately?