Heather Long on Red Thread Compass, PropTech and Turning Utilization Data into Action
A meeting room can be booked all day and sit empty. A collaboration area can look good on a floor plan but see little use. Workplace analytics helps reveal the gap between how a space was designed and how people actually use it. We asked our own Heather Long, Head of Technology Business Development, about the rise of PropTech and how Compass, Red Thread’s workplace analytics advisory practice, helps organizations turn utilization data into decisions about space, technology, and employee experience.
Key takeaways
- Workplace analytics helps reveal how people actually use a space.
- Those insights can guide decisions about room mix, layout and future needs.
- Heather Long shares how Compass helps clients make sense of the data and decide what to do next.
What has changed in the conversations clients are having with you about their spaces?
Heather: Clients are at very different stages in how they use workplace data, but the expectation for better-informed decisions is growing. Some have been measuring for years. They understand their patterns and use the data to make decisions about room mix, policy and where to invest.
Others are just starting, often because the gaps have become harder to ignore. A few years ago, lower attendance made some of those mismatches less visible. Now they show up quickly: teams with nowhere to sit together, meeting rooms that are always booked and rarely used, floors that are packed on Tuesday and empty on Friday.
How analytics enters the conversation usually depends on where a client sits on that spectrum. For the more experienced ones, it’s about getting more out of what they already have. For others, analytics becomes important when there’s a significant decision ahead, like a lease renewal, renovation or a leadership team asking whether the workplace is actually working. That’s usually the moment “we think” stops being good enough.
What is proptech in the workplace and which developments are actually useful to the clients you work with?
Heather: PropTech, short for property technology, is really an umbrella term for the digital tools used to manage, operate and improve buildings and the experience of the people who use them.
In the workplace, that can include utilization analytics, occupancy sensors, desk and room booking, workplace experience apps, indoor navigation, environmental monitoring, access systems and other technologies that connect people with the spaces around them.
For our clients, the most useful technologies are the ones that help answer more consequential questions: Where are there mismatches between the space people have and the space they actually need? Does the workplace support what people came in to do? Where is friction affecting how people use the environment? Which patterns are persistent enough to act on? And where could changes to space, technology or policy have the greatest impact?
There’s a lot of attention on AI-driven portfolio planning right now, but the quality of any recommendation still depends on the quality and context of the underlying data. No single source gives you the full picture.
The other thing I see constantly is fragmentation. Most workplace tech stacks weren’t designed; they accumulated. A booking tool here, badge access there, a sensor pilot someone ran in 2022 that nobody turned off. A workplace app may capture what someone intended to do, while other data sources help show what actually happened in the space. Each is a different piece of the puzzle.
Desk booking tells you what people planned. Movement data shows how the space was actually used. Employee feedback adds context about the experience. The challenge is putting those pieces together, understanding what they mean in context and deciding what to do with them.
Why is it so hard to tell whether a space is working just by walking through it?
Heather: A walkthrough only shows you a moment, and you’re trying to understand a pattern. A full office on Tuesday tells you very little about how the space works the rest of the week. With hybrid work, you also need to understand why people choose to come in and whether the space supports what they’re there to do. A room might be booked all afternoon but sit empty, while a team works remotely because they’ve struggled to find a suitable place to work together.
Even the data people already have can mislead them. In one CBRE study, sensors showed an average daily peak of 59%, while access control data for the same period said 85%. With the more accurate number, they found room to consolidate from eight floors to six. Badge data told them the building was busy. It didn’t tell them how the space inside was being used.
What questions should a client ask before collecting workplace data?
Heather: Before collecting anything, a client should be clear on the decision the data needs to support. The first question is always: what decision are we trying to make? If you can’t name it, the data won’t name it for you. These are real investments, and collecting data without a plan is just hoping something useful shows up.
After that:
- What decision will this inform, and what evidence will you need to make it confidently?
- What would actually change your mind?
- What data do you already have? Badge, Wi-Fi, booking and even your video conferencing systems are a real starting point.
- How long do you need to watch? One week tells you almost nothing. You want enough time to see the patterns repeat, and ideally a seasonal swing.
- How are you going to explain this to employees before anything goes on a ceiling?
The good news is you don’t have to start with the most granular solution on the market. Most clients get further by starting with foundational data, often something they already have, and only getting more detailed where the questions call for it. You have to walk before you run. We also see the opposite: clients who skipped straight to running. They have incredibly granular data on a small part of their portfolio but couldn’t tell you how many people were in the building on Wednesday.
Helping clients set those priorities is a big part of what we do. A life sciences company, a law firm and a university don’t work the same way, and their spaces shouldn’t either. Different work modes, different space types, different questions. This isn’t the time for one size fits all and getting it right matters, because uncertainty is expensive.
Once the data comes in, how do you get from a dashboard to a decision?
Heather: A dashboard only shows you part of the story. The harder part, and where many programs stall, is understanding what it means and deciding what to do next.
Here’s a common pattern: large conference rooms that are always booked, holding two people. Small meetings are the norm almost everywhere. One of the largest sensor benchmarks out there shows about two-thirds of meetings involve one or two people so the data points toward more small rooms and fewer big ones.
But before you change anything, you ask why. Maybe the big rooms have the only decent video setup. Maybe the small rooms leak sound, so anyone with a sensitive call books the boardroom. Those are technology and acoustics problems, not square footage problems.
The answer usually isn’t a renovation. It’s often something smaller: better AV in a few small rooms, acoustic treatment, a different furniture layout, a change to which rooms can be booked.
Small changes are also easy to test. Agree on what success looks like before you look, try it on one floor, then measure again. That turns the data into a trigger instead of a debate. And if the small rooms fill up and the big ones finally free up, you have your answer, plus something concrete to show your teams about why things changed.
Where does Compass by Red Thread fit into that process?
Heather: Compass is Red Thread’s workplace analytics advisory practice. We help clients figure out what they need to measure, get the right technology in place, and then do the part most people skip: work out what the findings mean and what to do about them.
Because clients come to us at such different stages, the work is modular.
What a client can engage us for today:
- Technology Assessment: looking at what you already have and what you’re trying to decide, then recommending what’s worth adding (and what isn’t).
- Wi-Fi analytics pilot: a fast, low-lift way to see utilization across your buildings using the network you already have.
- Deployment and integration: sensors, booking and analytics platforms installed and connected so they actually talk to each other.
- Advisory Sprint and workshops: working sessions with your real estate, HR and IT leaders to go through your data together and leave with a plan your team owns.
- Ongoing support: staying in the room as the data changes and new decisions come up.
There are more workplace technology platforms to choose from every year. How do you help a client decide what they actually need?
Heather: I start by resisting the urge to answer that question too fast.
What you need depends on the decision you’re making, what infrastructure you already have, your budget and how precise the answer has to be.
Knowing a building runs at about half capacity on Fridays is a very different question from knowing which of forty meeting rooms are the wrong size.
That’s why I’m a big believer in pilots. Take a small bite at one problem and get it right. A good pilot gives you proof, and proof is what builds the business case for whatever comes next. Then you can move on to bigger priorities, if they’re needed at all.
And sometimes the honest answer is that you don’t need new hardware. You need to use what you already have better. I’d rather say that on the first call than sell something that sits unused.
Different tools measure space in different ways. How do you match the approach to the need?
Heather: Each type of technology answers a different question, and part of our job is understanding which question a client is actually trying to answer.
- Wi-Fi analytics: Broad portfolio-level utilization insights using existing network infrastructure.
- AV and videoconferencing data: Existing room-system data that can provide insights into room use and occupancy.
- PIR sensors: Basic presence detection for desks and rooms.
- People-counting sensors: More detailed occupancy and room-level and open plan utilization data.
- Environmental sensors: Air quality, temperature, noise and other conditions that can influence how a space is used.
- Booking integrations: A way to compare reservation activity with actual space utilization.
The right choice, or combination of technologies, depends on the decision you’re trying to make, the level of precision required, your existing infrastructure, privacy considerations and budget.
We’ve built close relationships with platforms that do each of these things well, which helps us get straight answers when clients need them. But we start with the question, not the product.
Privacy is often the first concern when workplace data comes up. How do you address it?
Heather: Privacy is usually the first concern clients raise, and rightly so.
For me, it comes back to purpose. What are you measuring, why do you need it, and what are you actually going to do with it? If you can’t answer those questions clearly, you probably need to step back before you start collecting data.
The technology is only half of it. The other half is transparency. I think of measurement as a company showing its work. If you’re asking people to come in, you should also be asking whether the workplace supports what they’re coming in to do. Measurement gives you a way to understand that and make informed improvements.
The privacy implications vary by data source and configuration, so we help clients clarify what is collected, whether it can identify an individual, how long it is retained, who can access it and how it will be used.
For IT, legal and security teams, we coordinate relevant product documentation, security certifications and client references as appropriate.
What does Red Thread bring to the table that a technology platform cannot provide on its own?
Heather: The question every client eventually asks: “Now what?” What does this mean for us, and what do we do now?
A platform can tell you a room is used 20% of the time. It can’t tell you whether that’s because the room is the wrong size, the AV doesn’t work, the team that needed it moved floors or it’s simply in a bad spot. Platforms aren’t set up to answer that. Their job is to deliver the data.
That gap is real. Organizations aren’t short on dashboards, they’re short on people who can read them in context.
When we look at that 20% room, our AV team checks the technology, our designers look at the layout and the furniture, and our acoustician asks whether it’s too loud to think in there.
We also read the data against everything around it: your culture, your real estate decisions and how your teams actually work. And we run these tools in our own offices, so we’ve lived with the same questions our clients are asking.
The data gets more valuable the longer you have it and the more context you layer on top. Every engagement makes the next one smarter, for that client and for the patterns we spot across all of them.
Can you share a time when workplace data changed the direction of a client conversation?
Heather: With a global insurance company, we brought together stakeholders from across the business and multiple geographies for a full-day workshop. We didn’t simply hand them a report. We worked through the findings together.
As questions came up, we compared badge data with sensor data in real time, allowing the group to test its assumptions on the spot. We then layered those findings with the group’s qualitative, lived experience of the space, including observations that no sensor or badge data could capture. The data showed us what was happening. The people in the room helped explain why.
What started as a conversation about the space turned into a conversation about the people in it. Different departments had different needs based on how their work actually gets done, and one approach wasn’t going to serve all of them. The workshop produced a set of priorities, from booking protocols to AV strategy. They left with a plan their own team could own, and the work continues.
What should clients be paying attention to next, and what would you advise them to do first?
Heather: AI is worth paying attention to, but not in the way most people think. It will make recommendations faster and cheaper, and that makes human judgment more important, not less. Someone still has to own the decision, understand the context and be accountable when the space changes. We’re the humans in the loop, and that role matters more than ever.
The other shift is toward hospitality. The best workplaces are starting to think like great hotels: anticipate what people need and take the friction out of their day, so they can do their best work with each other. Data is how you find that friction. Let the space support your people, not get in their way.
People and real estate are among an organization’s most consequential investments and valuable assets. They’re too important not to measure and nurture, and there’s real ROI for the companies that get this right. Space shapes behavior and over time, behavior becomes culture.
Wherever you are on the range, the first step is the same:
- Pick one decision you have to make in the next twelve months.
- Look at what data you already have.
- Fill the gap with the smallest tool that answers the question.
- Listen to the people who use the space.
Companies have good reason to ask their people to come in. Employees have good reason to expect a space that’s worth the trip. Both are fair. But a mandate without a space that supports the people in it loses trust fast. If an organization is measuring attendance, it should be equally committed to measuring whether the workplace supports the people being asked to use it.
The value of workplace data lies in what a team does with it. A utilization pattern might point to a different room mix, a growing team’s need for space or an opportunity to rethink an underused area. Through Compass, Red Thread helps clients choose the right tools, understand what the findings mean in context and decide what to do next.
About Heather Long
Heather Long | Head of Technology Business Development
617.291.3023
hlong@red-thread.com
With 15 years of experience in sales, client strategy, and workplace technology, Heather brings a strategic vision and a passion for driving growth and innovation. She has a strong track record of launching new solutions, expanding market presence across multiple channels, and building lasting partnerships—consistently delivering results that exceed expectations.
Heather joined Red Thread in 2025. She has held impactful roles at AT&T, Steelcase, and startups like VergeSense, where she helped scale SaaS and hardware solutions, led transformative sales initiatives, and supported Fortune 500 clients in reimagining their workplaces with advanced technology.
