Why Workplace Strategy in Life Sciences and Pharma Can’t Follow the Same Rules as Other Industries
Most workplace strategies are built on assumptions that work reasonably well in standard office environments: hybrid schedules, flexible attendance, and space optimization based on utilization trends.
In Life Sciences and Pharma, those assumptions break down quickly.
Work is distributed across offices, labs, clinical areas, specialized equipment zones, and regulated environments. People may be present on site, but not in the same type of space, not for the same duration, and not for the same reasons. That makes standard workplace logic harder to apply, and often misleading.
In a CoreNet Global webinar featuring Basking, Jennifer Mannier from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center shared how workplace patterns in complex environments often don’t match standard assumptions.
In our recap of the session, she highlighted a key point:
“Policy can only go so far – people still choose when they come in.”
This creates a gap between workplace strategy on paper and how space is actually used in practice. This is where standard workplace models start to break down. In practice, three following patterns tend to define how space is actually used in these environments.
1. Uneven Presence Is the Starting Point
A large share of the workforce in Life Sciences and Pharma is tied to labs, equipment, clinical environments, and regulated workflows. These teams are consistently on site, but that does not mean they use space in the same way as office-based functions.
At the same time, administrative, commercial, and corporate teams may follow more flexible attendance patterns. The result is not simply “high” or “low” occupancy, but overlapping patterns of presence that vary by role, task, and environment.
This is where standard workplace averages become misleading. A hybrid policy or attendance target may describe part of the organization, but not the workplace as a whole.
What to do:
2. Space Is Defined by Workflows
In Life Sciences and Pharma, space planning is constrained by workflows, adjacencies, compliance requirements, and specialized infrastructure. Labs, support areas, collaboration zones, and office space are often interdependent.
That means layout decisions cannot be driven by utilization numbers alone. Reallocating or reducing space without understanding how teams move between these environments can introduce operational friction rather than efficiency.
What to do:
3. Standard Metrics Fall Short
Traditional workplace metrics can show that a space looks underused, but they do not always explain whether it is functionally critical.
In complex environments, people may spend only part of the day at a workstation while moving across labs, clinical areas, or shared support spaces. Without that context, low observed utilization can easily be misread as excess capacity.
This is one reason perception and reality often diverge. Teams may report that space is constrained, while surface-level observation suggests the opposite. The missing layer is how work actually happens across different environments.
What to do:
From Visibility to Alignment
What this creates is a portfolio with multiple workplace logics at once: fixed lab environments, semi-flexible collaboration spaces, and hybrid-friendly office areas. Treating them as a single system leads to oversimplified decisions.
To plan effectively, organizations need more than high-level occupancy data. They need to understand how different teams use different types of space, where demand consistently exceeds supply, and which areas are functionally critical even if they appear underused.
This is where workplace strategy in Life Sciences and Pharma diverges from other industries. The goal is to align space with how work is actually performed — across labs, offices, and everything in between.
See also how Basking supports lab space utilization analytics for research-driven environments where office and lab demand need to be understood differently.
Visibility enables targeted change.
When workplace data reflects how space is actually used across teams and functions, organizations can move from reactive adjustments to precise, evidence-based decisions.
Align your workplace strategy with how work actually happens
From labs to offices, get the insights you need to align space with real usage patterns.
