Doing More With Less: How Toronto Workplaces Are Delivering Culture, Connection, and Performance in Smaller Footprints

For decades, offices in Toronto and across the GTA followed a predictable formula: more people = more square feet.

But after hybrid work reshaped how teams actually use space, that math no longer made sense. Companies aren’t just trying to shrink their real estate costs—they’re trying to protect the things that matter: culture, collaboration, and employee experience.

At Sensyst, we see this every week. Businesses are asking a new question:

“How do we create a better workplace… in less space?”

Not a cheaper office.

Not a stripped-down version of what they had before.

But a space that performs better—even if the footprint is 20–30% smaller.

Right-sizing a workplace isn’t the same as downsizing. Done well, it’s a chance to design a smaller, sharper, more intentional office that works harder for the business. That’s the lens we bring to workplace strategy and office design at Sensyst.

Start With Reality, Not Floor Plan Assumptions

The first step has nothing to do with furniture or finishes. It’s about understanding how work actually happens in your space now.

When we walk a Toronto office with a client, we’re looking for patterns:

Areas that sit half-empty even on “busy” days
Rooms that are always booked versus rooms no one touches
Teams that have created their own informal meeting spots in corridors, cafés, or copy areas

Layer that with hybrid schedules and attendance data, and you quickly see which parts of the office are pulling their weight and which aren’t. Only then does a smaller footprint start to make sense.

In many cases, a client realizes they don’t need less office—they need less of one type of space and more of another. That’s a very different conversation.

Designing for Moments, Not Just Headcount

Ratios drove traditional office planning in Toronto: one desk per person, a handful of meeting rooms per floor, a boardroom that seats twelve “just in case.”

In a right-sized, hybrid-friendly workplace, those numbers matter less than the moments you want the office to support:

onboarding and training
project kick-offs and workshops
leadership visibility
client meetings and presentations
quiet, focused work that’s hard to do at home

When we plan a smaller footprint, we often redistribute space instead of simply cutting it:

Fewer underused large boardrooms, more 2–4 person rooms that actually get used
Fewer rows of identical workstations, more zones with different levels of privacy and energy
Fewer “leftover” corners, more deliberate collaboration pockets and touchdown points

The office becomes less of a storage system for people and more of a tool for specific kinds of work.

Why a Smaller Office Can Actually Feel Better

One of the worries we hear is, “If we reduce our space, it’ll feel like we’ve cut back.”

That only happens if the design stops at subtraction.

A smaller office can feel more grown-up and more generous if the experience improves at the same time:

circulation routes that actually make sense
better access to natural light and views
materials and finishes that feel more like hospitality than institutional design
acoustic planning so people can think clearly without escaping to the stairwell

Employees rarely measure square footage. They notice how the space feels:

Is there somewhere quiet to take a call?
Can I find my team easily when I’m in?
Does this place feel like a step up from working at my kitchen table?

If the answer is yes, the fact that the space is 20–30% smaller quickly becomes irrelevant.

Furniture as Strategy, Not Afterthought

Once the footprint shrinks, the furniture has to carry more of the strategy.

In a right-sized Toronto office, we’re rarely specifying static, one-purpose pieces. Instead, we lean into:

workstations that can tighten or expand as teams grow or shift
tables that can host a workshop one day and split into smaller collaboration spots the next
modular lounge settings that can move as neighbourhoods evolve
mobile power so people aren’t tethered to a wall whenever they need to plug in

This is where commercial office furniture selection becomes part of workplace strategy, not just a catalogue exercise. Every piece you bring in should earn its place.

Keeping Culture Visible in a Smaller Space

One of the most significant risks in a compressed footprint is that the office becomes purely functional. It “works,” but it doesn’t say anything about who you are.

Culture needs square footage too—but not a lot of it.

We build it into:

how you arrive (reception, entry path, first sightline)
which stories you choose to tell on the walls (projects, clients, people, history)
where teams naturally bump into each other during the day
how leadership shows up in the space—behind closed doors or out on the floor

In a smaller office, these decisions matter even more because every experience is amplified. When the only shared area is a kitchen no one wants to sit in, the message is clear. When the social heart of the office feels intentional, people notice.

Using Data—and Now AI—to Make Smarter Real Estate Decisions

A few years ago, most real estate decisions in the GTA were driven by gut feel and lease cycles. Now, more clients are asking for evidence before they commit.

We’re using a mix of:

meeting and room booking data
badge or sign-in patterns
occupancy snapshots across the week
employee surveys on where and how people prefer to work

AI is starting to layer on top of that—helping identify underutilized areas, testing alternate layouts, and modelling how a hybrid team might actually move through space vs. how we think they do.

It doesn’t replace a design team, but it gives us better inputs. The result is the same: a right-sized office that fits how the business exists today and can grow in to tomorrow.

Doing More With Less in Toronto's Competitive Office Environment

The phrase “do more with less” gets thrown around a lot. In the context of office design in Toronto, here’s what it actually looks like:

Less redundancy, and more spaces that people truly use
Reducing the number of empty desks, and creating more high-value zones for focus, collaboration, and connection
Less guesswork in real estate decisions, more data-backed planning
Less emphasis on “how big is your office,” more emphasis on “how well does it support your people and clients.”

Shrinking your footprint doesn’t have to mean shrinking your ambition.

If anything, a smaller, sharper workplace can act as a clearer expression of your culture and a better tool for your business—especially when planned with intention.

If you’re starting to question whether your current space still fits the way your teams work, that’s usually the right time to step back and rethink the plan. That’s the work we’ve been doing across the GTA since 1977.