Guest post by essensys.
For most coworking operators, WiFi is a box to tick. It has to work, members complain when it doesn’t, and once it’s running nobody gives it much thought.
But your WiFi touches nearly every person who walks through your door, every day. Few other systems in your building see that much. Set up the right way, it can answer questions most operators are currently guessing at.
The questions you’re probably guessing at
Ask most operators how their space is really being used and you’ll hear a mix of instinct, door-swipe reports, and what the community manager noticed last Tuesday. It’s useful, but it’s patchy. Consider:
When are people actually using your space? You know Tuesday to Thursday feels busy. Do you know whether Friday afternoons are worth staffing, or whether your 8am rush is ten people or forty?
How often are your occupiers coming in? A company whose team came in four days a week in September and once a week in November is telling you something, usually well before they hand in their notice.
Which occupiers are driving your utilization? A handful of teams might account for most of your midweek rush, while others barely use the space they pay for. Without data, the space you’re selling and the space occupiers value can drift apart quietly.
How busy is each of your sites, really? If you run more than one location, gut feel gets less reliable with every site you add. One might be bursting midweek while another sits half empty.
What would make the experience better? It’s hard to improve something you can’t see. Knowing when people come in, and how often, is the starting point for everything from staffing to programming.
Why most WiFi can’t answer them
In theory, WiFi data should answer all of this. Every phone and laptop in your building talks to your access points constantly. So why don’t more operators use it?
The answer is in how most coworking WiFi is set up. Walk into most spaces and the network works like a coffee shop’s: one password, often on the wall or in the welcome email, shared by everyone.
A shared password has two problems.
You don’t know who’s on your network. Former members who never deleted the password. Guests who were given it once and passed it on. Someone’s freelancer friend. Members are businesses (law firms, finance teams, startups) sharing a network with people they’ve never met. With one shared password, anyone who has it can get onto the same network as your members, and you have no way to tell who’s who.
The data counts devices, not people. On a shared network, all you see are anonymous devices. One person might carry a laptop, a phone and a tablet. Modern phones also disguise their hardware addresses for privacy, so the same person can appear as a different device from one week to the next. Count devices and you get a number. It just isn’t the number of members using your space.
Individual logins change both
The fix for the security problem and the data problem is the same: give every member their own WiFi login.
Instead of a shared password, each person signs in once with their own credentials, using the same enterprise-grade standard (802.1X) that corporate offices use. From then on, their devices reconnect automatically on every visit. When they leave, their access ends. No more former members on your network and no more passwords doing the rounds.
The second effect is easy to miss: once every connection belongs to a named person, your WiFi becomes a sensor network. You stop counting devices and start seeing real usage:
- How busy each site is, day by day and hour by hour.
- When your peak days and hours are, and the quiet ones.
- Which occupiers are driving utilization, and which have gone quiet.
- How each team works: which days they come in and how often, so you can see habits forming or fading.
That’s the difference between “about 120 devices on Tuesday” and “Acme’s team came in three days this week, mostly Tuesday to Thursday, down from five days last month.”
No sensors to install, no cameras, no extra hardware. Just the WiFi you already run, set up so it knows who’s on it.
What to do with it
Utilization data is only worth having if it changes decisions. Here’s where operators typically see the value first:
Spot churn early. An occupier whose visits are tailing off is a renewal at risk. Seeing it in week three gives your community team time to have a conversation. Seeing it in their notice letter doesn’t.
Find the upsell. A team that’s consistently over capacity in a four-desk office is ready for a bigger space. You can have that conversation before they start looking elsewhere.
Plan your portfolio. See which sites are running hot and which have room to spare, and price, market and invest accordingly.
Staff and run the building to demand. Cleaning, front-of-house cover, heating and cooling can all follow when each site is really busy, not a fixed timetable.
Sell with evidence. “Our members come in an average of 3.4 days a week” is a stronger message on a tour than “we have a great community.”
Where to start
You don’t need to rip anything out. Start with three questions:
- Do you know exactly who has access to your WiFi today? If the answer involves a shared password, you don’t.
- Does your existing WiFi hardware support individual logins? It probably does. Most business-grade access points (Meraki, Ruckus, Aruba, Ubiquiti, Cambium, Arista) support the 802.1X standard out of the box, so you’re likely one configuration change away, not a hardware upgrade.
- Which one question would you most like answered about how your space is used? Start there, and let the data earn its place.
Make your WiFi work harder
WiFi is already the most-used system in your building. With individual logins, it stops being a box to tick and becomes a real asset to your business: a more secure network for members, and the clearest view you have of how they really use your space.
Secure by design. Intelligence built in.
About essensys Group
essensys Group has built technology for flexible workspace operators since 2006, and its essensys Platform solution is used by operators around the world to run connectivity across their buildings. essensys Platform Activate is a new, self-serve edition of the platform that gives every user their own secure WiFi login and turns your existing WiFi into a sensor network, delivering utilization intelligence with no new hardware.
Try it free for 30 days. Activate your first site at essensys.tech/activate to give your members secure WiFi and yourself real utilization intelligence. No long-term commitment. Cancel anytime.
