Companies all over the world know that the future of business means flexibility in how people work, where they work, when they work and who they work with. But there’s a big difference between wanting to make an organization flexible, and putting the right solutions in place to make it happen in practice.
There are so many different factors to consider in how a workplace operates: business needs, employee sentiment, operational constraints, cost implications and even the impact on the environment. So many, in fact, that the only realistic way to run a flexible office that takes all of these factors into proper account is by turning to technology.
Below we four key areas of the workplace, the challenges faced by employers and employees, and how an integrated approach to workspace scheduling can help you solve those challenges.
1. Experience
The challenge: Designing a workplace which employees want to come and work from, which brings people together for collaboration and socialization, and which helps to promote a stronger, more positive corporate culture.
The solution: Opening up employee choice so that they can access shared, bookable space within the office as and when they need it, so that they can work from home the rest of the time if they want to. Doing so makes the office the ‘hub’ of the business: a destination for people to spend time with each other professionally and personally, supporting their collaborations and improving their connections. The technology that can enable this is smart workplace scheduling that allows workers to book required spaces from web, mobile apps or even Microsoft Outlook.
2. Productivity
The challenge: Developing an office layout with a choice of workspaces and with a user-friendly environment that makes employees feel more positive, more relaxed and less stressed, so they can get more done on the days when they attend the office.
The solution: Creating an office environment full of shared workstations and meeting rooms, all with different surroundings and attributes. Loading these into a workspace scheduling platform allows employees to compare different spaces, find one that fulfils their needs both professionally and personally, and book it for the time they need it. If they find one they like, they can keep coming back to it, and if they find one they don’t like, it’s easy to book an alternative. This redefinition of how workspaces operates puts employees in control of their working environment and supports their workplace productivity.
3. Management
The challenge: Making the use of office space as efficient, cost-effective and safe as possible, while still meeting the demands of day-to-day business and the desire of employees to work as flexibly as possible.
The solution: A office technology that integrates workspaces, utilization rates, health and safety protocols, financial reporting, logistics, equipment and employee scheduling into one cloud-based ecosystem. Through this comprehensive approach, it’s possible to seamlessly control the use of space, including the management of rules and permissions that ensure the right people get access to the right working environments. At the same time, it also delivers traceability and transparency to how a flexible office operates from a business perspective, however complex the requirements and however many employees or buildings need to be incorporated
4. Analytics
The challenge: Gaining the deepest possible understanding of how an office environment is really used, so that future decisions around workspace layouts, flexible working and real estate costs can be better-informed and better support the long-term aspirations of the organization.
The solution: Software reporting and data analytics, incorporated into a workspace scheduling solution, gives clarity and accessibility to important insights. Interactive dashboards can detail when different spaces are used, how often and by whom, and also highlight trends in office usage by departments or individual employees. This information is ideal for enabling a reactive office that can be constantly reshaped to meet both employee and business needs, and to cut unnecessary business costs by helping to right-size real estate.
