How to Make Your Hybrid Workplace a Success

With COVID case numbers steadily down in the UK and vaccinations up, companies are busy preparing their return to the office policies and procedures. It’s also clear to anybody working in a corporate environment that hybrid working is likely to stay and there will be a need for us to adapt.

Changing from a 9-5-office-only model to new ways of working and streamlining company policies and procedures is definitely not a simple task, especially in complex corporate environments. Hybrid working means radical change in almost any use case, and successful implementation requires reliable technologies to make it happen in the most effective way.

Change is always daunting, but most change is normally also good. Large companies are full of all sorts of different technologies that facilitate the management and flow of their buildings and people. However, more often than not these are individual systems that cover only certain functionalities and do not integrate with each other. The hybrid working challenge offers a significant opportunity to audit and evaluate the company’s existing facilities management technologies and to eliminate legacy systems that no longer serve the purpose.

Typical problems that companies face when creating extra workspace include moving desks around to ensure safe distancing, managing employee’s in-office and remote-working days, sanitation, avoiding crowds and bottlenecks and the list goes on. All this calls for more detailed insights into the management and logistics of office facilities. Many companies have already embraced this approach, as evidenced in a 2021 outlook report from Deloitte that 43% of companies are increasing tech investments this year.

Technology has become a driving force behind any successful return-to-office initiative and as important to the employee experience as network connectivity and the furniture in an office. Smart WorkApp applies the highest standards of collaboration, communication, installation and integration to ensure that our clients are exceeding their employees’ and customers’ expectations.

Smart and all-encompassing single-platform technologies that successfully address hybrid working not only cover new phenomena in our lives such as social distancing but also bring together as many different corporate real estate systems as possible. Smart WorkApp covers everything from desk and meeting room booking, amenities, occupancy reporting, finding colleagues and safely navigating around in the building, real-time notifications as well as acting a single-source for all company news across the board. In addition to facilitating return-to-the-office programs, such technology also needs to be able to maintain the new normal.

The key objectives to address in creating an efficient, pleasant and successful hybrid workspace are:

1. Employee Engagement – Creating an ecosystem for other services and amenities is critical. As employees, tenants, and clients come and go, having access to on-site perks, locating amenities, and understanding the property is beyond helpful.
2. Real-Time Communications – As people will be more spread out, communication is key, and alerts, SMS messages, mobile notifications, will all play a pivotal role in keeping workers informed and tapped into location-based events.
3. Indoor Mapping – With space transformation and people moving between different offices, floors, and buildings, there will be a greater need to accurately track everything. Indoor mapping will mean the difference between locating desks, conference rooms, and workstations and identifying their availability.
4. Mobile Services – Unifying all these technologies and experiences by providing a mobile ecosystem is critical to keeping everyone engaged, involved, informed, and properly supported.

Today, more than ever before, users expect their spaces to be extremely functional, highly interactive, and hubs for collaboration. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out in March of 2021, ‘companies will have little choice but to accommodate workers’ demands, as an inflexible workplace could drive employees away as the economy rebounds.’ By providing one mobile app to employees that enables them to do everything, Smart WorkApp is simplifying people’s lives and creating less headaches for the IT teams who need to manage permissions for multiple applications.

What’s most important when shifting properties and workspaces for the return to the workplace, is to provide a safe and secure experience for tenants, clients, visitors, contractors, and vendors. You cannot achieve this without creating a seamless and practical smart working experience that connects the organisation and its employees and support services and systems with a solution that helps you to adapt, no matter what tomorrow brings.