What Do Employees Expect From A Workplace App Today?

Following the coronavirus pandemic, employee expectations of the workplace have changed — and your technology should evolve, too. A workplace app that facilitates flexibility and productivity is becoming an essential part of the modern workplace.

Here are five features today’s employees expect from a workplace app.

Essential features of a workplace app

User-friendly interface

The fierce competition of the consumer mobile app marketplace has given your workforce certain expectations about the apps they use in their personal lives.

It’s not enough for an app to merely offer the relevant features and tools to serve a specific purpose. What sets the best mobile technology apart from the rest is a thoughtfully-designed, intuitive user interface (UI).

Now that remote work has become part of the new norm and the line between your employees’ personal and professional lives has blurred, it’s essential for your workplace app to meet this same criteria.

If you want to achieve high user adoption rates, you need to recognize that the aesthetics and ease-of-use of a workplace app are just as important as its functionality.

It should mimic the technology they already know and love and fit so seamlessly into their daily lives that they wonder how they ever worked without it.

Ability to easily find colleagues and spaces

Regardless of your return-to-work strategy, your office likely looks very different now.

Your company may be allowing employees to return to the office in phases, with some departments making the transition back to working on-site while others continue to work remotely.

Or you may decide to eliminate assigned seats in favor of an agile work environment where employees reserve desks and rooms as needed.

Whatever the case, your employees will need a workplace app that helps them find colleagues and workspaces quickly in a somewhat unfamiliar environment.

It should integrate with your company’s directory so employees can search for individuals by name, find where they are working, and get directions.

Broader space reservation capabilities

When it comes to managing a post-pandemic workplace, employers now have several new responsibilities. One of the biggest is to provide employees with better visibility into the workplace and greater control over how they can engage with it.

This means, at a minimum, offering a workplace app that gives employees real-time visibility into available workspaces and meeting rooms.

They should be able to easily see the size, capacity, and available assets and technology of a room. That makes it easier for them to choose the room that’s appropriate for the size of their meeting and instantly reserve it, creating a safer work environment.

They should also be able to reserve desks, private phone booths, or other areas where they can focus on individual work.

The added benefit of granting your workforce the ability to book any space with a workplace app is that it gives you comprehensive, accurate insight into occupancy and utilization throughout the day. This makes it easier to prevent overcrowding and ensure employees can maintain a safe physical distance.

Expanded service request features

While the majority of your workforce has been working remotely, your facilities team has been holding down the fort. They’ve been working hard to guarantee critical building systems are functioning properly, repairing assets as necessary, and confirming spaces are properly cleaned and maintained.

When other departments start returning and employees begin using assets that have sat idle for several months, there will almost certainly be a spike in service requests. Your workplace app should give employees the option to submit and track work orders so they can get back up and running as quickly as possible.

Beyond making it easy to request maintenance and repairs, your workplace app should also allow employees to request other services, including cleaning/sanitation and catering for meetings. Employees should also be able to use the app to request specific assets, such as monitors and webcams, for virtual meetings.

Real-time notifications and alerts

When it comes to communicating with the workforce, many employers default to using email. But when the average employee receives upwards of 100 emails a day, this may not be the best way to manage important internal communications.

This is why your workplace app should allow you to send mass push notifications with company news, safety alerts, and personalized alerts to individual employees.

For example, if you discover an employee has tested positive for COVID-19, you will need to confidentially notify anyone who has been working in close proximity to that individual within the period of potential exposure. That could be everyone on their floor or within their department.

A workplace app makes this easy.

Your workplace app should also be integrated with a visitor management system that notifies employees as soon as their guest checks in.

How the Hummingbird workplace app helps employees return to work safely

The shift toward a more flexible workplace has been happening for a long time; the coronavirus pandemic simply accelerated it. Fortunately, we’ve had the technology in place to support these changes for years.

The Hummingbird workplace app makes it easy for employees to find people and places, reserve space, request service, and receive mail, visitors, and important announcements.

It also gives workplace leaders the real-time data they need to quickly make adjustments. For instance, they can:

• See how many employees and visitors have checked in for the day and limit capacity when necessary
• Add more reservable workspaces as necessary
• Notify employees of a potential COVID-19 exposure
• Monitor mail and food deliveries and adjust to higher volumes as needed
• Send quick surveys to employees to gauge their feelings about the workplace or proposed changes

More than 40% of our customers already use the Hummingbird workplace app to keep their workforce connected. In a post-pandemic workplace, it has become even more valuable. To get a closer look at how it works, request a live demo today.