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Enhancing productivity and collaboration

Elevate the employee experience with the right technology, strategy, and considerations that put people at the center of the ever-evolving workplace. Set the stage for a happy, productive workplace that supports the physical and digital needs of modern employees.

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Key components of the employee experience

In traditional office environments, employees worked in silos that made it difficult to collaborate and share systems with other functional teams. This landscape has shifted, and now collaborative, flexible, and frictionless office design matters most to employees.  In fact, two out of three employees value workplace design as equally or more important than workplace location. 

To create an engaging experience, you need to understand the employee-centered workspace and how to better connect people to the various parts of the office to help everyone thrive. Jacob Morgan refers to this as the “designed employee experience” — one that is focused around long-term organizational changes versus short-term perks like half-day Fridays (although still a plus for elevating the employee experience).

In general, employees need to be connected to each other, their space, and available services to create the most frictionless workplace possible. How well does your workplace design support the employee experience? How do you measure the impact of workplace technology on your employee experience? How well does your company culture support a positive employee experience?

Businesses that earn a high employee engagement score experience an array of benefits compared to those businesses with a low score:

A decrease in absenteeism of

41%

A reduced turnover rate of up to

59%

A boost in productivity levels of

17%

An increase in company sales of

20%

An increased profitability of

21%

CREATE AN AGILE WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENT

Eliminate barriers between employees and their work

In a new office environment built on collaboration and agility, employees move room to room and work with different teams throughout the day. Offices need to be well-organized and allocate space in a way that serves your employees’ needs and primary focus.

Office room reservation

Room Reservations

Space reservations promote collaboration in shared spaces — rather than hinder it — by allowing you to plan, organize, and schedule the use of shared space. From big presentation rooms to small brainstorm spaces, employees can see the real-time location and availability of meeting spaces and reserve them so they’re off limits to others and won’t be double-booked.

No matter which platform employees use to book a space, the information should be up-to-date and accessible from their work calendars. Otherwise, people will need to create duplicate events or swap between different tools just to find what they’re looking for.

For the optimal employee experience, the space reservation software should also integrate with IoT sensors. If the sensors don’t detect any activity in the space 15 meetings after the meeting was set to start, they’ll trigger automated cancellations. This eliminates “ghost meetings” and frees up unused space so other employees can make use of it.

Space panels that display availability at a glance visually are the easiest way to enable booking on the fly and make the transition to a room scheduling system easier on employees. The faster you implement that system, the sooner you can provide greater flexibility for employees, minimize clutter in the office, and improve space utilization.

Desk Booking Software employee

Desk Booking

Flexible seating arrangements come in many forms in the workplace, from office hoteling, to hot desking, to activity-based working. No matter the strategy you choose, desk booking software supports a seamless transition to your new office design and encourages employee buy-in.

Consider this frustrating scenario: an employee who arrives at the office later in the day spends 15 minutes looking for an available workspace. With a mobile desk booking system, employees can search for available workspaces by space type, location, and equipment and reserve one in advance or upon arrival.

As employees book workspaces, workplace leaders can access space utilization data from the desk booking system. With a better idea of how their workplace is being used, they can make smarter real estate decisions for the future and create different space scenarios before furniture is moved. Access to real-time space utilization data also helps workplace leaders ensure shared workspaces are cleaned and sanitized between uses.

Office wayfinding

Wayfinding

With paper maps, there’s a higher chance of sharing outdated or inaccurate information. Digital kiosks and wayfinding help people find their way around the workplace with fewer challenges than before because they provide real-time information and are easier to manage and update.

Fast-growing businesses can link their wayfinding signage to an employee directory that makes it easy to connect the dots between new names and faces, and find where these employees sit.

When employees are in an unfamiliar spot, it’s not just a matter of searching for conference rooms and navigating around the office. Digital kiosks and wayfinding help people feel comfortable, get oriented, and develop confidence in their ability to find their way around.

Integrating wayfinding software with room reservation software provides the best of both worlds. Employees can filter to show available rooms — including their capacity and available assets — and instantly reserve the space that best suits their needs. If the meeting room they want is occupied, employees can see when it will be available without interrupting their colleagues.

Workplace leaders can also use wayfinding to communicate important company news to employees, without clogging up space or getting lost in their email inbox. Millennials in particular appreciate this simple way to consume on-demand media, as well as the time they are able to save looking for conference rooms, employees, and more.

AN AGILE WORKPLACE HUB

Connecting people with their workplace

In today’s world of high-impact deliverables and agile project management, teamwork is a competitive edge that benefits organizational success by driving creative communication and innovation. A software suite helps bridge the gap between people, whether in-person or remote, internal or external.

Office collaboration

Collaboration Tools

At a time when the workforce expects to work remotely at least a few days each week, the draw of the office is connection. Rather than a place employees are required to be, the workplace will become a destination where colleagues can collaborate and socialize, and reignite that sense of community that adds value to the employee experience. Employees need a place to go to feel creative and inspired, and that’s not always possible at home.

With remote and flexible work on the rise, the hybrid workforce is eager for more “made to order” workplace experiences, including seamless interactions that make them feel connected to the organization. After all, making connections possible is key to supporting the hybrid work model.

Instant access to workplace information via mobile solutions helps bridge this gap. Mobile apps that enable employees to locate one another, reserve workspaces, get tech support, and schedule meetings together create a more cohesive experience that fuels efficiencies. The most beneficial apps to the employee experience are those that easily fit into daily operations without creating distractions or requiring training to use. Employees should simply download and start.

Your space booking system should work with your chat platforms, email clients, and other workplace tools to function as a seamless connection hub. That way, employees can continue to keep projects moving forward in between meetings and simplify correspondence with one single source of truth.

Office visitor 1

Working with External People

Every time someone walks in your front door, the experience tells a story. It tells people — including vendors, contractors, and interviewees — a lot about your office security, modernization, and company culture. So it’s essential that these individuals feel welcomed, comfortable, and encounter minimal inconveniences.

A digital visitor app allows guests to retain their autonomy at check-in. Similar to scanning a digital boarding pass at an airline gate, pre-registered guests can simply scan a QR code when they arrive at the office to check-in. Notifications sent via email, Slack, or text notify the host that their guest has arrived so they can promptly greet them.

From sign-in to exit, the visitor experience is more streamlined and enjoyable with visitor management software. Visitors will appreciate the minimized wait times and take comfort in how touchless sign-in reduces the use of shared surfaces and helps curb the spread of germs.

Using visitor management software, you can leave guests with a great first impression and help guide them around as they pass through your workplace. Meanwhile, employees can feel safer as visitor management software is more secure than a paper-based method where anyone can sign in. Your receptionist ultimately may not know someone is an unwanted solicitor or an employee that has been recently terminated.

Enable employees to fully engage with their workspace

Large investments in technology or processes only realize return if adopted well. Integrating systems together, so they can be accessed and connected on a single platform, removes friction to the employees connecting with different parts of your office.

Think about this in the context of the technology stack. A company with 200-500 employees uses 123 apps every day. This means the average employee uses around eight apps daily.

While toggling between these apps can create frustrations and inefficiencies, you’ll also wind up with siloed data and a lack of collaboration that stifles business growth. This explains why 66% of employees want a single platform for all workplace communications.

You’ll in turn gain the trust of your workforce by linking employees to the services they need to be successful in the workplace through one mobile employee experience management platform.

An employee experience app makes listening and responding to needs possible and gives everyone access to explore available services and submit requests. Let’s say Lydia opts to go into the office on the same-day an impromptu internal meeting is scheduled. She can locate the conference room where the meeting will take place and book a quiet deskspace for after the meeting all from the employee experience app. And if there’s a temperature issue in either space, she can request service to address it and restore employee comfort.

Even when working in different systems, functional groups can interface via the app. Rather than adding to the chatter, an employee experience management platform enables the secure exchange of information, making it easier to collaborate and minimizing duplicate efforts. Meanwhile, real-time data accuracy fuels informed decisions.

 

 

Office employee technology

How to get started with improving the employee experience

Creating an in-office experience your employees love requires careful attention to your office design, technology, and services.

According to research from Jacob Morgan, companies that heavily invest in these different facets of the employee experience are nearly 12 times as likely to be included on Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work.

Recognizing the three main factors that influence the employee experience, the first step is to identify concrete ways to measure them. There are a few ways to go about this:

  • Conduct a survey to identify what your employees value most and the changes they want to see
  • Consult workplace data (ideally through an integrated workplace management system, or IWMS) to analyze space utilization, room reservation, and other factors impacting your workplace
  • Look outside your own workplace to other companies with a high Employee Experience index and explore what they do differently

 

From these workplace insights, you can gain insights into how to better serve your employees through office design, technology, and services and make your business more profitable.

Employee experience employee happy

Want to learn more?

Enjoy our recommended collection of resources that will help you on your journey to building intelligently agile workspaces that are loved by the future of work.

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The Future of Work & The New Meaning of the Employee Experience

In this webinar, we talked with Smart Buildings Industry Analyst Dayann Charles Jeyamohan about Verdantix’s new research findings — and what they mean for the employee experience and the future of work.

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8 Ways to Use Technology to Improve the Employee Experience

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