You may have noticed that the former rigidity of the typical office environment has fallen by the wayside. Employees have gained greater flexibility through more fluid arrangements such as hybrid workplaces—while at the same time, businesses can maximize the utility they garner from every square foot of office space. But despite the general benefits that fluid working environments bring, they also present significant space management challenges for front-office teams.
The efficiency of the working environment directly affects the productivity of your workforce. Workspaces that can quickly and effectively streamline the now-fluid workday will be able to boost overall output. But workplace disorganization can foster a chaotic environment that creates unnecessary roadblocks. Needless to say—this type of environment can dramatically impact overall output.
So how do you fundamentally alter your approach to office space management to meet the demands of an evolving work environment? Luckily, there are solutions that can help you create structure within an ever-changing office.
Maximizing Space Utilization With Effective Room Booking
It’s costly and inefficient to hold space every day for employees that only utilize it a few times a week. A hybrid environment can often maximize workspace usage by allocating space based on need rather than having a chair for every employee. However, this creates a need for a way to coordinate hundreds of shifting individual daily schedules, meetings, and workspaces at the same time.
This is obviously a daunting prospect, but it’s possible—so long as you have the right tool for the job. Meeting booking software, which allows employees to access daily schedules detailing available spaces and book appropriate rooms, is essential for large hybrid offices. This software clarifies space usage for employees and allows them to fit their working needs into a shifting office map.
Facilitating Seamless Teamwork through Space Management
Allowing your employees to be active in the space management process via tools such as room booking systems helps them get more of their needs met. For instance, an individual may be able to book a private workspace for a client call, or teams might reserve a room to work more collaboratively on a project. Making it easy for workers to access the spaces they need can improve outcomes across the board.
Of course, visitor management is also an essential component of office space coordination. Contractors, clients, or interns need to fit into the daily schedule as well. Luckily, the same digital booking management platforms can be leveraged to service external parties, allowing them to seamlessly fit into the daily schedule.
But you also need to create the technical infrastructure necessary to foster efficient space management. Consider placing digital front desk displays in highly trafficked areas to provide both employees and visitors with a digital check-in solution and building information; the Sentry Interactive Tower even allows users to speak face-to-face with a remote receptionist who can assist them and answer questions regarding their daily schedule.
Ideally, you can place displays outside of conference rooms to truly optimize and clarify the daily schedule for each room.
Also, consider integrating an access control system with your meeting booking platform to enhance security and ensure authorized space usage. This way, you maintain control over who can book available spaces to create a structured system.
How Space Management Streamlines Meetings and Minimizes Downtime
The goal of any office manager is to curate environments and schedules that assist the organization in creating the most conducive space for productivity. Not having access to proper spaces can degrade the efficiency and output of teams across an organization; on the other hand, providing easy access to correctly outfitted and situated rooms can reduce productivity lags.
Meeting booking software can provide valuable analytical information on each room’s usage. For example, you may notice that one room consistently hosts continuous back-to-back meetings, while another room sits empty. This may be backing up the schedule as meetings run over, causing other groups to waste time waiting for space.
To resolve this insight, you can look into the outfitting of the unused room to discover if there’s a reason for its unpopularity—perhaps poor lighting, temperature issues, broken technology, or a lack of equipment. Then, you can fix the issue and reduce the backlog clogging up the booking schedule.
You should also consider integrating readerless mobile access control with your space management system to reduce potential delays caused by system errors. Mobile access makes it easy for teams to get into booked and authorized spaces without delay by eliminating the need to pick up physical credentials; users’ phones can scan an NFC door tile to provide access once they have been granted permissions following a successful booking.
How Optimized Space Management Results In Efficient Resource Allocation
Your office space is ultimately an investment—meaning that you need to ensure your usage spawns a positive ROI. Resources in your office, such as desks, meeting rooms, and collaborative workspaces, can be maximized to improve output—but you need access to usage data to understand where you can cut back and where to improve.
Digital space management software can track factors such as visitor influxes to help you allocate resources effectively. You can see which desks and rooms are being utilized most, and determine where you’re wasting potential space.
Finding the Right Mobile Access Control Solution
Integrated mobile access control solutions, such as Sentry Mobile Access, can work alongside booking and property management software via an open SDK and APIs embedded into 3rd party applications. This allows employees to book and access authorized spaces quickly and efficiently via their building and property management mobile platform. Sentry Mobile Access integrates with a number of market leading flex workspace management applications, like Nexudus and Coworks, as well as tenant experience applications such as HqO and Equiem. This allows both individuals and teams to create a work environment that’s conducive to greater productivity with less friction points and fewer delays. Plus, you’re maintaining greater security measures by restricting access solely to authorized individuals through biometric controlled smartphone access which is inherently more secure than keycards or fobs which are easily lost or shared.
Overall, advanced digital solutions can resolve the inherent confusion of a hybrid work environment. This eliminates administrative burdens, as tasks such as managing user permissions and tracking access logs are automated.
Although, you need advanced and reliable tools to ensure that these critical functions are being effectively managed. Integrated workplace access technology solutions like Sentry Interactive’s are a great example of an all-in-one access and visitor management system that can integrate into space management software, from readerless mobile access, to digital communications, and a round the clock visitor support solution with their digital receptionist.
So if you’re ready to adapt to hybrid work environments, reach out to Sentry Interactive today to learn more.
