4 BENEFITS OF USING ROOM RESERVATION SOFTWARE IN YOUR BUSINESS

Do you remember what “water cooler chat” means? That’s what we used to call the moments of unexpected collaboration at the water fountain. Office employees gained insight from one another when taking a moment to go get a drink of water. Some great ideas developed during those small, yet thoughtful moments of socializing.

But that was when offices were divided into fixed spaces. Most likely, you had a desk that stood empty half the time and only used meeting rooms on formal occasions. Since the era of the fixed space, office layouts have changed.

Today, you might still chat around the water cooler, but the way you work has been transformed. Now, workspaces are created strategically to encourage interactions that spark inspiration. Being kept in a cramped space with a limited possibility of collaboration wasn’t doing anything for anyone. In a modern, connected workplace, you move about freely, making the most of agile desks. Meeting rooms have become multi-purpose. They act as informal meeting spaces, which are now common in offices everywhere.

Many generations are working together — Generation Z is even starting to join the party — and they each have their own needs and working preferences. As times change, “one size fits all” is no longer going to suffice. To grow a successful business, employee satisfaction is a key component. Providing employees with their own preferable workspace improves employee happiness and well-being, ultimately boosting productivity. And, a boost in productivity is going to make everyone more money. However, it’s tricky to track each employee’s personal work-life preferences.

The solution? The latest workspace management technology with room reservation software.

Many organizations, including large law firms like DLA Piper and other major companies, are using room reservation software to streamline their operations and make agile operations genuinely flexible.

Even people who work at home benefit from the software. More than 8 million people in America were already working from home by 2017, according to the US Census. But, many say they lack tools and technology to work agilely. Two-thirds say they would spend more time in their office if it had better facilities. Room reservation software can make that happen for you.

What benefits does your organization gain from using room reservation software?

1. Empowered employees

• It allows employees to feel a sense of control with their workload.
• It creates a positive working environment that encourages talent to stay.
• A recent survey found that 1/3 of US office workers wanted to be more trusted to manage where they work.

2. Perfect meetings

• The smartest organizations are turning to state-of-the-art workspace management technology to manage their working environments and automate boring, time-consuming tasks.
• Room reservation software means your employees can spot suitable workspace and book it easily online via an app. They can book resources like AV, video conferencing and even catering at the same time.
• Meetings are easy to organize across multiple locations. The technology takes time zones into consideration and automatically informs everyone if any of the meeting details have changed.
• It’s a great way to remove tiresome admin tasks from your employees’ work day. That gives them more time to focus on their real work.
• Additionally, the software lowers the risk of no-shows, a common problem that makes meetings fail and costs dearly in time and frustration. The result? Perfect meetings, every time.

3. Improved Collaboration

• We know the benefits of collaboration tools like video conferencing and AV. They get teams together, no matter how far apart the co-workers are physically. This eliminates the strain and cost of travel.
• Companies love these tools and spend a lot on them, but employees can be reluctant to engage if they are hard to organize. Room reservation software removes the obstacles faced by employee uptake by making it simple to book rooms with the right equipment for an unlimited number of locations.
• So, you never turn up to your video conference only to find that the equipment is not in place — your organizer has booked it with a single click at the same time as reserving the room.

4. Better space utilization

• Keeping tabs on a changing work environment causes real headaches for office or facilities managers.
• Tracking how office space is utilized can be tough, particularly if your organization is based in many locations or if you need to recharge other departments within your company.
• Room reservation software such as Rendezvous by NFS integrates with occupancy sensors that monitor space and desk utilization in real-time and provides comprehensive reports.
• It gives you accurate data at your fingertips so you can make informed decisions about space going forward and make sure your real estate spend is justified.

What about ROI?

When the right technology is in place so that all of these factors can act together, the connected workplace gives your employees an elevated sense of control over their work environment. Satisfied employees will work harder for your business, which benefits everyone in the long run. Why miss out on the chance to eliminate stress and increase profitability? You don’t have to re-invent the wheel… There’s software for that!

If you are in management, the captured data gives a complete, real-time view of whether your space is being maximized, and how it can be improved. You are able to configure your space to meet the changing requirements of your workforce, no matter how they evolve. By making it easy for your people to find the room they need, you can also reduce the cost incurred when they decide it’s simpler to book external space. All of this amounts to the fact that room reservation software offers a quick ROI.

When competitiveness and productivity are at a premium, and talented staff is hard to find and even harder to retain, all of this should sound like good news for your business.

Allow this technology to benefit you. Get into the connected workplace.

WHY ARE OUR WORKPLACES MAKING US LONELY — AND HOW CAN WORKSPACE MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY HELP FIX IT?

Recent studies show that a growing number of Australian employees are feeling lonely and isolated by the work they do.

In some ways, this seems strange: we’re in the midst of a “gig economy” that’s geared to promote the latest connected technologies and workspace design. Technically, it’s never been easier to communicate and collaborate with our co-workers.

In reality, though, employees are not finding the link — socially.

Being part of a gig economy means many of us to have flexible working arrangements beyond the traditional employment models of the past.

We may choose to freelance and string together jobs on a short-term, contract basis or even to work full-time for a set employer, but without all the benefits of permanent employment.

Technology is a big enabler of agile and freelance working — with a smartphone and an unlimited data plan (or a nice cafe with wifi) — you can work from almost anywhere.

However, working remotely or apart from other people can make us feel lonely and depressed, which is not only unhealthy but also impacts on employee productivity.

The rise of the coworkers

This created the rise of “coworking” where independent employees “work alone together” in a shared office space. While the average cost to use one of these facilities varies, according to the Harvard Business Review, employees are still quite satisfied and think the cost is worth it.

Engaging with people in a coworking environment is one way to lower loneliness. Gig workers have stated that coworking spaces have helped them expand their social network and they are happier and less lonely.

But what about lonely employees working for companies

Unsurprisingly, even though loneliness is a profoundly subjective and personal experience, emotions can lead to negative objective outcomes in the workplace.

Employees who feel disengaged and isolated are considerably less productive and make a lot more mistakes.

A new study has found that 37% of all workers feel lonely at work, and the main reason for this is technology advances that were supposed to make jobs easier or more flexible.

The survey of just over 1,000 employees — conducted by HR think tank Reventure — also found 38% of lonely workers reported making more mistakes and 40% felt less productive.

Do we need to change the way we focus?

“There’s no doubt that the current way that we work is essentially driven by our demands around being transactional,” Reventure managing director Lindsay McMillan said.

“Transactional means looking at screens a great deal of our time, more time now than ever before and continuing to rise. So our focus on the screen means we’re not focusing on people beside us, on the floor above us or below us.”

Focus, when used correctly, is very effective. But when our workplace forces us to multi-task…

It’s hard to do one thing well when we’re constantly being bombarded with a multitude of external demands on our attention — from the constant ping of message alerts and urgent emails to distracting chats and intrusions due to the open design of our workplace environment.

The past 20 years have seen dramatic changes in the way we work. The old walls have been torn down and replaced with open plan areas; but it seems that the new walls have become our computer screens, mobile devices and smartphones.

The constant barrage of emails, text messages and other electronic intrusions have taken time away from water-cooler chats or daily face to face interaction. Who even has time any more to recognize a lonely worker?

Because the modern workplace can sometimes seem to be a push and pull with challenges and realities that appear to be contradictory and almost impossible to resolve.

So we find conflicting demands all around us:

• We want more open and collaborative spaces in workspace design — but we also need closed /quiet-focus spaces for concentrated work
• We need to maintain a conscious awareness of the social value of companionship at work but also maintain a non-intrusive association of employer and colleagues
• We’re seeing an unprecedented spectrum of generations and diversity in the workplace, creating apparent cultural barriers.

Perhaps it’s time to stop and say “hello” to the colleague working beside you. Why not break the ice and talk to the person sitting alone in the office or a local coffee hangout?

As employers, we should be aware that simply catering to what we think will satisfy the needs of the majority of employees won’t necessarily deliver the best outcomes for the company or for individuals.

One size doesn’t fit

Adopting a “one size fits all” approach to workspace management technology and workplace design certainly doesn’t work anymore.

By developing a deeper understanding of the emotional and transactional behaviour of our employees, and being more sensitive to socially disconnected employees, we can discover innovative ways of engaging and involving all members of our workforce.

Adapting the workplace to satisfy a wider range of employee needs may seem expensive, but it pays back in improved productivity and employee retention.

Effective and thoughtful workplace design can provide the right types and variety of workspaces that are required to support the diverse range of tasks that staff need to perform on a daily basis: from activity-based workstations to team rooms, from informal brainstorming areas to quiet spaces and pods.

Selecting the correct workspace management technology to support this flexible space is every bit as important as effective workplace design.

The solutions that you deploy need to be as fit-for-purpose and as flexible as the workspaces themselves — and just as easy to use.

When it comes to booking workspaces and scheduling supporting services such as catering and AV, we should be providing our employees with workspace management technology that is intuitive.

It also needs to integrate seamlessly with the existing technologies (such as Outlook) that they’re already using on a daily basis.

This familiarity makes it easy for them to find and book the workspace that best suits their specific needs even when they are on the move, using an app.

When used effectively, workspace management technology can help alleviate stress and bring employees together for perfect meetings and pleasant, easy and effective collaborations — and there’s no better answer to loneliness at work than that.