Optimized offices make for happier employees who can get more done and want to stay at your organization for longer. But to understand employee needs, you need to turn to workplace technology. Here we explore how simple and affordable this can be.
1. Envision the bigger picture
When you research what modern offices have to offer, functionalities like intelligent screens, augmented reality, and voice-enabled IT-requests may be the first things you come across. Yet, they may or may not be the ones that are going benefit your organization the most.
You should start by analyzing your office's current situation and identifying what would help your employees. Next, you can start forming a picture of how you want people in your office to work and feel. This will help you along the way to best identify the functionalities that can contribute to your ideal vision. After finalising your vision, share it with everyone involved, get their input, and ensure you address everyone’s needs.
2. Think 80/20
You may be familiar with the 80/20 rule (Pareto’s Principle) that shows the inbuilt imbalance between cause and effect. When it comes to your office, you may think that all functionalities are important to accomplish your dream picture. In practice, just as with Pareto’s law, only a few, but much needed, workplace tools will get you to 80% of your dream office.
For example, if you want to create an inspiring workplace where employees feel empowered, authentic, and supported, the impact of the following functionalities will contribute:
- Booking a workspace that supports them in their planned activities
- Finding and booking spaces that match the type of the meeting they are planning—such as an in-person or hybrid meeting. Easy to implement with our hybrid meeting solution.
- Locating spaces, colleagues, and facilities.
Determining the most important functionalities for your office helps ensure you use your budget for the functionalities that matter most. Depending on your business's unique situation, it may be useful to focus only on the most valuable functionalities first. Once they are successfully implemented, you can start adding additional features.
3. Involve everyone early on
If there is one mistake that can take unnecessary money out of your office budget, it is being too late with getting everyone in the project on the same page. Examples of additional costs that can be the result of late alignment include the following:
- Meeting security officers’ privacy request
- Repositioning of sensors to implement functionalities that require a different sensor location
- Tests conducted by multiple parties that could have been undertaken by a single party.
All the above additional costs can be avoided by meeting with all contributors in an early stage of the project. There is no such thinking as being “too early” when building your dream office.
4. Choose SaaS partnerships
Software as a service (SaaS) is a modern alternative to traditional software pricing models. Simply put, SaaS models allow you to rent software instead of purchasing it. The pay-as-you-go model also offers benefits for you as the purchasing party.
Here are the advantages of purchasing your office technologies as SaaS:
- Significant cost advantages
- Reduced time to benefit
- Upgrades at zero additional costs
- Scalability
- Flexibility
- Accessibility.
5. Communicate and persuade
After working hard to create the best office for your employees, you do not want to see them asking, “Should I use this?” but rather, “How can I start using it right now?” To accomplish this, you need to make sure you communicate about the benefits clearly. To ensure the highest implementation rates, you want to go beyond sending an email and posting a message on the intranet. The companies that see the highest implementation rates are the ones who use a part of their budget for additional communication efforts:
- Organizing a big office launch
- Visualizing the benefits that users will experience
- Making a promotional video.
6. Secure future budget by visualizing your ROI
Most businesses know that it pays off to invest in improving efficiency and employee well-being, but how can you prove the impacts of your office investment? One way is to ensure that your workplace technology partner provides you with a dashboard that displays Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as:
- Average availability of workspaces
- Ad-hoc or hybrid meeting room demand and availability
- Average availability of meeting rooms
- Peak occupancy rates.
With dashboards that visualize these KPIs, you can compare the difference before and after the introduction of the office tech. From here, you can quantify the impact of your office investment.
Our team of workplace experience advisors is happy to help you realize your dreams. Get in touch today to find out more.
