September usually marks employees' return to work, bringing liveliness back to many organizations' offices after the holiday season.
The office will buzz with collaboration, brainstorming sessions, spontaneous coffee chats, and some heads-down work in between. That means it must simultaneously accommodate different activity types and feel like a productive workplace.
But with more and more people coming to the office, employees find it challenging to find available meeting spaces if they haven't reserved one in advance or have a desk near their favorite coworkers in an open-space office layout.
We've rounded up some essential features to help you meet employees' needs during the return to work.
1. Maximize community building
When deciding to commute to the office, employees want to know what to expect. Will my coworkers be there? For many, this is one of the main reasons to come into the office.
With Connections, everyone can add their favorite coworkers to Mapiq and start building their own community. Coordinating workdays and getting a weekly overview of who plans to work from the office then becomes an easy task.
Once the connections list gets a little too long and employees are looking to see if a specific coworker is in the office, they can use the filter feature to find them quickly.
2. Sync calendars and stay up-to-date
Will my meeting be remote, in-person, or hybrid? Many employees now tend to plan their office days around collaborating in person, so it's essential to know who will attend and where they will be located. This information will also help determine what tools and amenities are needed to ensure the meeting runs smoothly.
As an admin, you can enable the calendar integration directly in Mapiq. Employees will then see a pop-up where they further can do the sync and have Mapiq suggest the perfect rooms for each meeting.
3. Offer more than desk booking
If you have a hot desking policy in place, you may be familiar with desk booking tools. When appropriately used, desk booking can simplify the hot desking process for hybrid teams and allow workplace teams to optimize office space while still offering flexibility. Desk booking becomes even more critical as offices become more crowded and employees seek to reserve their seats in advance.
What’s different about Mapiq’s desk booking?
Greater flexibility
With Mapiq, employees have the option to book workspaces either by area or desk level. This means that if there are certain sections of the office designated for specific teams, employees are not obligated to choose a particular desk. Instead, they can indicate which area they prefer to work in. This provides greater flexibility and eliminates the need to search for a specific desk they reserved in an open-plan office layout.
Team days made easy
When employees plan to work from the office, they usually prefer to sit alongside their team. Mapiq simplifies team days by allowing users to reserve workspaces for the entire group and recommending the most suitable area based on the group's size. When booking a workspace, employees can easily add their colleagues, and all members will receive an invite notification.
Personalized experience
It is now common for employees to have personalized home office spaces due to remote working. When using hot-desking, employees require assurance that the workspace they reserve meets their daily needs and has the necessary amenities to aid their productivity, such as a height-adjustable desk or double monitor. When employees book a workspace, they can filter by desk amenities, and Mapiq will provide suggestions for workspaces that meet their requirements.
4. Get the latest availability status from sensor updates
Having sensors in the workplace is not only useful for accurate workplace analytics and optimizing resources, but it can also benefit employees.
Occupancy technology will enable employees to find and book available resources on the fly based on the latest sensor updates. Combined with the calendar sync, it makes for a powerful duo – always know if a meeting room has been booked but not occupied, for example.
5. Automate office check-in
To ensure that employees make use of their reservations, many organizations require employees to manually check-in in the office. While this is a good solution, it is not user-friendly for employees who often need to execute the task manually.
You could instead automate this task by connecting Mapiq to your access control system or Wi-Fi. That way, whenever someone enters the building with their company badge, they will automatically be checked in. The data is then translated into Mapiq’s workplace analytics, where you can compare bookings to actual check-ins and provide employees with a more streamlined office experience.
6. Don’t forget about parking
Parking is often the cause of frustration for employees as it can quickly reach its capacity in busy metropoles. To provide employees with a great office day, parking should be part of the equation.
Parking booking can be easily set up in Mapiq by connecting your parking lots to a specific building. What’s also a good addition is that you can create parking lots with available charging stations and set a maximum capacity for those as they are always in high demand. This will then immediately translate into parking analytics.
7. Navigate the office with interactive maps
Finding available resources at the office can be challenging, especially on busy days when it's difficult to locate a nearby meeting room and book it on short notice.
With Mapiq’s latest addition of interactive office maps, employees can navigate the office without endless scrolls by zooming in and out to locate the perfect room. The new map has a unique feature that filters out irrelevant information and emphasizes essential details for users, resulting in an even more intuitive experience.
Need help making your office map ready for the return to work? Contact us.
