Workplace management is becoming increasingly complex. The rise of hybrid and remote work practices means today’s business leaders need to organise, manage, and optimise a wide range of dynamic, ever-changing spaces, from conference rooms to focus spaces.
Ensuring you not only make the most of your available resources, but deliver an excellent experience to team members, that actively encourages them back into the office, requires a holistic strategy.
Fortunately, technology has evolved to help organisations empower and coordinate the hybrid workplace. With the right tools, you can enhance resource allocation, pinpoint challenges and opportunities, and create a more efficient, productive workplace.
Here are our top tips for success.
1. Identify Your Employee’s Needs in Advance
The first step towards incredible workplace management is identifying what teams actually need from the physical office space. Some companies may operate in a flexible format, allowing employees to book desk spaces, meeting rooms, and other amenities in advance, as and when they need them.
Others will deploy dedicated spaces for things like training, collaborative sessions, meetings, and focus work. Understanding how your team members work, and the challenges you already face with workplace management will help you to identify the tools and resources you need most.
For instance, if you’re creating a hybrid workplace, but have limited access into resource utilisation, and room availability, you’ll need a comprehensive room management solution and booking system, like Microsoft Places.
If you’re trying to empower employees to turn any space into a meeting room instantly, you’ll need an easy-to-use solution for conferencing software like Microsoft Teams Rooms. When identifying the needs of your employees, remember they can evolve over time. Paying attention to user feedback, and installing scalable, flexible solutions will help you to adapt to new trends.
Strategic Partner Manager for Microsoft and MTR Vendors, Symity, Wesley Budd says, “Microsoft are investing a lot into the Meeting Room space to help bring teams of people together better. Microsoft Places is a huge step forward in doing this, giving employees key signals on when their colleagues will be in the office.
What’s more, Microsoft Places really assist facilities management teams with understanding the office utilisation giving them key insights on the busiest and quietest times the office is in use. Which in turn can let them make key decisions on how much space they actually need.”
2. Implement Innovative Room Management Solutions
Room Management technology, like Microsoft Teams Rooms, and Microsoft Places, which allow users to book desks, track the location of colleagues, and configure meeting spaces is the key to excellent resource allocation in the modern workplace.
The key to success is implementing a solution that’s custom-made for your specific needs. Partners like Symity can design user-friendly meeting room solutions on behalf of business leaders, installing both the hardware and software required for effective workplace management.
What’s more, these partners can offer ongoing proactive support to ensure that your meeting rooms and spaces continue to function effectively over time. Some vendors can even implement advanced features, like Microsoft Teams Premium, which unlocks access to more customisation options for meetings, advanced protections, and AI-generated meeting recaps.
Most importantly, the right solution will deliver valuable insights into how spaces are being used, allowing you to optimise resource allocation over time. You’ll be able to track scheduled and ad-hoc meetings, which devices are used in each space, average meeting length, and more.
3. Prioritise End-to-End Integration
Workplace management is complex enough in the hybrid world, without business leaders and IT professionals having to track multiple different applications and tools independently. The software and hardware you use in the workplace should all be connected, giving you comprehensive visibility into how your workplace operates.
Ensure your Room Management and Booking tools seamlessly integrate with the collaboration tools your teams already use (like Microsoft Teams), as well as additional solutions like employee calendars (for efficient booking), and workforce management software. Workforce management software integrations can be particularly valuable for showcasing data about when employees are scheduled to attend an office, so you can plan more effective collaborative sessions.
Additionally, look for easy integrations with wayfinding software, digital displays, and other resources that allow teams to easily navigate the office and access the amenities they need.
4. Leverage AI and Automation
Artificial Intelligence and automation are transforming how teams work on a massive scale, and these solutions can also have a powerful impact on your workforce management strategy. For instance, Microsoft Places, the AI-powered “workforce coordination” app, allows team members to leverage AI for suggestions on when to attend the office, based on which coworkers will be available.
This solution also provides team leaders with valuable insights into which spaces are available and how they’re being used, helping administrators determine how to configure their workplaces.
Other AI tools can help enhance the productivity of teams in different environments, providing everyone with access to an intelligent assistant that can plan meeting agendas, enhance meetings with translation, transcription and recaps, and fuel collaboration.
On the other hand, automation empowers companies to simplify room setup, with pre-configured profiles for certain users. Using sensors, companies can determine when meetings end, automatically opening spaces to other users, to enable the flow of work. Some tools can even shut down devices when they’re not in use, reducing your energy consumption.
5. Remember Security Requirements
Finally, one of the biggest challenges of managing a flexible workplace, is that it’s often difficult to preserve security, privacy and compliance, when the people visiting an office are always changing. Most room, space, and desk booking software solutions include security controls as standard, offering end-to-end encryption, access controls for employees and guests, and multi-factor authentication.
However, depending on your business, you may need to implement additional strategies to protect your team and business from data leaks and security issues. Working with a leader to implement advanced security protections, from endpoint and device control tools to intuitive solutions like Microsoft Defender for vulnerability and incident management can help to mitigate threats.
You can even set policies and controls that determine how many people should be allowed to book a specific room or space at a given time, to reduce the risk of over-crowded meetings. This can improve security, safety, and user experiences, all at the same time.
Master Workforce Management for Your Business
The workplace is evolving into a dynamic, flexible space, constantly adapting to the changing needs of different team members, and the evolution of technology. To manage this environment, you need a deep understanding of your team dynamics, the right technology, and a meticulous strategy.
Remember, as your workplace evolves, it’s important to be able to transform your workplace accordingly, creating new meeting room environments, focus spaces, and office plans, based on the needs of your growing team. Plan for the future, and be prepared to scale, experiment, and optimise user experiences over time.
“A common question we get asked is around the licencing for Microsoft Places. Microsoft have been very kind by bundling Places into the Microsoft Teams Premium licence. Meaning, if you purchase Microsoft Teams Premium with all its additional meeting functionality including AI generated meeting notes with Intelligent Recap you will also gain access to Microsoft Places when it becomes generally available later this year.”
- Wesley Budd, Strategic Partner Manager, Symity.
