Related Article: Planning for the Return to the Workplace
Workspace scheduling technology to help manage the return to the office after COVID-19 and maintain safety and flexibility for employees.
Back to the New Normal
Bringing employees back into the office needs careful management so that they can follow ongoing government guidelines to socially distance and keep themselves safe. With a large part of the workforce looking to reduce commute times and work more flexibly, the new normal office will become a place to collaborate and meet with clients, so how desks, workspaces, and sanitization are overseen will change significantly.
Key Challenges Solved
Our workspace reservation solution enables social distancing in the workplace by controlling space and capacity to ensure employees are not exposed to risk.
Reduce Workspace Density
Easily adjust your existing workspace for effective social distancing by reducing the number of usable desks and the capacity of meeting rooms. This can be done in a few simple steps.
Work with Fewer Desks
Creating extra space between desks to enable social distancing means you need to accommodate more employees in the remaining space. Easily take desk spaces out of the system as required to create more distance and space. Allow employees to pre-book their workspace to ensure social distancing, cleanliness and contact tracing.
Give Flexibility
It's important to give employees the flexibility to choose the days they want to work in the office and where they want to work while they are there. Employees can make a workspace booking via the web interface or mobile app. They can search for a suitable space and book it for multiple days. And they can easily mark the days they plan to work from home to inform their co-workers of their whereabouts.
Manage Private Offices
Private offices can be opened for bookings by employees if additional space is required or allocated to a specific person in the system. Bookable private offices are managed in the same way as desks and require a user to search and book the private office for a complete day or series of complete days.
Closed Spaces
Sometimes a desk, meeting room or a whole area might have to be closed at short notice to be deep-cleaned. We provide the ability to close space quickly if an area is no longer safe to be used. Bookings for closed spaces are canceled automatically while bookings outside the closure period remain unaffected. Notifications can then be sent to everyone who has a desk booking in that area, informing them that they need to make alternative arrangements.
Control Space & Capacity
Limit the maximum number of people who can safely use each workspace and reduce available space by restricting the number of days an employee is able to book a desk in the office.
Workspace Booking
Manage all workspaces, either as allocated or bookable by the employee. All employees must book their workspace in advance, and booking details are stored by the software for contact tracing and reporting. The Condeco today page and mobile app provide quick reference and updates to staff about their booking status, any changes to bookings, notices of possible contact with infected people, or space closures.
Automatic Notifications
Send automatic notifications to everyone who has a desk or meeting booked in a closed space that they should find an alternative available desk or work from home. With rebooking managed through the web portal and the mobile app, employees cannot leave home without having found an alternative desk.
Mobile App
Desks can be found using a simple search, or directly from a floor plan that shows available desks and private offices that are free, and desks can be booked on the app by the employee. Employees can either book an available space in the office or mark themselves as "working from home"or as "not working" on a given day. The number of days that desks or private offices can be booked is set according to the weekly or monthly allowance an employee is given.
Find Colleagues
As the workforce will always be spread across different locations, employees can easily search for colleagues and find if they are working in the office, at home, or not working, enabling better collaboration. If they are in the office, they can find the colleague's desk on a floor plan.
Effective Workspace Sanitization
Ensuring that workspaces are kept clean between uses to prevent any possible spread of infection, and preventing spaces from being used until sanitization processes take place, is essential.
Office Space Sanitization
Vendor workflow triggers a cleaning request for desks, with different cleaning requests if a space needs basic cleaning or deep clean for a new person to use.
Real-Time Space Status
Clean spaces are automatically marked in the system as bookable for employees.
If a space is not cleaned, the next booking will be canceled, and the relevant user notified via email and mobile notification
Office Cleaning Dashboard
For cleaning vendors, our dashboard generates a cleaning work order that can be viewed in real-time. Once cleaning is complete, they can close the work order, automatically changing the status to “clean”. Audit trails of cancellations can monitor the performance and effectiveness of the cleaning vendor.
Office Contact Training
React quickly to anyone who could potentially spread infection by tracking which employees have come into contact and where they’ve worked, so that appropriate isolation and sanitization measures can be enacted.
Trace Nearby Workspaces
When planning a visit to the office, all employees must book the workspace they require to use in advance, to ensure there is a record of usage in the contact tracing database. Desks are groups in neighbourhoods and the system holds information about adjacent desks for reporting purposes.
Contact Tracing Report
A contact tracing report can be created if an employee tests positive providing details of employees that were working in proximity or attended a meeting. The report can be passed to HR or other selected internal teams so that the are aware of the situation and can take the appropriate action.
Tracing Updates
Contact tracing updates will also be provided to the employees profile on the web and mobile app, so that they are notified should they potentially have had contact with someone who has reported symptoms.
Back to the Office Benefits
Returning to the office will be a challenge for every organization, but the benefits of a technology-led solution for businesses and employees alike are more wide-reaching than you might think:
For Employees
They can enjoy flexibility and choice of when to work from the office and when to work from home, allowing collaboration whilst reducing challenges around commuting and personal commitments.
Clear guidance on when they can come to the office, where they can safely work, and assurance that their workspace is correctly sanitized and safe to use will all inspire employee confidence.
Their risk of infection can be reduced by ensuring that the workspace is correctly designed to meet social distancing requirements., and by keeping them informed of any potential contact with an infected co-workers.
For Businesses
Providing a technology-based solution helps you successfully manage the return of employees to a dramatically changed workspace environment.
You can assure social distancing is maintained by decreasing workspace density to reduce the risk of the spread of Covid-19, thereby helping you easily manage the number of employees allowed in the office at any one time
Providing workspace sanitization with vendor workflows, monitoring and cost management helps you ensure employees remain safe.
Contact tracing helps you manage the spread of infection by tracking employees and recording where they’ve worked.
Implementation Made Easy
The support we can provide to you through your return-to-work process goes far beyond our comprehensive software offering. The first step is to work with our consultative accounts team and decide on the solution which best solves your challenges. Then our dedicated team of experts are here to help you every step of the way and support your journey towards a post-Covid-19 office environment that makes sense for your business.
Get Started Today!
Our expert team are happy to help you get your business back to the new normal. Whether you’re ready to implement cloud-based technology to manage your environment, or just want informal advice about your options, contact us today and discuss how we can help you transform the way you work.
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info@kathea.co.za
011 844 9900