Page 33 - RC21 EDGE Summer Issue

Increase Employee/Occupant Awareness
Many employees are being told to continue working from home indefinitely, while others are expected for scheduled intermittent office visits. Making meeting room, workstation, and huddle space availability easily accessible is essential to lowering return to work fears and showing users that their organization cares about their concerns. Smartphone apps, interactive map displays, and digital signage are all professional ways of delivering this data to users. These methods increase the flow of information and help users identify an ideal and unoccupied place to get work done—whether that be based on capacity, location, or amenities to support work preference. Gartner’s research also showed that many full-time employees are being replaced with contracted or contingent workers—making the need for office information visibility even more relevant.
Inform Space Changes
Will cubicles be an appropriate workstation going forward? Does our office need more open collaboration spaces? Are our current meeting rooms too large
for the desired capacity? These questions should be expected as real estate expenditure continues to become more scrutinized in the days ahead. Measuring space usage to adjust furniture and space allocation and configuration to support workplace habits and norms
will become increasingly important as offices continue to reopen. Gathering data to see which spaces are high-demand vs. lesser-used is a key metric—and not one that’s particularly new to the corporate real estate market. Understanding these spaces so that the proper new buildings can be secured and built out with the best spaces to support the work of today and tomorrow is more important than ever before.
Improve Building Services
It’s no secret that cleanliness and workplace hygiene is a key concern for physical office space. Leveraging usage and occupancy data to better understand when and where workstation, common area, and restroom cleanings need to take place not only ensures that the appropriate places are cleaned regularly, but can also save time and money over traditional scheduled cleanings. Many organizations are exploring and adopting this type of usage-focused model to support their workers and demonstrate their commitment to employee health and safety in the workplace.
No one is certain exactly how corporate America will move forward, since “return to work” strategies will differ across organizations, but one thing does seem
certain: data will play a key role. Employee experience, data science, visibility, and an emphasis on health
and safety will continue to move to the forefront of organizational concerns. These aspects of the virtually- empowered and data-driven workplace are no longer considerations or luxuries—they are now essential
to organizational growth and employee satisfaction. The workplace of the future is upon us, and facility managers need to understand how to access, gather and use available facility and workplace data to ensure their spaces can evolve to meet changing needs.
Based in Atlanta, Jarrod Easterwood is a solutions-focused marketing and sales leader with a history of supporting the technology and collaboration needs of his clients. Jarrod joined AVUITY in early 2019
and now leads the marketing and partner relations efforts of the hardware and software firm.
Huddle Space A Occupancy: 2 Capacity: 4 Utilization: 50% Duration: 46min Temp: 69o F Sound: 46 dB
Measure occupancy. Empower booking. Understand your space.
www.avuity.com info@avuity.com
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