Automate and enforce your return to office guidelines
Add-On Products can help you return safely to the office and automate your hybrid workplace procedures.
With employees gradually returning to the office, many new challenges have arisen. Effectively managing employees who are now working from home some of the time and the rest from the office has become a tremendous hurdle. Safely returning to the office in this new hybrid workplace after the pandemic is unlike anything we have experienced before. In the face of these challenges, organizations must ensure that employees, management, policies, procedures, and office solutions support this ‘new normal.’
Return to office guidelines and operating procedures has evolved into the hybrid workplace with a combination of remote and office work. Each organization has its own unique way of organizing their hybrid working environment.
With the hybrid workplace, organizations still need procedures that ensure employee safety. Based on feedback from our clients, our own analysis, and the flexibility of our products, Add-On Products has developed features and functionality that supports a safe return to the office/working environment. This makes our suite of products the perfect choice for your unique hybrid workplace.
Enable social distancing by blocking off desks
In order to create more space between your employees, you need to decommission the ability to book certain desks. Our products help you do the following:
- Control how close together your employees will be allowed to sit
- Enable employees to pre-book their desk, workspace, or meeting room
- Enable employees to book onsite with QR codes
- Reduce the time your janitorial crew spends on cleaning efforts
- Close off certain areas for deep cleaning on the fly or during fixed, recurring time slots
Free up private workspaces for general usage
It is important to maximize the usage of your current workspace, as every employee will require more space. Our products help you do the following:
- Open meeting rooms and private workspaces for general use
- Easily enable employees to locate workspaces via clickable floor plans or QR codes outside of meeting rooms
- Analyze usage during specific days or time slots and inform staff about options for future bookings
Communicate COVID-19 precautions and returning to office guidelines to employees
New rules and regulations will be difficult to communicate to all employees when they return to the office. To disseminate information about your return to office plan rapidly and reliably, you need office solutions that support agile and adaptable communication methods. Our products help you do the following:
- Direct employee traffic flow, communicating which entrances and exits to use
- Communicate movement flow on each floor and in each building
- Locate sanitation stations on each floor and in each building
- Locate nearest janitorial crew / office / station
Enable employees to book workspaces through their existing office solution
Accepting new return to office guidelines while adapting to the ‘new normal’ will be challenging for employees to grasp all at one time. To help ease the burden, it is important to equip your existing office solutions to embrace new features and procedures. Our products help you do the following:
- Ensure that existing office solutions like Microsoft 365 and Outlook® will accommodate alternate booking methods demanded by the ‘new normal’
- Provide workspace apps that enable pre-booking and booking onsite via app or QR code
- Enable employees to locate colleagues when pre-booking or while onsite
Contactless desk booking at the office
COVID-19 has necessitated that there be as little physical contact as possible between colleagues. Returning to office guidelines are challenging to implement with typical workspace booking procedures at the office. Our products enable employees to book their desk touch-free via:
- Floor plan in Outlook® and / or our mobile app (Workspace)
- RFID card reader on our Workspace hardware
- Low-cost, printable QR codes on desks and outside of meeting rooms and private offices
Effective sanitizing is key to preventing the spread of COVID-19
To keep your employees safe, it is essential that you fully manage and control workspace sanitation. If the management of these return to office guidelines and processes is not automated via your office solutions, then it could prove costly. Our products help you do the following:
- Provide reports and overview dashboards for your cleaning crew
- Provide cleaning requests for your cleaning crew
- Cancel bookings and notify employees if a workspace hasn’t been cleaned
Contact tracing – minimize COVID-19 spread
Quick responses and information sharing with employees are essential to ensure less spread. Rapidly informing employees that they have been in the proximity of someone with reported symptoms of COVID-19 is best practice. Our products help you do the following:
- Generate date-based reports with name and email based on proximity to those who reported symptoms
- Enable internal teams to see data on historic proximity
- View report – click here
Facilitate teamwork – work next to specific colleagues
Ensuring the seamless continuation of teamwork can be cumbersome since today's focus is on getting employees back to the office in a safe and socially-distanced way. Without the right tools, the potential outcome could be that work efficiency and quality will be lower than before COVID-19. But it doesn´t have to be this way. Our products help you do the following:
- Enable employees to book desks or resources that allow them to work in proximity of the same teams as before COVID-19
- Enable employees to search for desks booked by their team members
- Enable employees to view floor plans and find team members
Ensure workspace optimization – release unconfirmed resources
Being able to utilize workspaces efficiently is vital for any organization. If desks, meeting rooms, and other resources are booked yet remain unused due to no-shows, it adds to overhead costs and elevates employees' level of frustration. Our products help you do the following:
- Require an employee's confirmation of booking at start time
- Free up and release unconfirmed bookings of resources
- Improve utilization of your existing workspace
These features can help you solve common challenges and facilitate a safe return to the office. If there’s anything we haven’t covered here, don’t hesitate to contact us. We are always here to provide you with more information and inspiration on how to develop an effective return to office plan for your employees.
