A smart office provides useful information so leaders can make data-driven decisions about integrating new workplace technology and helps leaders future-proof their organization’s office locations and meeting spaces so they perform effectively for today’s on-site, remote, and hybrid workers.
In this article, we will quickly summarize why smart offices become more and more important even in this world that is full of remote and distributed work.
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Smart offices help build relationships among employees
PwC’s US Remote Work Survey shows just 13% of executives are prepared to let go of the office for good.
Meanwhile, 87% of employees say the office is important for collaborating with team members and building relationships — their top-rated needs for the office.
A smart office provides collaboration tools for staff to have collaborative work smoothly.
Big Companies are seeking smart offices
LEGO and LinkedIn are committed to transforming their smart offices to support hybrid offices. They provide lots of virtual technology and office management system in their workplaces.
Coca-Cola also has already redesigned their office in Singapore. The aim is they want to offer some multi-functional communication tools and technology for employees, allowing them to communicate and collaborate with various colleagues and support remote colleagues back in the office work seamlessly.
Smart office further develops towards sustainability
Some smart offices already use renewable energy to reduce carbon emissions.
David Watkins, solutions director at Virtus data centres, says that in addition to the data centre sector as a whole having its own net-zero by 2030 pledge, pressure to hit that target comes from customers.
Smart offices not only drive environmental protection, but it is also a big business
In order to promote smart offices, it is necessary to establish some data centres to store relevant data to enable the smooth implementation of electronic management.
Google and Microsoft have committed to three-quarters of data centre energy consumption being renewable or carbon-free by 2025.
The push for data centre sustainability can also be big business. The green data centre market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 7.5 per cent from $36bn in 2021 to $55bn by 2027.
Work more flexibly in a smart workplace
As mentioned above, a smart office allows remote workers and office workers to work together and provides lots of flexible facilities for them to work.
According to a report from Omdia, 48% of the total workforce will work in a mobile or hybrid fashion over the next 2 years. The reason is employees think that working in a flexible workplace makes them happier at work so improving their work quality and productivity.
Meeting rooms are not useless at all
Based on The Economist poll, only 10% of respondents think meeting rooms are useless in the post-pandemic office. Meeting rooms are here to stay in the hybrid working era.
For how to create a perfect smart office, there is no standard answer, and neither is its office space. To summarize some reports, in terms of building the size of meeting rooms, you can refer to the following article.
Step by Step: Determine the right office size and system for your new office – ONEs Blog
A smart office can help to reduce the operation cost
Some companies use a variety of flexible work equipment to replace fixed office facilities such as hot desks. Thus, this can help them to reduce their budget for buying furniture and pay lower rent while saving space.
Takeda Pharmaceuticals has reduced the number of fixed workstations by hot desking in order to create more meeting rooms and community spaces. Its redesigned workspaces were made available to employees at the beginning of this year.
As Inc. studies found out that 40% of an office’s dedicated desk space sits unused on a given day, hot desking can highly help companies to reduce their office costs by freeing up these dedicated workstations.
Creating work targets and a working guideline
With the help of smart office, employees can follow some work guidelines for hybrid work, this can ensure they have positive work performances.
In HP Teradici’s survey, 85% of respondents said existing company policies have already changed to reflect the new hybrid working environments, which means including setting some hybrid work guidelines for employees.
Providing a full working guideline for your employees can make sure them to have specific work targets and ensure their productivity.
An office management system is a must for any smart offices
One of the HR challenges is management procedures and 15% of respondents agree on this point, according to HP Teradici’s survey.
The reason is the admins usually take much time for monitoring the staff’s performance or manage office resources, which makes the admins can’t focus on their work and difficult to maintain good performance.
Therefore, business leaders should think about how to optimize their employees’ work process and Omdia’s report suggests organizations should plan and deliver technology to help their workers be productive from wherever they are.
One of the best solutions is for companies should implement some office management systems, for example, meeting room booking.
Few suggestions for office management systems
The followings are the popular choice for your office management system:
- ONES: A system provides a comprehensive set of office management functions, including hot desks, room booking service, visitor management, and hardware configurations.
ONEs work with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Viva. Also, ONEs can work the IoT sensors, therefore the misused rooms will be auto-released, preventing office resources from being wasted. - The Receptionist: It creates a personalized check-in experience that makes a great first impression. However, it is just a visitor management system and does not provide other office management systems.
- Envoy: A company dedicated to optimizing visitor management systems. The initial activation plan is free, but it has some restrictions.
- Robin: Offers all the basic visitor management features, such as custom permissions and floor plans. A free trial is available, but some features are restricted.
- Condeco: A system that provides a variety of office management systems, including room booking, hot desks, and a visitor management system. It can be chosen at various prices depending on the needs of the office.
Contact us: hello@ones.software, or visit ONES Software official website for more information: https://ones.software/.