How to make your workplace more efficient and productive

Hybrid work­ing has become the norm thanks to the pan­dem­ic. That doesn’t mean the office is dead, though. With the cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis prompt­ing peo­ple to recon­sid­er work­ing from home, the work­place is set for a renais­sance. Dan Drog­man, chief exec­u­tive of smart build­ing oper­at­ing plat­form Smart Spaces – used by the likes of 22 Bish­ops­gate, Three Mobile, GPE, JLL, Nor­ton Rose Ful­bright, Work­space and Brook­field – explains how smart tech can improve build­ing effi­cien­cy and help attract peo­ple back to the work­place.

How has the pan­dem­ic changed the way employ­ees use the office?

Peo­ple want and need to feel in con­trol. They want to be well-informed and clear about their bound­aries. On our app, Sun­day evening activ­i­ty clear­ly shows us the lev­el of staff engage­ment with the work­place. Every­one can now plan their entire week on a sin­gle plat­form. Com­pa­nies that have already moved to hybrid work­ing are ask­ing col­leagues to book desks and rooms in advance. This enables effec­tive plan­ning of team meet­ings, social­is­ing and cater­ing require­ments, while min­imis­ing unnec­es­sary jour­neys and food waste. Smart Spaces allows com­pa­nies a lev­el of trans­paren­cy that was sore­ly missed dur­ing the work­ing from home spell. This has great­ly ben­e­fit­ed indi­vid­u­als, too. They now feel empow­ered to not just nego­ti­ate but some­times demand a lev­el of self-deter­mi­na­tion in their work­ing week, prov­ing they can work from any­where in lots of sit­u­a­tions.

Why should busi­ness­es con­sid­er using smart tech?

I think the key rea­sons that a busi­ness would deploy a plat­form like Smart Spaces is the desire to dri­ve sus­tain­abil­i­ty and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, while bal­anc­ing well­be­ing to both attract and retain the best tal­ent and meet their ESG agen­da. Despite the rise of new work­ing mod­els such as hybrid, for many employ­ees, break­ing free of the old mind­set is still dif­fi­cult. Com­pa­nies need to give them mul­ti­ple rea­sons to engage with col­leagues in per­son, at the office, and that’s where smart tech real­ly helps. You can now under­stand where peo­ple are going to be and ensure the resources you are pro­vid­ing, such as office space, rooms, facil­i­ties and so on, are being max­imised, or decide whether you need a rethink.

Why now?

It’s about ESG and mak­ing the most of the real estate they invest­ed in. It’s expen­sive to move and every­one wants to get it right. Select­ing space that’s fit for pur­pose is a top con­cern right now, espe­cial­ly with ris­ing ener­gy costs and Grade A offices com­mand­ing ever greater pre­mi­ums. The right smart plat­form will shine a spot­light on your assets and enable you to opti­mise all the resources you have and ensure your teams are work­ing as pro­duc­tive­ly and effi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble. Opti­mise the phys­i­cal space and your col­leagues will use it more effec­tive­ly.

One client had a huge office, but down­sized it to a much small­er, more high-end space. They used the book­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tools and occu­pan­cy ana­lyt­ics to use that space as effi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble. They actu­al­ly worked out that not only did they find it eas­i­er to attract more tal­ent to the busi­ness but that the busi­ness is oper­at­ing more effi­cient­ly. They can grow into their space even more by look­ing at the sen­sor data in the app and deter­mine that they won’t need to buy any more office space for anoth­er two years.

How can com­pa­nies use smart tech to engage with hybrid work­ers?

Smart Spaces enables them to max­imise their invest­ment in the space. An app is a direct chan­nel to the user, in their pock­et and ready to use. And because our app is the access pass for the build­ing, the whole com­pa­ny is exposed to the Smart Plat­form. We see smart tech adop­tion being dri­ven by the mag­netis­ing effect of show­cas­ing and pro­mot­ing space-as-a-ser­vice to col­leagues so they can make the most of their time at the office. This means com­pa­nies can show­case con­tent sur­round­ing the office, send noti­fi­ca­tions and pro­mote events to col­leagues as they arrive or when select­ing resource book­ing tools ahead of com­ing to the office.

What impact will the rise in ener­gy costs have on the use of office space?

Anoth­er aspect of smart tech is its abil­i­ty to dri­ve sig­nif­i­cant effi­cien­cy with build­ing man­age­ment costs. What real­ly res­onates at this time is the cost sav­ings because we have nev­er seen ener­gy costs like this. If you use our plat­form to make the work­place ultra-effi­cient, you could eas­i­ly save up to 30% of the ener­gy costs straight­away. And, if you can show­case that to col­leagues, then they will make bet­ter choic­es about their ener­gy con­sump­tion. We think that this win­ter, you’re going to see more peo­ple come into the office if they can save on their home ener­gy bills. That’s bet­ter, because it’s more effi­cient to heat one space than hun­dreds, even thou­sands of homes. We can bench­mark that on live dash­boards as more peo­ple use office space rather than WFH.

What is the future of work­place tech?

I think the future is arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, but don’t wor­ry, not Hol­ly­wood AI. It has already helped us iden­ti­fy when there have been a lot of last-minute changes to a meet­ing where atten­dees decide to attend vir­tu­al­ly, yet the meet­ing room nev­er gets resized. Thanks to our cut­ting-edge AI, we can auto­mat­i­cal­ly real­lo­cate that room. It will can­cel that book­ing, cre­ate a new book­ing for the appro­pri­ate size and then send out the new invite, ful­ly auto­mat­ed. Our prod­uct can make deci­sions on your behalf and opti­mise the work­space for you, with­out you hav­ing to think about it.

What impact does smart tech have on staff recruit­ment and reten­tion?

I think it shows that the employ­er is a tech-for­ward com­pa­ny. Peo­ple want to work in a smart office. Every­one is becom­ing more con­scious of the impact they’re hav­ing on the plan­et. And if you can tru­ly under­stand what that impact is and you’re work­ing for a com­pa­ny that’s active­ly address­ing that, it’s fan­tas­tic. You can lit­er­al­ly see how many kilos of car­bon you’re con­sum­ing and what the finan­cial cost of that is. As a busi­ness on the jour­ney to net zero, you real­ly need to know exact­ly how much you’re con­sum­ing. And then once you under­stand how much you con­sume, you can reduce it and opti­mise it. Smart Spaces will allow you to do that across your real estate.

How can Smart Spaces help busi­ness­es cre­ate a more pro­duc­tive and effi­cient work­place?

The key ques­tions are: How do I reduce my car­bon foot­print? How do I make sure my staff are using the office as effec­tive­ly as they can? How can I attract my staff to the office? Smart Spaces access­es the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment, allows peo­ple to book desk space, meet­ing rooms, car park­ing and well­ness spaces. It can real­ly max­imise the val­ue in a company’s real estate to ensure that it is as effi­cient as pos­si­ble and make sure its employ­ees are as pro­duc­tive as pos­si­ble. It gives employ­ees access to those resources in an easy-to-use, sim­ple plat­form.

For more, please vis­it smartspaces.app

Pro­mot­ed by Smart Spaces