Hoteling, reserved, hybrid, reservations oh my!
The old problems were adjacency issues and midnight acquisitions of the seats near the window. In our brave new world of occupancy we’re now challenged with how to scale the space we own now to fit one-third to two-thirds of the occupants we had a year ago. Since a fair amount of companies are now going to hybrid workspaces on some level those not in the office full-time will need a place to post-up for varied lengths of time. Think every office can be like a conference room in that it can be used by anyone at any time.
Our job: Keep track of it and report on how much space the company needs.
This goes way beyond Covid-19, it has to do with what we all learned from a year of WFH. This new trend is not a pump-fake. It’s here to stay as the current survey data suggests. People want to WFH at least part-time.
IFMA defines hoteling thusly: The practice of allocating available workspaces on demand to employees or others when required.
There’s a lot baked into that definition. There are really three things going on.
1, We need to identify some spaces as reserved so that we don’t allocate them to something else. These encumbered spaces will either have people or functions.
2, Hybrid personnel with set scheduled days. It looks like we’re going to have a fair amount of personnel on a set schedule of M-W-F or T-T or… For these personnel we can also choose to double up locations or use their offices in some way when they are not in the office. Set schedulers might also want to use a simple check-in/check-out app-based procedure.
3, Hoteling/Reservations these are the most random of the bunch. There is the potential here to break up a space into hours, much like how you use a conference room.
At Collectieview we’ve already built the tools but for different purposes. Last year it was more about tweaking our tools more than building. In the three years prior to Covid our clients were pinned to the walls crowded. They were already trying to figure out how to stack employees like cord wood. As space got tighter reserved space went up. Hording. Hoteling spaces decreased but were policed more. Spaces pulled double duty if possible – however on a much smaller scale than what we’re seeing now.
Our approach is based on who is doing the requesting. For problem #1 our space planning users can allocate the spaces and update the departments that are using the space. The end user only needs to know that that space is not available for other uses.
For #2 our traditional MAC (Move, Add, Change) process to assign a workspace. The end user or the space planning staff can use the reservation system or our App to set up Check-ins for when they will be in the office. The Check-ins can also alert cleaning staff or any type of work order necessary to facilitate the occupancy.
For #3 we use our reservation system which acts like a catch all for the rest of the allocations. These are any temporary space, remote staff, temp employee, hoteling, part-time encumbrances, and of course other. The Reservation system can be accessed online or through the Collectiveview App.
If you’re wondering how you can get real-time visibility into your occupancy let me show you... Demo me please
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