Post-Pandemic Office: How to Ensure Your Workplace Is Safe with the Help of Room Booking System Features

In simple words, they are enthusiastic to come back to their desks if it is safe. So as an employer, how can you ensure that your workplace is ready to resume operation? Do your meeting room booking process and shared office space software support safety features and comply with the health protocols?

Aside from the safety, what’s with the physical office that makes employees want to go back? Let’s find out.

7 Reasons Why Employees Are Thrilled to Return to Their Workplaces Post Pandemic Era

Usually, people think that working from home is the most desirable work setup as it allows you to do your job without leaving the house. But in reality, it doesn’t work for everybody. Here, we summarized some of the common reasons why employees want to return to a typical work setup.

1. They miss face-to-face meetings and interacting with colleagues.

Before the Covid-19 breakout, teams developed a friendship and camaraderie in the office that motivated one another through in-person meetings. Working with people who have the same goals as you can spark productivity and inspire creativity. A survey said that 3 out of 4 employees said that the primary reason they prefer face-to-face meetings is the people. The top three most crucial factors to come back to are socializing with company staff, meetings with team members, and unplanned in-person interactions.

But even with a lot of virtual meeting technologies that are readily available today, most employees still find it challenging to collaborate with others and staying up to date when working from home.

2. Younger generation of workers decreased productivity and are less motivated at home.

Many people believe that younger employees generally have higher technological knowledge and preparedness, a knack for remote work, and are more skilled at developing virtual connections. But researchers said that Gen Z and Millennials find it more challenging to work from home as they see the experience as a lot more stressful and struggling to get the work done than older colleagues. Also, they lack awareness of what is expected of them in their jobs, and at the end of the day, they are less likely to feel motivated and accomplished.

3. Workers want to come back to the workplace but expect company preparedness.

Employees are eager to return to their desks, but they also consider if the workplace is safe. With the increasing number of Covid positive cases, you may think twice. According to a report, workers will feel confident coming back to the office if they ensure their companies implement stricter health policies and heightened office cleaning and room configurations that support social distancing.

4. Video conferencing can’t replace in-person meetings.

Organizations need to meet whether it is about a project, monthly sales, or discussing goals in a given period. While technology allows your team to conduct video conferencing, there are still disadvantages that may hinder the purpose of the discussion. Poor connection, different time zones, noisy environment are some of the common distractions when joining a virtual meeting and may cause you and your team stress.

5. Free snacks, fewer preparations, and dishes.

Working from home allows you to prepare the food that you want but may take up a vast amount of time that you should spend on work. Whereas in your office, you can grab a snack and enjoy the bottomless coffee in the pantry. The best thing was, you don’t have to prepare it with much time and don’t need to bother washing the dishes. It means you have more time to concentrate on work or collaborate with colleagues.

6. Every day feels the same day working at home.

Workplace events and special company occasions are some of the happening employees looking forward to before the pandemic. These events allow them to socialize and unwind away from a load of tasks and deadlines. When every day feels and looks the same at home, people get bored and long for the excitement of gathering with a few people to celebrate, relax, or learn.  

7. Overwhelming family time.

Finally, you can spend more quality time with your spouse, kids, and relatives. However, family time can quickly destroy your focus when you need to finish a deadline. Additionally, kids are studying at home, so as a parent or a sibling, you may need to spend a lot more time helping them with school activities.

Room Booking System Features for a Safe Return to the Workplace

Employees look forward to returning to a different workplace environment. They want less workspace sharing, adequate space for physical distancing, strict monitoring of health protocols and disinfecting, and increased virtual and mobile work support from their employers. A survey revealed that showing transparency about how business owners ensure their workplace is safe is the key to gain the employees’ confidence. A robust room scheduling software has all the features that can help them ensure health compliance for a better and streamlined transition.

1. Desk Booking Software Allows Flexibility

Even before the pandemic, many employees are willing to work in a more flexible working environment, based on a survey. Now that many of them become habitual to work from home or remotely for over a year now, it seems far-fetched to expect workers to return to a typical work environment.

While some team members will, a small percentage of employees may never return. But research revealed that the majority wants to adopt a mix or hybrid working style – working at home partly and the office on some days of the week.

Desk booking software empowers the office hoteling system – the practice of enabling team members to reserve any workspace before arriving or at any time within the day using a free meeting room display app. It allows them to come to the office on some days and work remotely on others without a permanent desk. Moreover, it will enable them to secure a reservation and ease the worry about looking for a desk to work on, especially if they need to sit near a team member to work on a project.

2. Desk Reservation Software and Room Scheduling Software Helps Manage Capacity

The office hoteling system provides consistency and greater flexibility, but it can also be an excellent tool for better office space management. One of your most significant concerns as you reopen your office for team members is to keep the office density at a low-risk level. You’ll need to reduce office capacity by at least half or more to fit in your office space, considering physical distancing.

Failing to do that may end up turning away someone that may have traveled distancing to come early to work. To avoid that, you may need to plan how many employees will be in your office each day. Desk reservation software allows you to quickly restrict the spaces reservable while disabling other desks to comply with the 6-meter requirement.

The same goes for the meeting room reservation. When you book a meeting, you can limit the room capacity using the room scheduling software. It will prevent overcrowding and possible virus contamination in the area.

3. Desk Reservation Software Enables Strategic Space Management

The birth of flexible working arrangements tremendously changes the way people use their workspaces. When managing your company’s real estate, there are a lot of factors to bear in mind to come up with the right decision, such as:

• If you are leasing an office space, is it practical to renew your contract that hardly had only a 40% occupancy rate?
• Is there a need for additional space to support physical distancing?
• What are the chances that your team members to extend their contract for the following year?

These questions are crucial to developing your real-estate strategy. But can be difficult to find accurate answers when analyzing manually. An intelligent room booking system will help you predict future requirements by looking at the reports and analytics within the system.

4. Meeting Room Booking Software Allows Quick Checking and Reservation Of Meeting Room Availability

Before the pandemic, you check rooms one by one or even asks every occupied space when their session would end. Today, it could be dangerous and consumes time and energy.

As a government mandate, everyone should stay six (6) meters apart from other people.

A meeting room booking software allows you to check the available rooms and book them right away. You can also do so with your mobile device using the room booking system app. The system prevents you from doing the tedious way of securing a room and avoids the risk of getting the virus.

5. Meeting Room Reservation Software Schedules Desk and Room Sanitation After Every Use And Weekly Deep Sanitation

One of the required safety measures is the frequent sanitation of shared things and spaces. Meeting room reservation has new features that address today’s health crisis. Bacteria and viruses attach to shared things, air vents, and person-to-person interaction, scheduling of sanitation and deep cleaning can tremendously minimize the risk of workplace contamination.

6. Meeting Room Booking System Enables Screening, Monitoring, And Tracing Team Members and Visitors

The safety protocols start when your team member or visitors enter the premises. When they arrive at the facility, temperature screening requires them to log in their info for tracing purposes and ensure they’re using protective face coverings. But if you have a bustling facility, it could be challenging for the lobby staff to monitor people who come in and out of your building.

Today, a meeting room booking software provides innovative and beneficial features to help business owners address the current crisis challenges. The intuitive software solution is integrated with mask detection and thermal scanners, allowing companies to quickly detect visitors and team members who have raised body temperature and not wearing face coverings before entering the building.

Additionally, the system has a contact tracing function that collects data from people’s Bluetooth devices and organizes this information for a contact tracing basis. It is more convenient to identify persons that may have contracted the virus carriers during their time in the office.

The Takeaway

Are you planning to welcome your team members sooner? Ensure that you follow all the CDC safety guidelines, so you are legally and health compliant. Efficient office space booking software like DeskFlex can help you implement the safety protocols and allow your workers to adopt the ‘new normal quickly.’ More importantly, DeskFlex now has vaccine management features that will enable you to manage your organization’s vaccine history so you can ensure everybody’s well-being while at work.