Why is technology important in supporting the return to the office?

As we plan to go back to the office, many people are looking for the best ways to bring back their workforce in a safe, managed and maintainable way.

Whilst some businesses are already openly discussing initial ideas, looking to simple solutions like dividing the workforce into separate groups, who can come in at different times or on different days this option isn’t a practical long-term solution.

This method doesn’t provide flexibility for workers and teams to collaborate across groups, can’t account for previously agreed flexible working, and doesn’t address challenges around sanitization, cleanliness, space capacity management, and contact tracing.

With a technology solution you can easily manage these day-to-day issues quickly and efficiently, whilst respecting employees’ need to choose where and when they want to work, based on their work-life needs and collaboration tasks. Whilst also implementing a longer-term solution for your business which can adapt to change quickly as we transition through the return to work into the ‘new normal’ workplace.

Key challenges workplace technology resolves

Workplace management technology can help in a number of key ways as we provide for a COVID-secure workplace, and beyond:

• No need to rigidly divide the company into groups or teams and give specific days they can come in, which stops meeting and collaboration.
• Prioritizes and supports key workers who need to be in the office daily, whilst giving flexibility and choice to those who don’t.
• Get a clear schedule of who is in and out of the office at any one time, automatically. So you don’t have to police your space, worry about over-capacity issues, or maintain logs manually.
• Technology supports employee choice, stopping the admin burden of ‘exceptions’ when allocated days for groups are not suitable for individuals.