How smart office technology can enhance the employee experience

The Employee experience is affected by everything employees experience during their tenure at a company - and nurturing the employee experience is considered to be one of the most important factors in strengthening overall competitiveness and reducing staff turnover. The rise in popularity of hybrid working is estimated to increase the overall work experience of the employee, but comes with its challenges. In this blog post, we will discuss how smart office solutions will play a significant role in mitigating the logistic problems of a hybrid workforce.

What is a smart office?

What is employee experience?

The employee experience references to the summarized experience, actions, feelings, and observations made by the employee during their tenure at a company (1, 2). The employee experience is hence affected by every stage in the employee life cycle, including the perceived pros and cons with the office environment. Managing employee experience entails a lot more than just the office space - but is surely affected by it.

Employer vs. Employee experience

Creating and nurturing a positive employee experience takes a lot of effort and employers need to be responsive to the requests made by both new and long-term personnel. One example of an employee experience topic that has risen in popularity during the last year is hybrid working models, giving employees increased agency over their work schedules, including when they work and where. Employees are demanding workplace flexibility more than ever, and providing the right tools to make this shift both smooth and manageable is likely the most important factor in increasing your overall employee experience at the office.

Employee experience and hybrid working

Hybrid working has been shown to give many benefits for employee’s work-life balance, and in turn the employee experience. How effectively employers manage to adapt to hybrid working schedules largely depends on the smart office solutions implemented to mitigate the problems that arise when employees work schedules and working locations vary. If this is not dealt with, the employee experience can suffer due to either resource shortage or the lack of colleague finding capabilities.

Resource shortage and uncertainty

In a hybrid workplace, there is no need for individual desks in large office areas. Without a desk management system for office resources, arriving at the office can be plagued by uncertainty regarding available spaces.

Connecting and collaborating with colleagues

With a flexible workforce, effective tools are needed to coordinate teams and find available spaces for collaboration. Even though we have grown more used to virtual meetings, on-site workshops and team building sessions will still be needed on-site. However, the employee experience can suffer if there are no effective tools in place to manage the rising difficulties in knowing when colleagues will be in the office or enable bookings for entire groups. Employees’ risk experiencing on-site collaboration as more difficult – even if hybrid working seeks to make day-to-day work more manageable.

Enhancing the employee experience with smart office solutions

Smart office technology is built on modern IoT solutions that mitigate the problems that arise from having a mobile workforce. Workplace Experience Systems (WPE system) optimizes work in traditional office landscapes and in activity-based offices. These types of systems help employers to optimize their premises, save time for employees and create a more digitalized and attractive work environment. WPE systems has several different functions such as finding and booking a workplace or a suitable conference room with the right equipment, finding a
colleague, search functions and a statistics module.

Why is Hot Desking so beneficial?

The main benefit with WPE systems is that it increases the agency of the employees, guarantees seating and enables colleague finding directly from the employees’ phone or computer. Overall, it is estimated that employees can save 15 minutes a day with effective resource booking, wayfinding, and colleague connector. Experience a stable flow in the office is a surefire way of increasing your employee experience by providing both hybrid working and a modern office.

Are you interested in a smart office WPE system? Contact us for more information.