Hybrid Work Continues to Benefit Organizations

Hybrid Work Continues to Benefit Organizations

Lessons learned from a fully remote organization can help overcome the challenges of hybrid and improve organizational health.

Our work in organizational health suggests that a fully remote organization can demonstrate a level of health that rivals, if not exceeds, the performance of most traditional companies. Organizations encouraging moderate on-site presence can learn about overcoming the inherent challenges of hybrid work from the experiences and operating models of highly distributed and remote-first companies.

To better understand and assess the impact of these operating models on organizations today, McKinsey is re-examining and refreshing an important resource: the Organizational Health Index (OHI). Based on more than two decades of expertise, our approach to measuring and improving organizational health has helped more than 2,600 clients in 100-plus countries improve and sustain performance. Although we have researched and published extensively on hybrid and remote work, we had not yet directly leveraged the OHI to connect flexible work practices (i.e., when, where, and how work gets done) to organizational health.

Since much of the debate continues in the hybrid middle—where most organizations are operating and where individual employee experiences can vary wildly—we’ve partnered with technology organizations that have been fully remote since before the COVID pandemic to help quantify the impact of their operating models. All the companies we have studied achieved top-quartile scores on the OHI, and the largest and most mature of these organizations achieved top-decile health as compared to our benchmarks. This demonstrates that it is possible to reach an exceptional level of organizational health through clear values, transparent decision making, and intentional ways of working designed to overcome limits and coordination challenges across time and place.

There are also similarities in these organizations’ cultural profiles, notably top-decile scores on OHI outcomes for Work Environment and Motivation. They share common leadership styles with top-decile performance on Consultative Leadership and Supportive Leadership OHI practices as well.

We have learned from these studies that there are six priorities for companies that aspire to sustain a flexible or highly distributed workplace alongside top organizational health, each with a set of actionable practices:

  1. Remove ambiguity about working practices. Set expectations, emphasize clear and consistent meeting protocols, and incorporate asynchronous work practices—enabling collaboration without real-time communication—through role clarity and operational discipline.
  2. Reset performance expectations. Create an environment where on-site and offsite colleagues feel on equal footing, through performance goals and reviews.
  3. Be transparent. Have a single source of truth for all managers and employees (e.g., a regularly updated handbook that lays out the rules and norms), through knowledge sharing and process-based capabilities.
  4. Be purposeful about where people work. Hybrid organizations should encourage informed, intentional choices to work together in person—focusing on the moments that matter—by helping employees understand working norms and why they are asked to be onsite. A similar level of strategic intentionality should be applied to remote working decisions as well.
  5. Foster trust and a sense of support. Demonstrate a welcoming work environment, through inclusion and belonging, supportive leadership, and openness and trust.
  6. Test and learn. Make decisions quickly, regularly assess what is working and what needs to be improved, and share lessons learned—even the failures—through empowering leadership, tech enablement, and data-driven decision making.

These six priorities are deeply ingrained within the culture at the fully remote companies that we’ve assessed, helping their employees connect and collaborate across locations and time zones while enabling top quartile performance. Organizations that have adopted, or are considering, a hybrid or fully remote operating model should follow suit—our work suggests that doing so could prove an accelerator for their organizational health.

How Archibus can Help Promote Hybrid Organization

Space management and utilization is a concept that should be on every organizational leader’s mind. With rent and real estate prices skyrocketing in desirable cities, there’s never been a better time to figure out whether you’re using all the square footage you’re paying for to the best of its abilities. Even if you don’t operate in an expensive region, unused office space represents a massive point of waste that can easily be resolved when you use facility management software. Learn more about common areas of underutilization in office spaces and see what a smart workplace management software platform like Archibus can do for you as you work to make better use of the space you have.

The Best Way to Get Archibus

If you’re new to Archibus or want to get this software today, our team at Robotech can help. We offer comprehensive entry-level basics training, and we sell Archibus software directly to companies across the country. We are a gold partner of Archibus, and we’ll ensure your team is fully set up and comfortable with the software before we consider the job “done”.
We have a few Archibus packages that we offer, and we can provide a free trial for you to test it before you buy. Within a few minutes, you’ll see how helpful this software is in maintaining your healthcare compliance accreditation.

Schedule a call to get started today.

 

How Pharmaceutical & Life Science Companies Optimize their Spaces with VergeSense

How Pharmaceutical & Life Science Companies Optimize their Spaces with VergeSense

The pharmaceutical industry is facing unique circumstances when it comes to managing their workplaces. Not only is pharma one of the few industries with labs in their workplace, but also, the most recent Occupancy Intelligence Index report revealed that the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry has the highest capacity usage of all industries, presenting them with challenges (and opportunities) that greatly differ from other industries that aren’t as far along in their return-to-office and hybrid working journey.

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This high workplace utilization is primarily due to the specific nature of pharmaceutical work; operations such as laboratory research, manufacturing, and shipping pharmaceuticals require employees to be physically present in the office. Remote work is simply not feasible for these key functions, leading to consistently high usage and significant growth. This industry’s robustness continues even amidst today’s macroeconomic slowdown, allowing workplace and CRE leaders in the life sciences industry to continue to invest in and focus on workplace development.

Pharma and Life Sciences Workplace Challenges
In pharmaceutical and life sciences workplaces, three key goals stand out for workplace leaders:

  • Optimizing lab footprint and design
  • Enhancing space utilization
  • Ensuring Success of Dynamic Work Models Across Campus

Essential insights for optimizing lab space lies in understanding how many team members are using the space and how often, as well as how frequently the equipment at each workstation is operational.  Understanding this is the first step towards making decisions around optimizing the total footprint of the labs, the lab design/layout, energy consumption, and cleaning schedules.

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Outside of labs and within office spaces, leaders aim to create environments that foster collaboration. To achieve this, they need to identify the most and least popular areas and determine why certain spaces remain unused. Additionally, they need to determine their ideal space mix and how much space each business unit requires.

Finally, as unassigned seating becomes more and more common, tracking meeting room usage and helping employees locate available workspace across sprawling campuses is crucial for a seamless and productive workplace experience.

With the VergeSense Occupancy Intelligence Platform, workplace leaders can tackle these challenges head-on, armed with data-driven insights to optimize their spaces and improve employee experiences.

Optimizing Lab Footprints and Lab Design

Pharmaceutical and life sciences workplaces are inherently unique as they are one of the few industries with lab spaces, giving workplace leaders new challenges to tackle, especially as special attention is often put on these spaces due to their high cost per square foot.

Many pharma companies are also looking at increasing their lab-to-workspace ratio, which makes it all the more important that lab spaces are highly integrated with the traditional workspaces so employees can have seamless physical connections and sightlines into the labs from individual and collaborative workspaces. Workplace leaders are also deeply considering team adjacency needs when it comes to placing neighborhoods near labs.

Usage Map
Make the necessary lab space adjustments and optimize your real estate spend by understanding, at a glance, how many people are using each of your labs – and how often.

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Workplace leaders must first understand the capacity usage (number of people detected across the selected space(s) divided by the total capacity) as well as the time usage (total time the space(s) were in use divided by the total time the space(s) were available) of their labs.  Understanding these measures of space efficiency is crucial, because these spaces cost so much money to build, maintain, and clean.  It is vital to understand employee usage patterns to determine if more or less of these spaces are needed, or if their designs need to be reconsidered.

​​Heat Map
Optimize what you’re spending on expensive equipment by understanding when, and how often, that each workstation is really being used.

Because of the expensive nature of buying and maintaining lab equipment, c-suite executives and workplace leaders are increasingly concerned with understanding how often their lab equipment is being used. This can help inform what equipment they should be investing in (or shedding), as well as help them determine which pieces may need maintenance or repair due to frequent use.

Where Usage Maps provide capacity and time usage insights for the overall lab space, Heat Maps allow workplace leaders to easily understand how frequently each individual workstation and piece of equipment is being used.  The heat map also allows this information to be distilled quickly, by evaluating the map colors to determine hotspots in seconds.

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Here you can see how one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies is using VergeSense within their lab spaces to monitor each workstation as its own space. This allows them to easily understand how frequently each workstation is being used and if it’s properly sized and located.

Optimizing Office Space Design
Pharma is ahead of the curve when it comes to returning to the office because of how much of their employees’ work is centered around being in the office. Because of this, workplace leaders have already started optimizing their designs to foster a collaborative employee experience, but they need help understanding how their design changes are helping their teams operate, where their employees are spending their time, and how much of each space type they need in their new integrated design models. They also want to understand what gaps exist in their current designs.

Usage Map
Make data-driven design changes after identifying which space types and neighborhoods are the most and least popular so your teams can be happy and productive inside and outside of the lab.

One of the top priorities for workplace leaders as they begin optimizing their office space design is understanding which spaces are the most and least popular so they can repurpose unpopular spaces and add more popular spaces as necessary. Without data, this can be entirely subjective, leading to assumption-based decision-making.

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With Usage Maps, workplace leaders can identify where employees are spending the most of their time, as well as which spaces are the most/least popular. Workplace leaders can then use this data to evaluate which space types they may need more of to accommodate employee demand and which spaces they should eliminate due to low engagement.

Passive Occupancy Detection
Make design decisions with a true understanding of how your spaces are being used: actively by your team or passively by common objects that indicate a human presence.

Sometimes, popular spaces aren’t in use during uncharacteristic days or times and this can lead to a lot of questions as to why. Gaining a true understanding of how spaces are being used by people and objects can help provide clarity, as many times, popular spaces aren’t in use by employees because objects are reserving the space for someone else.

pharma_passiveoccupancy2-minOnly VergeSense offers passive occupancy detection. This innovation identifies common objects that indicate human presence, even when no one is physically there. This type of occupancy constitutes up to 50% of all usage. By leveraging passive occupancy data, workplace leaders can gain deeper insights into how spaces are truly used. This knowledge empowers leaders to understand inefficiencies in how their employees are using the office so they can make necessary changes to the spaces themselves and encourage behavior changes when necessary.

Another global Life Sciences organization leveraged VergeSense and discovered that many spaces were consistently “occupied” by laptops, bags, and clothing – not humans. By gaining a true understanding of their occupancy with Passive Occupancy Detection, a global biotechnology company discovered that they could assign 30% more employees to their existing office footprint and avoid a $13M portfolio expansion.

VergeSense x ChatGPT
Make data-driven decisions faster than ever. Through its natural language interface, VergeSense x ChatGPT becomes your data-science co-pilot that provides insights on the performance of your space designs in minutes.

Data provides the answer to nearly any question workplace leaders may be having; however, analyzing it is easier said than done. Workplace leaders across the globe are looking for an easier way to analyze data to uncover the answers to key design questions like:

  • What is my ideal space mix?
  • Which spaces do I need more of?
  • How much space does each business unit or team need?

pharma_chatgpt_2-minOur secure and private integration with ChatGPT allows workplace leaders to ask questions about their occupancy data so they can understand where to go next. ChatGPT will dive into your data to discover your ideal space mix, which spaces you need more of, how much space a business unit or team needs, which spaces are frequently near or at capacity, and anything else you may be wondering about. It amplifies the speed at which workplace leaders can innovate and start using their data to make concrete strategies and decisions without needing to consult a data expert.

Ensuring Success of Dynamic Work Models Across Campus
Pharmaceutical organizations have continued to transition to fully hybrid, dynamic work models, leading to increased adoption of new ways of working, such as unassigned seating and activity-based work. Not only does this impact how workplace leaders are optimizing their spaces, but it also impacts how employees work and interact with spaces. Oftentimes, workplace leaders have to help employees adjust to the new ways of working and change inefficient behaviors.

Space Booking Automation
Automatically release unused bookings and allow other employees to use these spaces, helping to create a frictionless work environment while optimizing your space availability.

Addressing inefficiencies caused by employee behaviors and responses to today’s dynamic work environments often starts with understanding how meeting rooms are being used. When booked meeting rooms are not actually used, but still show as booked in your system, it leaves employees struggling to find open meeting rooms for them to collaborate in.

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Ghosted meetings account for 37% of all meetings worldwide, meaning that these meeting spaces are going unused – but they’re available. Even when a space is booked but unused, other employees won’t use it and have to search for unbooked, empty rooms, despite no one actually using the booked space. This causes wasted time and a poor employee experience. This can also skew occupancy data, leading to incorrect conclusions that the spaces are going unused due to planning and design-related factors. VergeSense space booking automation uses occupancy data to automatically release any booked spaces that are ghosted or end early so other employees can use the space, improving employee experience and improving your bottom line by ensuring the square footage you are paying for can be utilized.

Kiosks & Real-Time Availability
Make it easy for employees to find and reserve available spaces to work anywhere on your campus, whether it’s on the same floor or in a different building.

As employees move across your campus, they want to be certain that they will have a space to work at. Walking across a large campus just to struggle to find a place to work is an experience with little to be desired.

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Kiosks help employees manage unassigned seating and activity-based work models by giving employees access to real-time availability so they can find the open space they need and providing a larger inventory of space to look for beyond their current floor. Because it is natural employee behavior to remain on one floor throughout the day, kiosks help employees feel comfortable and motivated to switch floors or buildings because they can see that the space they are looking for is actually available somewhere. This reduces the wasted time and friction associated with searching for available spaces manually.

A global pharmaceutical organization relies on VergeSense to better understand how often their lab equipment is being used.  As you know, this equipment is incredibly expensive and understanding it’s utilization is critical when assessing the overall efficiency of their lab spaces.  VergeSense wired area sensors provided the solution to their dynamic lab by offering poll rates every 30 seconds, ensuring the frequent movement of people between equipment is accurately captured.

Ensure Your Team Consistently Meets Their Space Needs

Ensure Your Team Consistently Meets Their Space Needs

In today’s increasingly dynamic work environment, individuals and teams are constantly moving around the office to find spaces that fit their specific and ever-changing needs. As organizations embrace flexible work arrangements and adopt agile practices, the traditional concept of a dedicated desk or office has evolved to be more fluid and dynamic.

However, with this newfound flexibility comes the challenge of ensuring that team members can consistently find and use spaces that meet their needs. The availability and accessibility of workspaces significantly impact productivity, collaboration, and employee satisfaction, making it a key focus of workplace leaders across the globe.

Space planning and availability foundations

Space planning and availability are two considerations at the forefront of ensuring your teams have space to work. Space planning is key to making sure your workplace has the right kinds of spaces that are meeting your employees’ needs, while space availability ensures that they are actually able to use them.

Space planning strikes a delicate balance between accommodating diverse work styles, maintaining cost-efficiency, and maximizing the utilization of physical resources. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to what the right space mix looks like or what the universal seating ratio is and planning is even impacted by your employees’ own subjective preferences, meaning workplace leaders must have a deep understanding of the specific needs and preferences of their employees to create effective spaces.

Workplace leaders must also navigate the intricacies of space availability to ensure that their spaces can actually be used. This often involves implementing room and desk booking systems to identify utilization patterns in bookable spaces and even auto-releasing spaces that are ghosted. Space availability works to understand why spaces are getting booked but unused while trying to ensure that those abandoned spaces can be used by others.

Shifting your strategy

Shifting your workplace strategy requires embracing a new mindset that values agility and change. Workplace leaders must be willing to move beyond the traditional and static workplace concept to develop a more fluid and flexible approach. By embracing flexible spaces, having a healthy space mix, and experimenting, organizations can create a workplace that is tailored to the specific needs and preferences of their employees, while ensuring there is enough space for teams to work as they need to.

Embrace flexible spaces

As organizations continue to evolve in response to rapidly changing work environments, one strategy that has emerged as a powerful means of ensuring workspace availability and accessibility is the adoption of flexible spaces. By incorporating flexible space types such as hot-desking and activity-based work zones into their workplace design, companies can not only support a diverse range of work styles, but also make more efficient use of their physical space.

Hot desking allows employees to work at any available desk or workstation on a first-come, first-served basis, rather than having a dedicated, personal workspace. This practice enables companies to better adapt to fluctuating needs, as team members can find a spot to work ad-hoc without creating dedicated workstations, which become a bottleneck as more employees work in-office only a few days per week. Additionally, hot desking encourages cross-departmental collaboration, as employees have the opportunity to engage with colleagues from various teams as they move throughout the space.

Activity-based work zones are another common solution for ensuring that teams have the space they need to work effectively. These spaces cater to specific types of tasks or work styles, such as quiet rooms for focused, individual work, collaboration areas for group activities or brainstorming sessions, and break-out spots intended for informal conversations or relaxation. By offering diverse, dedicated zones, employees can quickly and easily identify the most suitable space for their current task.

While there is more to creating flexible spaces than just implementing hot desking and activity-based spaces, these two are means of beginning your journey into a more flexible and dynamic workplace that can adapt to meet your employees needs.

Have a healthy space mix

A healthy mix of space types helps make the workplace effective for all different work styles, tasks, and employee preferences, allowing individuals and teams to seamlessly move between spaces based to fit their specific needs of that moment. While there is not one correct way to mix various space types, some of the most common space types we see in innovative workplaces include:

Hot desks: Hot desks are shared workstations that are not assigned to a specific individual. Employees can use any available desk on a first-come, first-served basis.

Conference rooms: These are meeting spaces equipped with a large table, chairs, and audiovisual equipment for conducting formal discussions, presentations, and meetings.

Huddle rooms: Huddle rooms are small meeting spaces designed for quick team meetings, brainstorming sessions, or private conversations. They typically accommodate a small number of people.

Breakout areas: These are informal spaces where employees can relax, socialize, or have casual meetings. They often include comfortable seating, tables, and recreational amenities like game tables or lounge areas.

Brainstorming areas: These spaces are specifically designed to facilitate team collaboration and often feature whiteboards, projectors, or interactive displays to encourage brainstorming and idea sharing.

Cafeterias and pantries: These spaces are dedicated to dining and refreshments, providing a place for employees to eat, socialize, and recharge during breaks.

Phone booths: Phone booths are small, soundproofed rooms or enclosures that offer privacy for making phone calls or participating in virtual meetings without disturbing others.

Innovation labs: These specialized spaces are designed to foster creativity and innovation, often equipped with tools, technologies, and resources for experimentation and prototyping.

By providing a diverse range of spaces that accommodate the unique requirements of their teams, workplace leaders can help ensure that employees have access to the most suitable work environments for their needs. This, in turn, leads to greater usage of available spaces, resulting in a more effective and efficient workplace that supports the needs of an organization as a whole.

Experiment with new space types

An innovative approach to ensuring that teams have the space they need to work effectively is embarking on a journey of experimentation. Adapting and introducing new space types can provide fresh solutions that cater to the evolving needs of an organization, ultimately leading to greater employee satisfaction and productivity. Some of the most common and effective changes we are hearing companies experiment with across the globe include:

Modular furniture: This flexibility empowers employees to modify their workspaces to suit their individual or team requirements and encourages them to take ownership of their environment. By fostering a sense of autonomy and adapting spaces to fit diverse work styles, organizations can create more responsive and dynamic workplaces that are suited to an ever-changing workforce

Pop-up collaboration spaces: Create temporary project or brainstorming areas using portable whiteboards, movable seating, and screens. This enables teams to gather quickly and collaborate effectively without having to search for available meeting rooms.

Reservable focus booths: Introduce private, soundproof booths that can be reserved for individual employees who need a quiet and distraction-free environment to work on tasks that require deep concentration.

Shared amenities zones: Establish multipurpose areas that serve as a combination of lounge, café, and recreational space. This communal zone can foster informal interactions, promote relaxation, and offer an alternative setting for impromptu meetings or remote work.

Quiet zones or “libraries”: Establish designated quiet areas where employees can work undisturbed and free from auditory distractions. These spaces could be specifically designed and equipped with acoustical treatments or partitions to minimize noise levels and maintain a peaceful atmosphere.

Wellness or mindfulness spaces: Create dedicated spaces for relaxation, stress relief, or meditation, equipped with soothing lighting, comfortable seating, and features that encourage reflection and rejuvenation.

Personal storage solutions: Offer employees flexible personal storage options, such as lockers or mobile pedestals. This caters to those who work in a hot-desking environment, allowing staff to keep personal items secure and readily accessible without having to carry them around the office all day. Storage solutions like this also prevent employees from passively occupying spaces, allowing others to use them when people are not present.

Utilizing property technology

Proptech is another key element to ensuring your teams have space to work. By leveraging automation and data, technology enables workplace leaders to move beyond hunches and intuition to make evidence-based decisions about how their spaces need to be optimized to ensure the best experience for all. Solutions such as room and desk booking software, occupancy sensors, and occupancy intelligence platforms, like VergeSense, help workplace leaders across the globe solve for space planning and availability challenges.

Auto-release unused bookings

One of the key challenges in creating an agile and flexible work environment is ensuring that bookable spaces are available when teams need them. While room and desk booking systems help streamline the traditional approach of manually managing room reservations and desk assignments, alone they cannot solve for ghosted meetings, which affect over ⅓ of booked meetings.

By integrating desk and room booking systems with occupancy sensors, organizations can implement automation tools that can significantly enhance space availability. VergeSense allows for the auto-releasing of unused bookings after a set amount of time automatically.

Auto-releasing unused bookings helps to reduce wasted resources and minimize the number of unused spaces throughout the workplace. This can lead to significant cost savings, especially for enterprises with multiple locations. By freeing up valuable space for other teams to use, auto-releasing unused bookings improves overall space availability and accessibility, which can ultimately enhance employee experience as well.

Finally, by leveraging technology to automate the process, workplace leaders can gain valuable insights into how different spaces are being used and what adjustments may be necessary to optimize their utilization. This can help inform decisions around future space planning and design, ultimately leading to a more efficient, effective, and engaging work environment for everyone.

Evaluate capacity usage

Evaluating capacity usage, a metric measured by VergeSense occupancy sensors, offers insights into how effectively a space is being used, providing critical information on whether space constraints are hindering employee productivity.

Capacity usage is calculated by dividing people count by the capacity of the space, and it provides an indication of the percentage of the space that is in use. For example, if a conference room has a capacity of 10 people and is occupied by an average of 5 people, its capacity usage would be 50%.

Using capacity usage as a key metric can help workplace leaders identify which areas of their workplace are underutilized, providing an opportunity to optimize and maximize these spaces. It can also help determine whether the root cause of employees not having space to work is a lack of square footage or a matter of spaces not suiting employees’ needs.

Evaluate time usage

Time usage, another powerful metric, helps organizations understand how often their spaces are being used so they can gain insights into what makes a space effective or not.

Time usage is measures the amount of time a space was used compared to the total amount of available time, providing a clear indication of how much time employees are spending in various spaces throughout the workplace. For example, if a conference room was used for 7 hours during the 10 hours it was available, its time usage would be 70%.

Time usage offers critical insights to workplace leaders, helping them determine whether the root cause of employees not having space to work is rooted in spaces that don’t suit employee needs, or simply that there is too much or too little of a particular kind of space. With this data, organizations can make data-driven decisions around space planning and design, ensuring that they create an environment that truly meets the needs and preferences of their workforce.

Solving for space planning and availability

Ensuring that your team always has space to work is a complex challenge that workplace leaders face in today’s ever-changing work environment. It requires striking a balance between accommodating diverse workstyles, maintaining cost-efficiency, and maximizing the usage of spaces. However, by embracing a dynamic workplace strategy and utilizing technology, organizations can adapt to changing workforce needs and create a workplace that is tailored to their employees.

Enhancing Workplace Flexibility in the Health Care Industry

Enhancing Workplace Flexibility in the Health Care Industry

Young pharmaceutic seller explaining something to doctor in a hospital.

In the dynamic landscape of the healthcare industry, fostering workplace flexibility is paramount to meet the diverse needs of both healthcare professionals and the organizations they serve. Here, we delve into five key strategies aimed at creating a more adaptable and responsive healthcare workplace.

Flexible Scheduling Options:

Flexible scheduling lies at the core of workplace adaptability in the health care sector. Compressed workweeks, allowing professionals to condense their standard hours into fewer days, provide extended weekends or additional days off. Part-time schedules cater to those seeking a balance between personal and professional commitments, while job-sharing arrangements enable collaborative responsibility sharing among employees.

Telecommuting and Remote Work Opportunities:

The integration of telecommuting and remote work options introduces a new dimension to workplace flexibility. Administrative roles, such as billing and scheduling, can be seamlessly executed from home, enhancing work-life balance. Additionally, telehealth services offer healthcare practitioners the chance to provide remote care, expanding the reach of services and granting professionals the flexibility to work beyond traditional clinical settings.

Cross-Training and Skill Diversification:

Investing in cross-training initiatives is crucial for building a versatile healthcare workforce. Comprehensive training programs empower professionals to develop skills beyond their primary roles, fostering personal and professional growth. Skill-based task delegation ensures that multiple team members are adept at handling essential responsibilities, promoting resilience during times of increased workload or unexpected absences.

Flexible Leave Policies:

Leave policies play a pivotal role in employee well-being. Unlimited paid time off (PTO) alleviates the stress of limited leave, allowing healthcare professionals to prioritize their well-being and attend to personal matters. Furthermore, flexible use of accrued leave, such as half-day increments or intermittent days off, empowers staff to tailor their time away from work to suit individual needs, contributing to a healthier work-life integration.

Technology Integration for Workflow Efficiency:

Embracing technological advancements enhances workflow efficiency, a critical component of workplace flexibility. Electronic Health Records (EHRs) streamline data management, enabling professionals to access patient information securely from various locations. Telemedicine platforms facilitate remote care delivery, expanding access to services and supporting a more flexible approach to healthcare. Collaboration platforms, fostering effective communication and coordination, enhance connectivity among healthcare teams, regardless of their physical location.

In conclusion, creating workplace flexibility in the health care industry is a multifaceted endeavor that involves reimagining scheduling practices, embracing remote work options, investing in skill development, refining leave policies, and leveraging technology. By implementing these strategies, healthcare organizations can cultivate environments that empower their workforce, enhance job satisfaction, and ultimately improve the delivery of patient care.

 

Let Robotech CAD Solutions help you find your solution for workplace flexibility. Send a message to info@robotechcad.com or call us at 201-792-6300.

3 Methods to Bring Your Workers Back into the Office

3 Methods to Bring Your Workers Back into the Office

As the world continues to recover from the effects of the pandemic, organizations are struggling to bring employees back into the office. Remote work has become the norm for many, and it is no secret that many employees do not want to give up the level of flexibility that working remotely has provided them. So, how can workplace leaders encourage these employees to return to the workplace? The answer lies in consistent, data-driven optimization of your portfolio.

To help you strategize your next workplace initiatives, we will explore three expert-curated strategies to get people back into the office and create a more dynamic, collaborative, and effective workplace.

1. Force high usage by shutting down areas

With global occupancy rates hovering around 12%, it continues to be difficult to uncover how employees want to work. Though this strategy will not directly lead to more employees returning to office, forcing high usage through strategic area shutdowns and consolidation is the foundation of building an office that employees will want to return to. By temporarily shutting down specific spaces, floors, or even entire buildings, you will create higher usage rates in the remaining areas that will uncover more pronounced insights into employee preferences, behaviors, and patterns.

A neighborhood or team-specific approach can be highly effective in this context. By assigning specific days for different teams or departments to work in the consolidated office, organizations can encourage team collaboration and foster a sense of belonging while creating a deeper understanding of occupancy patterns and trends, especially those from team to team.

To explore this strategy, you need to first determine what areas of your workplace you should shut down. Utilize the following steps as a good foundation for how you can make this decision with intent:

  1. Define your objectives: Clearly articulate the goals you aim to achieve through this experiment. Are you looking to swap unused space types for new ones? Do you want to realize the impact of design on space usage? Identifying your objectives will help guide your decision-making process.
  2. Analyze your occupancy data: If you have an existing means of data for your workplace, such as an Occupancy Intelligence Platform, utilize its data to analyze occupancy patterns. Look for trends such as underutilized floors and space types. Also, keep in mind your build’s total capacity usage to help determine how many spaces you can reasonably shut down without causing overcrowding.
  3. Prioritize based on potential ROI: Rank the floors and spaces you want to remain open based on their potential for generating pronounced insights. As general guidance, closing down an equal balance of popular and unpopular spaces can give you a better idea of how employees would behave in a smaller office space. Closing down the most unpopular spaces can create more pronounced insights as to what popular spaces employees enjoy the most and why they are so greatly enjoyed.

By experimenting with workplace availability and analyzing the resulting data, organizations can better understand how to optimize their office space for employee preferences and productivity.

2. Prioritize optimizing for collaboration, design,  and well-being

Organizations must focus on creating office experiences that make commuting worthwhile. To achieve this, prioritize optimizing collaborative spaces, as collaboration is one of the primary motivators for employees to work in-office and it helps enhance company culture. Design is also regarded as one of the most inspiring factors for employees to make the commute.

Though it may not directly correlate to more employees coming into the office, well-being must be at the forefront of your strategy too, as transitioning from remote to hybrid/in-person work can be difficult for employees. By offering spaces that focus on wellness, organizations have the opportunity to build an empathetic work culture through the built workplace.

Optimize for collaboration

  • Provide a diverse range of collaborative spaces: Offer a mix of open and private collaborative areas, meeting rooms, and huddle spaces to address various collaboration styles.
  • Equip spaces with advanced collaboration tools: Incorporate technology-enabled solutions in collaborative spaces, such as interactive whiteboards, video conferencing systems, and space availability kiosks.
  • Encourage team bonding and informal interactions: Create comfortable social spaces, such as lounges and cafes, to promote spontaneous conversations and team-building activities away from the traditional office setting.

Optimize for design

  • Create inspiring and visually appealing workspaces: Incorporate natural lighting, modular furniture, and unique decor to create a beautiful and inspiring in-office experience.
  • Reflect company culture and values through design: Use design elements that align with the organization’s values and culture, such as branding, colors, and themed spaces, to inspire pride in employees and reinforce a sense of identity.
  • Implement sustainable design elements: Integrate natural elements, such as plants, greenery walls, natural materials, and water features, to enhance employee well-being and create an office space that is environmentally friendly.

Optimize for well-being

  • Focus on employee comfort: Invest in ergonomic furniture, standing workstations, and adjustable temperature/lighting controls to provide employees with comfortable, customizable environments.
  • Provide health-oriented spaces and initiatives: Offer on-site wellness programs and facilities, such as gyms, yoga rooms, meditation spaces, mother’s rooms, nap pods, and quiet spaces to promote employee physical and mental well-being while in the office.
  • Encourage movement: Design the office layout to promote movement, such as strategically located break rooms and social areas, to stimulate circulation and prevent sedentariness.

Regularly seek employee feedback and continuously adapt and adjust to evolving employee needs. Open lines of communication and a willingness to improve the office environment can foster a strong sense of belonging and commitment among employees.

3. Utilize artificial intelligence (AI)

In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing world, harnessing the power of artificial intelligence has given businesses additional tools to help them stay ahead of the curve. AI has proven to be a game-changer, revolutionizing work processes and enabling faster, easier, and more confident decision-making. From writing emails to coding and writing spreadsheet formulas, AI streamlines tasks across all job functions and industries.

The use of AI in the workplace industry can help further transform the decision-making process from being assumptions-based and time-consuming, to being data-driven and fast-paced. Just recently, VergeSense announced their collaboration with ChatGPT to leverage AI in analyzing workplace occupancy data, resulting in quicker and more confident decision-making without needing to manually analyze data.

By utilizing AI in your workplace to streamline data analysis and decision-making, you can better adapt to every-changing employee needs and build a workplace built on your workforce’s actual behaviors.

Create data-driven results

As the post-pandemic workplace continues to evolve, organizations have a unique opportunity to reshape their office spaces by building strategy and decisions around employee experience. By experimenting with workplace availability, optimizing spaces for the ideal in-office experience, and utilizing AI for data-driven decision making, organizations can create a greater demand for in-office work and foster a more dynamic, collaborative, and innovative working environment.