Desk booking technology can do wonders to break the inertia employees feel with a return to the physical office. How? Employees leaving the confines of their home office seek another comfort zone at their workplace. This may include a peaceful corner desk with ample natural light, amenities like printers, notebooks, sanitizers, or systems with specific software.
A desk booking software can help employees identify and reserve desks with all these facilities when coming for in-office work. Thus, eliminating any potential conflict arising from space sharing. This digital tool will also make your team feel confident enough to return to physical offices. Also, it will optimize their working hours as they would waste less time finding an ideal place to work.
But, let’s not jump the gun yet! Before learning about the advantages of desk booking software, let’s understand what it is.
Table of Contents
What is Desk Booking Software?
Think of it as a tool that helps you scout and reserve an ideal work desk in advance in various facilities for a day or more. Booking a desk in advance using desk booking software is also referred to as hoteling and is not much different than reserving a table at a fine dining restaurant.
Another way of pre-booking a desk is by reaching the office and reserving a workstation for the day at that very moment. How? By using a QR code available on the desk booking software. Simply flash the QR code, check availability, and reserve a workstation based on the available choices. This is called hot-desking and can be done for both individual employees as well as group bookings.
Since desk booking software is essentially a sophisticated app on your phone or laptop, you can check out the entire virtual plan of a facility before reserving a desk. While searching, you can also observe individual work stations, their location within an office, common areas, conference rooms, other resources, and locations.
All your employees need to do is check desk availability and send a booking request through the software app for approval.
5 Benefits of Using a Desk Booking Software
-
Encourages Optimal Office Space Usage
Since desk booking software keeps you informed of capacity utilization in real-time, you know whether you need a bigger space or not. This helps you reduce your real estate footprint. It also tells you whether there is a need to increase the number of specific types of desks or place them in different areas, such as close to the balcony or open corners, to boost bookings.
For instance, the CEO and other senior managers at HSBC have given up their premium location office desks for hot desking. Since they travel quite a bit and don’t use their desks as much, they are now available for use by other employees who book them using desk booking software. By doing this, the organization has reduced its overall real estate footprint by a whopping 40%.
-
Awards Productivity and Flexibility to Employees
The hybrid work approach is here to stay for the foreseeable future. In such a scenario, desk booking software helps employees reserve desks without any nasty surprises.
When they receive the flexibility to select a comfy corner with desired amenities, they look forward to coming to the office and tend to work more productively. In fact, the flexibility desk booking software offers by letting employees book ideal workstations can help boost their employee experience as well.
-
Reduces interruptions
When you pre-book a table at a restaurant or any other entertainment venue, are you ever approached by individuals expressing a desire to use the same space? No! Similarly, when you reserve a desk using desk booking software, everyone else using the application knows not to approach the booked workstation.
This means you can work peacefully without any interruptions. This benefit doesn’t only extend to individuals but also to a group of people. Since teams can also pre-book meeting or conference rooms using desk booking software, they avoid being disturbed by fellow workers scouting a place to conduct their meetings.
-
Facilitates COVID-19 Compliance
Imagine showing up to your work desk only to realize it’s not sanitized because no one knew you were coming. Working out of such a place can have serious health repercussions. Now, such a scenario is avoidable if only desk booking system was involved.
If an individual reserved a desk in advance or on-site using a desk booking software, the supervisor or facility manager would have intimated the janitorial staff to get the desk ready. And, they would’ve cleaned and sanitized it, keeping all COVID-19 protocols in mind.
-
Reduces Fringe Costs
When facility managers have a snapshot of space usage and occupancy rates in front of them, thanks to desk booking software, they can tweak maintenance costs and reduce amenity purchases.
For instance, by leveraging insights on space usage, facility managers can significantly reduce the quantity of stationery, printers, coffee machines, and other equipment they buy. Moreover, if the software indicates that only one floor of the office is used for the majority of time, they can ensure that ACs and other electric equipment are turned off on other floors, thus saving on utility bills.
These nuanced practices are made possible due to the insights provided by the desk booking software, which eventually translates to significant savings.
Parting Thoughts
A desk booking software doesn’t cost much but is a win-win for all stakeholders using it. What’s more, implementing this tool is ridiculously easy. All you need to do is provide basic training to your employees on how to book and cancel requests and raise complaints.
So, invest in desk booking software to efficiently manage your office space better. WorkInSync is a leading desk booking solution that helps you manage your hybrid workplace. From utilization data to desk hoteling, floor plan to contact tracing, you get a number of features on the mobile app.
You can also book for a demo to know more about the product.
