Tips To Choose The Best Desk Booking Software For The Hybrid Workplace

As soon as Covid-19 vaccines came into the market, most companies are looking forward to reopening their offices. However, some of them choose the hybrid work model where the employees can split their time between work from home and working in the office. Due to this reason, the concept of having a permanent desk in the office is a past thing now. When the employees work in the office thrice or twice a week, it becomes difficult to manage the working space. It is where the concept of desk booking software evolves.

The Validation of This Concept

For many years this concept was valid. Traditionally, employees were allowed to reserve a space as their workstations. Some of the software vendors have extended their offerings where the companies can choose and book desks. It is relevant along with features like visitor management tools. It becomes easier for freelancers and contractors to work in the office as per their hybrid work schedule.

How Does This Software Work?

The hot desk booking software lets employees or freelancers choose a specific workspace for the total duration of days. In some cases, these workers can reserve the desk well in advance. In colloquial terms, it gets recognized as hoteling. Moreover, you need to come to the office and claim a particular desk that is available. It works on a first-come and first-serve basis. When you are not booking the desk in advance, the process is known as hot desking. Most of the vendors offer the clients both these options according to their preference.

In addition to that, you will get to see the office floor plan that offers to show the individual workspaces, including the standing desk, offices, common area, and even the meeting room. The manager of the company can designate each of these desks for their employees. They can be assigned based on reservation, permanent booking, or even hot desk.

The Technique of Utilizing This Software

Employees can take the help of mobile apps or the internet to search for the available workspace. They can use the official QR code or RFID tag to get to their desk. As long as the pandemic period continues, employees can take the help of the hot desking software. Most of them refer to this technique to prevent situations where they need to share the space with too many employees on a particular day.

Elsewise, employees can also submit a reservation request. Either it gets automatic approval or gets forwarded to their manager for approval before your desk gets finalized. To ensure proper social distancing, some software office managers make the adjacent desk unavailable to the employees.

In some instances, the software integrates with the hardware. In these situations, one can even check the real-time availability of the desk with the help of various cues.

Consider The Factors Before Choosing the Best Desk Booking Software

In addition to some of the above factors, you can select the desk booking software based on specific considerations. Check for this consideration in the below section.

Look for a modular system

If you are checking the larger room, then it often comes with multiple models. These models provide various tools, including visitor management, move management, or facility management. Also, you need to be sure that you can pay for just the desk if that is your only requirement.

Check for the employees' health features

Every city or state has its regulations regarding the Covid-19 situation. If your company has workers from various parts of the country, make sure to look for options that offer the best health-related features. For instance, you may find multiple vendors who provide questionnaires that screen out the health-related problems before the employees come to the office. If any team member shows up with Covid-19 symptoms, then the reservation automatically gets canceled.

Have a backup plan and beware of complexity

If the desk booking software is overly complicated, then the employees look for spot booking options. It can cause unnecessary chaos if your employees cannot find their desks at the proper interval. It can also affect your impromptu meeting sessions. During such scenarios, you can choose the option of the office desk booking software. You must also have some of the bookings done on a hot desk to help workers who forget to book in advance.

Don't forget about the security factor

You must respect the private data of your employees. Make it a point that you do not publish the security information. Before choosing your desk for an Autonomous hybrid office through the booking software, you must ensure that it offers standard privacy compliance, enterprise-grade encryption, and various other security measures, including SSO support.

Use proper tools to have a cost-saving affair

During the advent of the pandemic situation, the company went towards the condition of empty offices. These instances had various expenses, including electricity, heating, and many more. Companies now deal with these open spaces by offering their employees a hybrid workplace to reduce the cost. You can do it by downsizing the office space.

Use the data for optimizing space

Once you use the desk booking software to get to your office, you must not use the data to monitor individual employees. Instead, you should use the data to manage the office space efficiently. You should do it because it can tempt the manager and consciously or unconsciously favor the employees who come to the office frequently over the rest who conduct their office from home.

In Conclusion

Many of the desk booking software offer the companies to track the desk that their employees use. It can help companies to manage their space efficiently and effectively. But when the companies use these hybrid work technologies to monitor individual workers, it becomes rather tricky. Hence, one should not use it as a measure to check the team member's presence. Instead, you can use tracking data to check on your employees.

When you provide your employees with the option of a hybrid office, you must take the help of the booking software to maintain the convenience of working.