Navigating the next phase of hybrid work with RSPB

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is the UK’s largest nature conservation charity, inspiring everyone to give nature a home and secure a healthy environment for wildlife. The same philosophy applies to their company and people. The company aims to foster a culture of collaboration and productivity amongst their people, while optimizing their real estate footprint.

Case Study Logo - Navigating the next phase of hybrid work with RSPB
  • Industry Non-profit organization
  • Employees 2500
  • Location United Kingdom
  • Features Desk Booking
    Space Analytics
    Health certification

“Kadence has helped us find a way to keep people organised and allow flexible desking in the office buildings that are currently open.”

Challenges

The RSPB has over 2,500 employees and 12,000 volunteers, making it one of the largest wildlife conservation charities in the UK. The company has always aimed to foster a culture of collaboration and productivity amongst their people. 

With the new way of working, it is clear the team’s needs were also changing, and their office space would need to change – the leadership team decided it was time to rethink their workplace strategy, with one that supported their hot desking model.

Prior to the pandemic, the team had no way to manage the hot desks. There were a few hot desks in selected buildings, but the majority of the employees had their own dedicated desks. The company has also previously undertaken a project to ascertain the efficiency of desk usage with the goal to utilize their workspaces more efficiently, and the pandemic simply accelerated that initiative and their need to change.

Results

  1. Implemented desk hoteling model within weeks, with a process that can be rolled out office by office swiftly.
  2. 98% MoM growth in desk bookings, as people rediscover the value of being in the office, suggesting people are feeling engaged and excited to return.
  3. Using Kadence has helped RSPB accommodate all of their 2,500 employees, while saving costs on unnecessary office expansion plans.

Problems we solved

Implemented flexible desking model with ease

When the RSPB team was searching for an effective flexible desk solution, it was clear that the selected solution needed to be user-friendly, easy to set up to cater for a large, diverse group of employees and volunteers to help the team implement the flexible desking model quickly. 

That’s when they turned to Kadence.

“Kadence’s overall package and solution was deemed most suitable from the tender we performed. The team had a very flexible approach with their product development, and was open to developing the product to meet our future needs.”


Using Kadence’s desk booking feature, employees at RSPB have the option to choose where, and how they work when they decide to come to the office. Desks are laid out in color-coded floor plans, employees can easily search and book an available desk (in green) right from the floor plan that looks just like their office. It was easy, interactive for the teams to use. Not only did this help the workplace team manage who was in or out of the office, it also made the whole desk booking implementation painless and quick to adopt.

Kadence office neighborhoods


Forecast demand for desks more accurately

The team at RSPB needed a flexible desk booking tool to not only manage how people used the spaces, but also to prepare for the demand of spaces throughout the week, and months to come. They needed a live office view across all locations, so building admins can get a sense of how desks are being booked and used, who is in and out of the office, which helped manage and forecast the influx of office traffic more accurately.

Kadence’s space usage analytics has allowed the workplace team to make informed decisions about how office spaces are being used, enabling teams to plan intentional, productive time together in the office, and giving them the ability to use data to right size office spaces across different locations in the future.

Using Kadence has helped RSPB accommodate all of their 2,500 employees, without needing to make major changes to their real estate portfolio, saving on costs with flexible desking.

 

Kadence insights

From a facilities management point of view, the flexible admin control functionality within the platform has also allowed the building administrators to make changes and manage different spaces easily across multiple floors and buildings. For example, building admins were able to remotely control which desks are bookable or restricted to use to maintain office capacity.

Navigating the next phase of hybrid work

With the rollout of Kadence, they were able to facilitate the way of working swiftly. Over the last two months, office utilization has been significantly increased with a 98% month-on-month growth in desk bookings as people rediscover the value of being in the office, suggesting people are feeling engaged and excited to return.

“Kadence’s software is very easy to use, thus creating less of an administration pull from employees needing help or guidance.”

Get started with Kadence

Discover how Kadence can help bring your people back in a hybrid workplace

Book demo
Kadence hybrid working OS