Customer stories · Higher Education
RCS England consolidated two floors into one and saved over £40,000 a year.
The Royal College of Surgeons of England released a floor, reclaimed 300+ hours of admin a year, and saw 85% of staff meet the minimum office policy without enforcement.
The situation
Before Kadence
- Policy required staff in the office 20% of the time, one to two days a week, and many were not meeting it, with concern that hybrid working would lead to disengagement
- No desk booking system to support hybrid working, and staff wary of taking on more new tools
- Teams working in silos, with little contact across departments
- Coordinating space and check-ins by hand took significant time each week, with no structured way to support staff with mobility or ergonomic needs
- A goal to consolidate two floors into one and cut facilities costs without disrupting how people worked
What changed
With Kadence
- Desk booking inside Microsoft Teams with single sign-on, so the rollout streamlined an existing need rather than asking people to change how they work
- Team visibility showing where colleagues are sitting, so staff choose to sit together across departments
- An AI assistant in Teams that takes plain requests such as “Book me a desk for Thursday” or “Who’s in today?”
- Desks set aside for mobility and ergonomic needs, bookable by the people who need them without asking for special treatment
- Automated desk release and AI-assisted booking in place of manual check-in tracking and double-booking fixes
- In-office days that staff choose to take because they can see who is in and know they will have a desk
Two floors to one
RCS England set out to consolidate two office floors into one and roll out new hybrid policies at the same time, with the aim of improving operational efficiency and cutting facilities costs. The risk was in two parts: managing the logistics of less space, and making sure the change did not disrupt how people worked. Kadence was chosen for its simplicity, its fit with existing operations and its native Microsoft Teams integration. Because booking ran inside tools staff already used, with no separate login, adoption was immediate and the floor was released without a change in how people worked. The annual saving comes from that floor.
Attendance without a mandate
Like many institutions, RCS England had departments that sat, communicated and collaborated only within their own groups, and an attendance policy that many people were not meeting. Rather than enforce it, the college made coming in easier. Staff can see who is in, coordinate their schedules with colleagues and book a desk without uncertainty, and the AI assistant in Teams means doing so takes a single message. People began choosing to come in more often, and to sit with other teams when they did. RCS England puts the increase in cross-team collaboration at 50%, and credits the change with more social connections between staff and new internal social clubs.
Admin hours and accessible desks
Managing desks and office resources had been a manual process: the operations team tracked check-ins by hand, fixed double bookings as they arose and answered a steady stream of booking queries. Some staff needed desks near lifts or toilets, or with adjustable-height configurations, and there was no structured way to manage that. A portion of desks is now reserved for mobility and ergonomic needs, and users book them themselves. Automated desk release and AI-assisted booking removed the rest of the manual work, and the hours it took have gone back into higher-value priorities.
“Kadence has become second nature, like getting a coffee. It’s woven into how we work.”
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