As IT managers, you’re likely spending a lot of time grappling with the complexities of your company’s transition to hybrid work.
It can feel like a monumental task: integrating new solutions into your existing tech stack, driving adoption in your company, and demonstrating clear ROI on these investments. All on top of your other day-to-day responsibilities.
In many ways, you’ve become the architect of the future of your company. But you’re desperately short on time!
The good news is that you don’t have to do it alone. In this guide, we’ll be taking you through a step-by-step approach to hybrid work from an IT Manager’s perspective, giving you all of the information and tips you need to handle the transition to a new way of working.
Understanding IT's Role in Hybrid Work and Desk Booking
Hybrid work is about more than just providing employees with the option to work from home.
It has become a key tool for companies looking to empower their employees and IT Managers to do their best work wherever they are and boost performance as a result. Hybrid work software enables companies to manage their office and workspace desk booking, and room booking, and coordinate their teams so that employees can collaborate where and when they need to.
As IT Managers, you play a crucial role in the move to hybrid. You are responsible for identifying and implementing the right hybrid work software into your company’s existing workflow.
Your work is likely to encompass:
- Understanding and catering to the in-office and remote work needs of your company
- Defining the requirements for hybrid work software and desk/room booking solutions
- Ensuring system compatibility and smooth integration of new tools
- Supporting tech proficiency and adoption of new solutions among employees
The ultimate result of your work will be introducing an entirely new tool to your teammates. But what kind of tool do they need?
How to Identify Your Needs for Desk Booking Systems
Identifying the specific needs of your organization is crucial to choosing a hybrid work solution that will work best for you.
Whether you’re a small startup or a global company with offices in every continent, you’ll have your own specific daily operations, workflows, and collaboration patterns.
Here are three steps IT managers can take toward understanding where a hybrid operating platform will fit into your company’s unique setup:
- Conduct an assessment of your current workflow and employee work patterns.
How often and why do teammates collaborate in person, or choose to work from home? How do they currently use technology to help them navigate the day-to-day of hybrid work? How should any desk booking software integrate with your company’s tech stack? - Collect input from as many departments as possible.
How do hybrid work habits and needs differ from department to department? Who is likely to be an early adopter of hybrid software, and who might need more time to adjust? Consider identifying key personas in your company and how they respond to hybrid work. - Zoom out. What is the bottom line?
Where are you looking to move the needle? How can a hybrid work platform help you to be more productive as an organization, by encouraging in-person collaboration or enhancing individual contribution? How can it help you save on real estate costs by giving you insights into the real-time usage of your spaces?
By getting to grips with the current dynamic of office-based and remote work, and taking time to understand how that dynamic can evolve, you’ll start seeing where any future solution could fit into your wider plans.
Evaluating Hot Desk Booking Software and Space Management Solutions
So you’ve understood why IT is important to the hybrid work conundrum, and done some thinking about your specific organizational needs.
Now it’s time to choose the desk booking software that works best for you.
Let’s break this into two main areas: your technical needs and your cultural needs.
In order to evaluate the tech side, consider the specifications of solutions, their integration capabilities, and the security features required to support your infrastructure efficiently. You could ask yourself…
- Does the solution integrate within our current tech stack? (Slack / Microsoft Teams / Google Workspace)
- Will the minimum viable implementation work for our organization?
- Is the software available as both a desktop and mobile app?
- Can we uphold our data security and privacy standards?
For your cultural needs, consider how different desk booking feature sets complement your existing hybrid work dynamic, and how they can help it evolve. For example…
- Do you anticipate needing to set office days or regular team meetings?
- Do you require detailed reporting about the use of your offices and workplaces?
- Do you want an AI-driven platform for smart recommendations on scheduling and space management?
- Is the UI and UX up to scratch, and easily understandable to all kinds of employees?
The hybrid work platform you eventually go for should be one that integrates seamlessly to both your technical infrastructure and company culture.
Driving Adoption of Desk Hoteling Software and Ensuring ROI
You’re almost there! You’ve done your research into different hybrid work platforms and chosen the one that you think will fit perfectly into both your tech stack and the company’s vision.
Now it’s time to introduce it to your team and get them using it!
Although you might think this is the responsibility of your Operations or HR team, there are still plenty of things you can do as an IT manager to help your teammates navigate and understand their new tool.
- Give a tutorial on your new tool
After all of your research and due diligence, no one likely knows your hybrid operating platform as well as you. Consider talking your team through the ins and outs of your new tool (or sending around a company memo!) so that everyone knows exactly what it’s capable of — and how it can benefit them. - Offer onboarding help
If people are still struggling to use your hybrid work tool — consider helping them onboard. Whether it’s you or your IT colleagues hopping on a video call for 15 minutes to give a quick bit of assistance, your team plays a crucial part in ensuring everyone has the same access to the new software. - Ensure ROI by aligning with finance and operations teams
If you’ve gone for a platform that provides full analytics and data insights into desk and room booking, this information will be invaluable to your finance and operations teams. Giving them access to real-time data on how your physical spaces are being used will help them make the best possible decisions about your company’s real estate moving forward.
Kadence as Your Hybrid Work Partner
At Kadence, we deeply understand the challenges for IT managers navigating a new way of working. Through years of speaking to our customers and fine-tuning our product, we’ve come up with a solution that we are confident addresses these challenges.
From desk and room booking to smart space management and in-depth insights and analytics, Kadence provides organizations of all shapes and sizes with a full feature set to streamline workflows and boost productivity.
With a strong focus on seamless integration, security, and ease of use, we provide IT managers with an out-of-the-box solution for your unique tech stack. That includes integration with Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Workspace — and plenty of other tools.
At the end of the day, your hybrid work software should work for you, not against you. That’s why we’ve made it our mission to help IT managers simplify the process of integrating their new hybrid work tools. Our team will go above and beyond to ensure our public API can be plugged into your native system to get Kadence up and running as quickly as possible.
If you want to learn more about how Kadence can integrate with your company’s tech stack, you can find out more here.
If you’d like to see Kadence in action, don’t hesitate to get in touch and book a demo with us.
