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Tag: office space management software

Say Hello to Our New Slack Desk Booking Integration

Posted on by Luke Christian-Farman
Add your interactive office floor plan to Slack so your teams can book spaces and collaborate inside Slack
Add Kadence to your Slack tool stack

300,000. That is the number of Slack messages sent each second of every day. It’s powerful, and for Slack users, it’s the first application you open up to check your DMs, Threads, and Channels. 

It’s no surprise, we all do it, and the reason why we do it is so we can stay completely in the loop. We desire to remain digitally connected as much as possible so we can plan, organize meetings, have an idea of what our teams are up to, and check out the various channels we’re involved in. In fact, ‘9 hours is the period an average user of Slack is signed in for.’

Think of it this way: If you’ve gone hybrid, and you use Slack as your digital ‘tech stack’ wallet for all of your tools, why not unlock the power of hybrid with Kadence too? You have it open all day anyway, and I’m telling you, it’ll make your life so much easier. 

Here’s why:

The benefits of Slack Desk Booking

An easier way of checking in

Check-in notifications are a powerful weapon to wield so your team members never miss another booking. It also means you get cleaner booking data because more people remember to check into their bookings. Now with Slack, users get instant reminders of when their onsite, room, or desk booking begins allowing them to check in from wherever they are, straight from Slack. 

All your tools in one place

People are more successful in their work when all of the applications they use are in one single place. For many, Slack is like the entryway to all of the tools your company uses day to day. In fact, those tools become even more valuable when they’re in Slack. That’s why Kadence makes hybrid working powerful for Slack users. Better yet, there’s zero setup, passwords, or training needed. Simply ‘add’ Kadence to your ‘Slack Workspace’ and enjoy the benefits of hybrid in one place.

Coordinate with your team

Slack is fantastic at keeping you in close connection with your teammates. You use it primarily to communicate and more often than not that includes talking about when you’re next planning on going into the office. There’s only one thing missing: An overview of your schedule. So after thinking about this, the Kadence team sat down in their secret laboratory and decided that Kadence users on Slack shouldn’t have to leave to go to another app to see their schedule or make a booking while they’re in the middle of making a plan with their teammates. They should stay right where they are. So that’s what we did, and the result is better than we expected. Users can now see an entire overview of their bookings for the week allowing them to check in, self-certify, and view each booking on any given day, all inside Slack!

Conclusion

Just like our existing integration with Microsoft Teams, Slack is an essential tool for bringing all teams and communication into one place. It makes sense to keep it that way. It also makes sense to unleash the strength of a hybrid working platform like Kadence inside the tool you’re already using without having to go anywhere else or download another app. It’s easy, effortless, and effective. 

To find out how to unlock the power of hybrid through Kadence within Slack, book your demo here. 

How many apps do you, and your teams use to get things done?

Introducing New Assigned Desks To Help Hybrid Teams Thrive

Posted on by Luke Christian-Farman

Let’s be clear, hybrid work looks different for everyone, and to a large degree, it always will. For some, it looks like planning to come into the office to connect with your friends whenever you’re going in. For others it’s a regular rhythm where you plan to come in on specific days of the week, having a consistent connection with those that sit nearby. 

There’s no right and wrong, it’s all valid, but spending time trying to understand what works best for your organization, and what you, and your people need is always a good place to start. Here are some things to consider:

What do your people need?

  • Come-and-go flexibility
  • Regular in-person team connection 
  • To see where their friends are working

What do you need?

  • A Smooth space booking process for your team
  • To know which spaces are being used and what to expect
  • More smart space management options

Flexible working will sometimes mean having to stay agile, but as long as you can keep on top of the needs of your people and your spaces you’ll never stray far from the road. Here are 3 tips to find out what you need:

 

3 ways to find out what you need

  1. Talk to your team managers, and team members to understand how they work
  2. Check your team’s booking activity on the Kadence web app to see how often they connect with each other in person at the office
  3. Look at your team’s booking history to see if they’re using the same spaces more regularly
  4. Review your space usage, and find out what areas of the office are more popular than others 

 

Picture this: You wake up in the morning after the weekend, the sun is shining and you’re pumped to go into the office that day. You don’t need to pre-book a desk because your manager has already assigned you one that you use regularly. On your way to the office, you wander past your favorite coffee shop and grab some drinks for yourself and the teammates you know will be sitting at desks near yours. You bump into them at the front door, and although you all arrived early you can all check into your desks anyway. 

You see, Assigned Desks are more than just a tool to maintain the organization of your office space. For your people, it’s the thing they look forward to when they come in, and here’s why:

Assigned Desks, good for your people and your data 

Assigned Desks 

Perfect visibility on who is sitting where

With Assigned Desks, everyone has perfect booking visibility. Everyone knows exactly who is working and where at any time, and on any given day. Coworkers can connect and shoot the breeze with their friends who are working close by, and Facility managers can better understand how their spaces are being used by getting better data. Not only is this a perfect solution for companies to know exactly who’s onsite in case of emergencies, but it is also great for your people to know that they have a guaranteed space to do their best work, and connect with friends every time they come into the office.

Build deeper connections with coworkers

One of the main reasons your people want to come into the office is because they want to connect with their friends. What Assigned Desks does is encourage coworkers to connect by giving them a familiar space to do their best work on a regular basis. They’ll have their own spot to work with all the amenities they need, and they’ll be close to their team members more consistently enabling those deeper work relationships to form. 

Coworker connection is crucial, if not THE most important part of any team and assigned desks does all the legwork for you. Getting this right means your teams will be successful in their work, and in their lives. By assigning desks to members of your team on specific days of the week, you will encourage those regular touch points your people will have with one another on a consistent basis, the outcome of which will result in a shared mission, company vision, and objectives. Now, who wouldn’t want that?

Maintain an organized workspace

For Office or Facility Managers looking for more space management options to add to their hybrid tool kit, Assigned Desks are far more powerful than you think. Does it encourage team connection? Yes. Does it mean you can know exactly who is working where at any time? Yes. Does it also mean you can clean up the chaos and confusion of hot desking hassles and enable your spaces to run smoothly and autonomously without having to step in and intervene every 2 seconds? 100%!

As a way of optimizing your spaces in a way you’ve perhaps not experienced before, Assigned Desks enables you to equally share desks of your choice amongst any team members you choose and on any given day of the week. All your team needs to do is show up, and if there’s a no-show, you can either give that spot to someone else or release the desk back into the system to be booked by another team member. It really couldn’t be more simple. 

Understand behaviors and trends

With Assigned Desks, your data on how your spaces are being used is more accurate, period! Those that have desks assigned know where they’re sitting, and those who are simply ‘desk hotelling’ know exactly where they can and cannot work also. Your office is organized, there are no booking conflicts as everyone knows what’s available, and your people can cancel bookings allowing you to reassign a desk to someone else ahead of time. It’s a win-win, and the actionable data you get back from how your office is being used is a fantastic resource for making important decisions like repurposing space, cutting costs, and it can also play a huge part in crafting a hybrid policy that works for you, and your people.  

Conclusion

Let’s be even clearer, hybrid work looks different for everyone, and to a large degree, it always will. The very least we can do is bundle problem after problem and turn it into one blindingly simple solution to take care of that, right? Exactly!

Interested in getting started? Get in touch with our team for a demo.

How do you encourage team connection, and consistently maintain office organization in your company?

4 new Space Management System enhancements you need to know

Posted on by Luke Christian-Farman

The summertime is more often than not a quieter month in the office for most workplaces making it a great opportunity to discover how you can benefit from a Space Management System for your people’s return! With summer coming to an end with people coming back from their time away, is your office ready to receive them?

If this is you, and you’re not ready for all the changes autumn brings, never fear! Check out some of our new smarter space management features that’ll take the pressure off managing your spaces so you and your teams can thrive.

Release unassigned neighborhoods for anyone to use 

Office Neighborhoods are a great way of assigning specific areas of the office to specific teams or departments of your choice, allowing only those within that team to book spaces there. It’s a great space management system tool to help you do more with less space, helping you save real-estate costs and utility costs. It’s also a fantastic way of boosting cross-functional team productivity by balancing out desk usage, and coordinating which teams you would like to be close to one another. 

With Kadence, admins can make neighborhoods public or private, assign teams to neighborhoods on scheduled days of the week (eg. the Product team on Mondays, and Wednesdays, the Engineering team on Tuesdays, and Thursdays, etc), and If that’s not enough, this newest release means that on the days where there are no teams assigned to a specific day, Kadence automatically makes those neighborhoods public allowing anyone to reserve a space there. By selecting ‘make neighborhood public on unassigned days’, you can simply sit back, watch your spaces fill up with no manual intervention, and know great work is being done. 

smarter space manager

Search for bookings and teams fast using names or emails

Finding a particular booking in Kadence is easy. Using the filters provided admins can find precisely what they’re looking for within just a few clicks. This is useful for a number of reasons to locate what you’re looking for whether it’s a team, a neighborhood, or even a booking status – but what if you just wanted to look for a particular person without having to filter exactly what you needed every time to find them?

A new search filter on the bookings menu lets you instantly find who you’re looking for, their booking status, and booking history with just their name or email. 

smarter space manager

Find your guest’s bookings in one click

Looking after your guests is important. Similarly to looking after your employees, a good host should always be aware of where their guests are working, and who they’re with so that they may be looked after whilst onsite and given a great experience in your office. That’s why we wanted to make it easier for you to find guest bookings quickly rather than pick them out amongst the rest of your bookings. We decided to separate employee bookings, and guest bookings because the very nature of these bookings is vastly different from one another. Your employees are likely to have more of a consistent rhythm of bookings whereas your guest bookings will be ad-hoc, and less regular depending on whether they are regular contractors, new hires for interviews, or even one-off facility service professionals. 

Simply go to your filters under the bookings tab, select ‘Individuals’ and select ‘Only Guest Bookings’ to see all of your guest’s bookings, and their booking status.

smarter space manager

Conclusion

Space management should be a done deal, autonomous, and streamlined, and SHOULD NOT be the extra headache of a problem to add to the many that come with solutionless hybrid working. However, armed with Kadence’s solution for making the coordination, and management of your spaces second nature, you can focus on the things that really matter, knowing your spaces are being used and enjoyed by your people. 

Interested in getting started? Kick off your free trial today or get in touch with our team for a demo.

Are your offices ready for your people’s return?

3 Steps to a Successful Hybrid Work Model

Posted on by Dan Bladen

In this webinar, our Co-Founder & CEO, Dan Bladen, is joined by Shaun Ritchie (Co-Founder of Teem and Former Chief Workplace Experience Officer of WeWork) and Neal Piliavin (Former Director of Collaboration at HubSpot) to discuss the findings from our return-to-work research study, as well as the critical success factors to be addressed for a happy hybrid work model.

The way we work has changed forever, and the office needs to change too. It’s now a place for collaboration, team-building, spending time together, and experiencing company culture. People will no longer sit behind a desk 9-5, and will increasingly become more intentional about when and where they choose to work.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the discussion (Start watching at 15:35):

  • Social interactions with colleagues were the top reason for people to return to the workplace. Many also anticipate easier collaboration, quicker decisions, and better productivity once they are back.
  • Employee well-being: The Metaphysical energy that surrounds us. Being around people lifts our energy, and conversation is the medium, such as sharing ideas. Isolation is one of the worst forms of imprisonment, as human beings, we need to be around others to maintain our mental wellbeing.
  • The workplace/office manager’s role has changed and one of the main challenges is creating a balance of synchronous and asynchronous work – making sure coming to the office is a real occasion with tons of value and minimal friction.
  • The new role of the workplace manager is to organize coincidences: The community and serendipity element in the office has been difficult to replicate over the last year with remote working. For businesses looking to transition to hybrid working, it is important to use technology to orchestrate these interactions.
  • Successful organizations will have to rethink their workplace as a strategy (WaaS) with the right metrics and tools to maintain their competitive advantage.
  • Technology will be key to facilitating new ways of working: from provisioning the right equipment to WFH or organizing logistics for a more dispersed workforce to optimizing workspaces. Over one-third expect to be able to book desks in the office post-Covid.

Given how drastically the pandemic has changed the way we work, it is promising to see businesses rethinking their strategy and actively shifting to a hybrid working model – but it is also key to implement it in the right way. Hybrid working is more than just a mix of office locations, it is a new way to work and collaborate.

Book a demo with our team today to see how Kadence could help you build a successful hybrid workplace.