touchless workplace Archives

Safely manage your team’s return in the New Year

Posted on November 30, 2021 by Luke Christian-Farman

If you’re planning a safe return to the office for your team in the New Year, it’s important to put the right steps in place to ensure your team can be productive and safe while they work and collaborate.

With new variants and added uncertainty, there will continue to be ebbs and flows, ups and downs, as companies open up their offices again for Hybrid…which is exactly why companies are turning to Kadence.

The solution needs to be simple to use and fast to rollout, and now with Kadence it is. With all the essential tools you need in one place, you can quickly and effectively make sure your entire office is secure, and safe for your employees to return – here’s how.

Simple health sign-in – Ensure a safe and secure re-entry to the office

Admins can set health screening guidelines to align with their company’s health and safety policies. Determine employee health instructions and include anything you want from vaccine mandates to wearing a mask. Release desk bookings for no-shows and allow employees to book spaces up to 3 months in advance. Allow employees and visitors to self-certify before checking in to their reserved spaces from 1hr, 2hrs, or 24hrs of their arrival and prevent employees from checking in if they have not self-certified. With Kadence simple health sign-in, you set the parameters to keep your people safe. Find out more about our visitor management solution.

Team contact tracing – Manage people’s safety in the office

Access your team’s schedule in the Teams Activity overview to see when and where employees are working and see who they’re working with on the interactive floorplan. Know which spaces they’ve booked now and in the future and block out particular spaces or neighborhoods to implement social distance space booking for added safety.

Find out more about our people coordination solution.

Touchless experience – An all-in-one booking tool, all-in-one place

Employees can also book any space that’s available either near colleagues or anywhere on the floorplan with the right amenities they need for the day eg. Sit-stand desk, monitors, keyboard, etc. Reserve a private room for a group meeting, book a parking space for their ride, and admins can book on behalf of others all within the mobile app booking flow.

Find out more about our desk scheduling & room scheduling solutions.

Oversee capacity limits – Rich space usage insights for easy decision making

Easily understand space usage insights so you can set building and floor capacity limits and re-assign employees to under-used space. Control booking permission levels to anyone you choose and book on behalf of others helping you bring your team together on particular days.

Check out this post to learn how to set up self-certification to help meet the U.S. vaccination mandate requirements.

Interested to see how Kadence can help bring your team back to the office safely? Book a demo with one of our team today to find out more.

Dynamic desk scheduling for an era of flexible working

Posted on December 14, 2020October 2, 2023 by Luke Christian-Farman

View full blog series here

As the world transitions to a new way of working, one with social distancing, reduced real estate, and flexible working, it can be overwhelming when trying to decide what space management solution to use.

Challenges with existing space management systems

Static, clunky, legacy systems with limited flexibility and customization

Many of the existing workplace management systems were set up to manage offices operating in regular 9 to 5 hours. As Covid-related policies and government regulation keep evolving, workplace leaders and facilities managers are suddenly having to create new processes for flexible working, while at the same time ensuring the safety of employees and cleanliness of workspaces.

Employers need highly customizable controls and tools to manage their real estate and allocation of spaces, especially as most of their expensive real estate is sitting empty right now.

Difficulty finding and booking spaces with poor UX

Change is hard. With the new flexible, hybrid ways of working, it can be frustrating and confusing to employees without clear communications.

Employees need simple, intuitive ways to find and reserve working spaces that meet their needs (and assurance that these spaces are clean and safe), from hot desking to collaboration spaces to working from home. If you have desk booking, there is no physical representation of the digital state of the desk whether it is available or booked, therefore it is static and not dynamic.

Space inefficiency

Many buildings have remained empty for over 9 months, and employers are having a headache trying to figure out how much space they need to enable flexible working. Businesses need to manage their spaces in a smarter, more effective way.

Kadence Wx: built for dynamic spaces and people

Kadence Wx desk scheduling software has been built from the ground up to help you get your business back on track in a post Covid-19 world. We have focused on delivering the best solution for a return to the workplace and can help you every step of the way.

Customize how you want your spaces with WxCloud

We have built a highly dynamic, flexible solution to fit with your Covid-19 policies and your vision for returning to work. Just a few of our features include:

Integrate with your existing active directory systems for easy employee onboarding and management. Manage and group employees with teams, and track users’ experiences working in the office.
Control building, spaces and Covid-related settings with ease. Limit building and office capacity, ensure social distancing of desks, visualize high traffic areas and adjust your plans accordingly.
Easily manage your office spaces, rooms, desks, and neighborhoods to fit your needs.
Adjust and create user permissions with different access levels, defined by you, to help you collaborate with and manage your spaces and people.
Apply and adjust booking permissions for your employees to help control traffic and office capacity as well as restricting access in the event of a Covid-19 outbreak.

Enter Kadence WxApp: a people-first app

We built the Kadence WxApp with the goal of giving employees a simple, seamless experience when booking spaces. Simplicity, with no training, or guidance, required from the employer.

A clean, polished, friendly user experience was at the forefront of our minds when producing the app. No headaches, no fuss, just simplicity in booking on any device.
Employees can book a space from anywhere, at any time, in seconds, and on any device (app, iPad, desktop)
Helpful alerts, reminders, and notifications on bookings and company updates.
Easily share spaces and collaborate with team members.
We ensure that employees understand and feel comfortable with installing the application on their personal devices, describing the use of every permission we request, ensuring they know we don’t store or share their data, and allowing them to use an incognito mode, should they choose not to disclose any of their personal information.

Analyze and improve space efficiency with accurate data

The true power of an effective space management solution lies in being able to inform better space planning decisions by using different types of spaces efficiently, maximizing its full utilization and usefulness.

Hyperlocal location data for occupancy data, perfect for tracking activity, capacity, and employee traffic.
Our solution learns about how your spaces are being used overtime and makes informed decisions to protect employees, reduce real estate costs, and allow effective flexible working and collaboration.

If you’d like a chat or a demo with one of our team to see how our desk scheduling software can help you meet the challenges of the new workplace, why not pick a time in our calendar to suit you?

Touchless traffic light solution for desks gives employees confidence to get back to work safely

Posted on September 17, 2020October 2, 2023 by Team Kadence

Kadence for Desks is the new touchless desk management solution, with traffic light style indicator, that gives employees visual confidence to use flexible unassigned desks post-covid.

San Francisco and London, September 17, 2020 Kadence, the leading provider of cloud-connected smart wireless charging technology, has launched Kadence for Desks. It includes a wireless charging LightRing visual indicator that shows employees which desks are clean and available for use. The traffic light visual, combined with touchless check-in and convenient wireless power provides an improved safe and frictionless desk experience, with space utilization data insights to help optimize flexible working strategies.

At the end of 2019, over 73% of workplaces globally were rolling out flexible working strategies to enable more efficient use of real estate. Now, in the midst of COVID-19 when employees are predicted to visit the workplace less regularly, there is even more pressure on the real estate footprint. Flexible working is becoming even more of a necessity for a safe return to the workplace. However assigning, managing and cleaning hundreds, if not thousands, of desks across multiple office locations is a challenge for even the most agile organisations.

“It is now clear that hybrid working is here to stay and Covid has rapidly accelerated how organizations best utilize their real estate. Kadence for Desks means organizations are empowered to overcome the challenges around reducing touchpoints, clear communication to employees and optimizing space utilization. As more mobile and flexible ways of working become the norm, Kadence provides organizations with a crucial tool for a safe, confident and efficient return to the workplace.”

Dan Bladen, Co-founder and CEO at Kadence.

Kadence for Desks means that flexible desk policies such as hoteling and hot-desking can be implemented with confidence. The Kadence wireless charging LightRing uses the internationally known traffic light colours to clearly and intuitively show when a desk is safe to use. An employee knows green means clean and places their smartphone on the LightRing to enable a safe, touchless desk reservation or check-in. When a reservation ends the LightRing turns red, making it clear that the desk should not be used. Janitorial staff are instantly notified and when cleaning is complete they use the Kadence RFID keyfob to change the desk status to green, making the desk available for use again.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise who include Kadence for Desks in their portfolio of solutions to help customers with a safe return to the workplace stated:

“Kadence for Desks enables workplace leaders to provide a safe return to the office by setting social distancing policies and density rules, whilst providing clear visual communication on when desks are safe to use. This combined with a safe, touchless interaction with shared resources, and useful occupancy data insights, is a winning combination for a post-Covid workplace strategy.”

Christopher Riddles, Global IoT Workplace and Building Services Lead, HPE Pointnext Services at Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Kadence for Desks is available now, with the Kadence LightRing becoming available in Q4 2020. Kadence for Desks completes a full end to end desk management solution when integrated with your favourite desk scheduling software. Get in touch with our team to find out more.

Kadence help employees get back to work safely with new touchless meeting room experience

Posted on July 17, 2020October 2, 2023 by Team Kadence

Launching Kadence for Rooms : The new touchless meeting room solution that provides employees with the confidence of a safe meeting room experience in a post-covid workplace.

San Francisco and London, July 22, 2020: Kadence, the leading provider of cloud-connected wireless charging technology, has launched a first of its kind touchless meeting room solution that helps employees feel more confident about returning to work and using collaborative workspaces. ‘Kadence for Rooms’ combines a light status indicator with touchless wireless charging that automatically triggers in-room experiences. The solution integrates with leading meeting room booking and scheduling software, to instantly check-in and start in-room experiences such as video conferencing in one seamless action.

One example is the Kadence for Rooms integration with Envoy, a workplace platform provider focused on creating tools that make the workplace safer, without sacrificing a great experience or product adoption. Employees returning to the workplace can find and book clean and safe rooms when the green light-ring signifies that they are clean and available for use. Once they are in the meeting room, the employee can simply place their smartphone on a wireless charging spot to check-in or reserve the space. This action simultaneously launches a pre-booked video conference for a quick and efficient start to a meeting. For space planners, valuable data on room usage and occupancy is captured, which helps free up unused spaces improving availability.

“Kadence takes the meeting room booking experience to a new level by connecting touchless check-in and wireless charging. It helps us create safe, touchless experiences for our customers and their employees as they plan their return to the workplace. The integration also captures space usage and occupancy data for workplace teams without having to add another device in the infrastructure,” said Matt Harris, Head of Workplace & Technology, Envoy, about the value of the joint solution for both employee and space planner.

The global pandemic has brought new challenges for space planners and has accelerated many trends that were already gaining traction, such as mobility, flexible working and how spaces can be used more seamlessly with less friction. Now, the emphasis is on reducing physical touch points and ensuring clear communication to employees to show when spaces are clean and safe to use.

“Meetings need to be safe, touchless and more productive than ever before. Less room capacity due to social distancing will increase demand, and reliable occupancy data from touchless automatic check-in is key to increase the availability of clean and safe rooms. Companies that deploy touchless technology show their staff that they have taken appropriate steps to provide great spaces that don’t compromise safety.” commented Dan Bladen, CEO, Kadence.

Kadence for Rooms is available today, and is a full end to end meeting room solution when integrated with your favourite room scheduling and video conferencing software. The Kadence LightRing will be available in Q3 2020. Get started today with Kadence for Rooms + Envoy and get up to 10 FREE Envoy Rooms licences when you buy the Kadence Starter packs.

Want to find out more? Join Kadence and Envoy in our upcoming webinar on “How to enable a Covid-Safe touchless meeting experience” on Thursday 6th August, to discuss the challenges faced by space planners, and how this unique solution helps employees feel safe and confident as they return to the workplace.

The future of workplace experience with Envoy: Welcome employees back to the office with confidence

Posted on June 26, 2020October 2, 2023 by Dan Bladen

This week on our ‘Future of Workplace Experience’ series, we discussed with Justin Bullock, Head of Sales at Envoy on their phased return to the office and how Envoy Protect can help enable a safe work environment to bring employees back to the office with confidence. Check out our interview and key takeaways below.

Planning for a phased return with capacity limits

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Companies are planning shifts or phases of return: Currently Envoy is deployed in about 14,000 offices and 84 countries, so we’re getting a lot of feedback from our customers that helps guide us to create the solution that can ensure a safe return to the workplace.
Capacity limits vs office layouts: Companies need to think about what capacity limits for each phase, based on social distancing guidelines and the amount of spaces they have, and how will the office layouts change.

Ensure a safe return with Envoy Protect

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Return to work requires a seamless connection of the physical and virtual workplaces: For a long time Envoy has been an expert in how humans enter and interact with your physical workplace, with Envoy Protect it is a slight shift to focus on how do we bring our employees back to work safely and how do we manage that process?
Designed to bring employees back to the office with confidence: The solution focuses on some key areas such as employee screening, touchless workflow, capacity management functionality.

Meetings in the new normal

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Capacity management with meeting rooms: Smaller spaces like 1 or 2-person pods will be off limits in the first phase for hygiene purposes. Capacity management is not just for your building, it can be for the rooms as well by limiting the availability of meeting rooms to minimize physical interactions between employees.
Eliminate zombie meetings with data insights: After a few months of usage at Envoy HQ, we discovered 25% of our scheduled meetings didn’t actually happen and realized we can save a good amount of money not having to build more meeting spaces.

Enabling a touchless environment with smart integrations

Envoy integrates with a keyless entry solution: I can open my front door of the office building, the door to my office, as well as the elevator all with a mobile app.
A slick visitor check-in experience with Aruba ClearPass: As soon as I sign in and sign the NDA within seconds on my mobile device, I would receive a unique Wi-Fi code to get on to the Internet. instead of just sitting there and waiting. It’s a super slick experience for me, but also a great layer of security for the company.

Accelerated workplace trends during Covid-19

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Mobile adoption in the workplace: We are seeing mobile app adoption skyrocket because of employee-driven use cases. For example, employees can see all of their deliveries that come to the office. More recently, employees can schedule and book rooms via the mobile app. For Envoy, we always had a long term vision of creating more value for employees within your workplace.
Hot desking and desk hoteling: The concept of hot desk and desk hoteling is not new, but the popularity and need for it has accelerated dramatically during this period. Companies have to find new ways to use their spaces with social distancing in mind, so that is just naturally driving the need to have solutions that can help you.

Reimagining the workplace with design thinking: The future of workplace experience with IBM

Posted on June 17, 2020October 2, 2023 by Dan Bladen

As part of our ‘Future of Workplace Experience’ series, we discussed with Paul Russell, Business Development for Smart Buildings at IBM Tririga on design thinking for the workplace and the rise of community workspaces. Check out our interview and key takeaways below.

The rise of community workplaces

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New models emerging post-pandemic: In countries like the UK, where people might not travel like they used to, how do you make sure people can still physically meet people? One of the changes that you might see is more community workplaces appearing.
Close proximity technology in the workplace: With over 300,000 employees at IBM, it is easy to find out about people from different teams or regions through some of our tools currently in play, but what you can’t find out is if anyone is working close to you in the same building in real time.
Community workplaces in suburban areas: Instead of renting large corporate offices in the city, I think businesses, particularly in the UK and Europe, will start to regenerate traditional suburbs with community workplaces, creating new opportunities in suburban areas.

Addressing needs of younger members in the workforce

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While the older generation may prefer working from home, it’s also important to address the needs and concerns of the younger members in the team, who may prefer to have a physical office and the social experience of working in a city. Need to make sure they will have the same upwards trajectory and opportunities to grow inside of an organization.

Reimagining the workplace with design thinking

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Understanding user behavior with touchless technology: Moving forward, there will be more emphasis on how people move through their workspace through the use of technology and deeper understanding of how people want to use their workplace. It’s opening up new lessons to learn about how we can augment their experience by providing touchless technology and Kadence’s desk and room management software is a great example of that experience.
Design thinking in the workplace: We talked a lot about design thinking at IBM and if we want to change someone’s behavior, there needs to be sufficient motivation, efficient ability and a prompt.
Enabling contact tracing: With the contact tracing example, we are changing people’s behavior because we want them to feel safe in the workplace and they’re motivated to do this because they want to stay healthy. People need to understand the value exchange and it needs to benefit employees in some way.

The future of workplace experience with MAPP: Embracing a new way of working

Posted on May 27, 2020October 2, 2023 by Dan Bladen

“The office has a future – it is just going to look different and needs to do something different than it has been in the past.”

This week on our ‘Future of Workplace Experience’ series, we discussed with Founder and CEO of MAPP, Nigel Mapp on rethinking the purposing of offices and using it as a tool to retain the best talent. Check out our interview and key takeaways below.

Employee safety and assurance: The number one priority

Things are going to look very different when we return and you can expect a number of control measures in place at MAPP managed buildings, for example:

Getting employees safely to their office with signage and floor marks to keep people 2m apart
Queuing systems in place with designated one lift up and one down
Using fire escapes stairwell as one way system for going down
Touchless measures by disabling building entrance barriers

Embracing a new way of working

At MAPP, we ran a survey of how our workforce want to work post-pandemic and only a minority of our employees would like to return to office more than 3 days a week.
Offices will need to rediscover a purpose and there is a lot we can learn from retail. It will become a place where the brand exists and remain as a place to get people together and exchange ideas.
Companies will use space to project an image and for their people to belong, to collaborate, and share great thinking as opposed to housing rows and rows of workstations.
Offices might also start to become seen as a ‘perk’ to retaining talents as everybody wants to work in a great space. We can expect companies to occupy less space and invest in quality and infrastructure.

Planning for your office reopening? Download our guide below to discover 10 top tips on how to plan your workspace more efficiently with technology and data.

The future of workplace experience with Ricoh: Preparing for your office reopening

Posted on May 15, 2020October 2, 2023 by Dan Bladen

This week on our ‘Future of Workplace Experience’ series, we are delighted to have Simone Fenton-Jarvis, Workplace Services Consultation Director at Ricoh to explore how companies can prepare for their office reopening and why it is important to trust your employees. Check out our interview and key takeaways below.

Approach future workplace design with a people-centric attitude

It’s important to understand the purpose and role of your office, incorporating your employees’ work styles and culture to approach your future workplace design and policies.
Companies should provide clear and sound guidance about the data they are collecting for safety measures. For example, we will start seeing thermal temperature scanners being deployed at building entrances and workplaces. As long as companies are being transparent with the use of data, people will become more accepting – it’s important to build trust and confidence with your employees.

Preparing for your office reopening

Expect to see more on-demand bookable spaces with controlled measures such as enhanced airflow, sanitizing stations and touchless solutions like Kadence to understand which spaces have been used and who has been using them.
Make sure you have a concrete plan in place for cleaning and sanitizing shared spaces more frequently going forward to ensure employees’ health and safety, and to reduce overall risk for your business.
“Office is always open, come back only if you want to” – Employees will not have the same comfort level about returning to an office environment. Office reopening should be a gradual process and should not be compulsory at the start to make sure employees only come back when they are ready.

Planning for your office reopening? Download our guide below to discover 10 top tips on how to manage your desks and workspaces more efficiently with technology and data.