4 benefits of an interactive office map

Getting lost in the workplace is never a great experience. Imagine running around the office looking for a meeting room, coworker, or even a restroom. You can’t find what you’re looking for and have wasted time trying to find it. Not a fun experience, right? Being lost in the workspace can hinder productivity and cause frustration for many employees. Companies must have better ways to help their employees find who and what they’re looking for when they come onsite. Enter: workplace maps. Interactive maps are a great solution for companies who need a way to help employees navigate their workplace—no matter if it’s a HQ, manufacturing facility, or something else.In this blog post, we’ll go over what an office map is and four ways it benefits your company to have one. Let’s get exploring!

What is an office map?

In today’s world, an office map is a digital, often interactive, layout of a workplace. The map shows all amenities and spaces, such as desks, meeting rooms, storage rooms, delivery areas, front desks, emergency exits, restrooms, loading docks and more. Its main purpose is wayfinding and navigation—or literally finding your way around a workplace. An interactive office map can be viewed on a smartphone, desktop, or even a screen in the office and allows the user to interact with different parts of the office to view additional information.For example, a knowledge worker can use an office map to see where a coworker is sitting. A lab technician can use an office map to figure out what available lab space they can book for their upcoming project. A manufacturing facility might include all of their emergency exits on an office map for safety and security purposes.

4 benefits of an office map

Navigating a large or complex workplace can be difficult, especially for new employees or office visitors. An interactive office map can take the stress out of finding directions to a desk, colleague, or workspace. Here are four benefits of an interactive workplace map for your company and your people.

1. Makes it easier to find coworkers, meeting rooms, and points of interest

Interactive office maps help employees find one another onsite by offering a detailed view of where everyone is sitting. Folks can search by name or see a birds-eye view of their customized map. They can even “star” their favorite coworkers to make it easier to spot them on the map. This not only saves time but also encourages and empowers employees to collaborate and communicate better among colleagues. Employees can also use maps for finding meeting rooms, desks, points of interest and lots more around the office. You can configure the map to showcase the shape of each room or space and label it on the map, making it easy for people to locate what they need.Plus, it can be an essential emergency tool. For example, employees can pull up the map to quickly find emergency exits or important health supplies like first aid kits or defibrillators.

2. Optimizes space management

Space management is an important aspect of running a workplace. It creates a better workplace for employees, and also allows workplace leaders to keep track of their workplace budgets. An interactive office map allows company leaders to get a birds-eye view of their entire space. This can help them organize their layout better and easily spot spacing issues. Workplace leaders can answer questions like, are there too many desks near social areas? Or is a lab with dangerous chemicals too close to a highly trafficked area?Combining their observations from the office map with usage analytics from their workplace platform gives leaders confidence in making data-driven and effective space changes.

3. Improves the space booking experience

Creating a great workplace experience is all about streamlining inefficiencies. Sometimes a big workplace improvement can come from something as simple as making the act of booking a meeting room easier. With an interactive office map, like in the Envoy app, employees can quickly scan which meeting spaces or work spaces are empty based on their color in real time. Green for “go ahead and book me!”, red for “try another room, I’m in use.” In addition, employees can book desks via the office map. They can do a quick scan within the app and find their preferred area to work in or book an available desk near a teammate. The best part? They can book these spaces on-the-go. This improves the overall employee experience and reduces the time it takes to book a room.

4. Enables customization

Having a workplace map is a great contributor to employee happiness and overall business success. However, workplaces can change, so it’s important to be able to reflect that within your interactive map. For example, imagine that you’ve just included an additional emergency exit and a mother’s room in your workplace. With workplace maps, you can draft and change your map before publishing it to your employees. Once everything is ready, you can push this update and your employees then have a renewed, live interactive map experience. —Workplaces are becoming increasingly more dynamic and complex. Nowadays, employees have high expectations of their space to work, so it’s more important than ever to ensure employees can navigate these dynamic workspaces with ease. A workplace map benefits both employees and workplace leaders by making it much easier to move around the office, increase collaboration, improve security, and optimize spaces. Companies who have a hybrid workforce, are expanding their workforce, or are regularly inviting visitors can greatly benefit from the convenience of an office map. What would you do with an office map?Learn more about how an interactive map can improve your workplace.