Introducing Envoy Desks for flexible workplaces

Companies around the world are adjusting their workplaces to satisfy a hybrid workforce, where employees can choose which days to work in the office and which days they prefer to work from home. With this, workplace leaders are reevaluating their space, looking for ways to make it more flexible, efficient, and effective for employees when they are on-site. Today, we are launching Envoy Desks in beta to help companies to make the desks all throughout an office safer and more useful.

Heather Somaini, Chief Administrative Officer at Lionsgate, has been using an early beta version of Desks at the company’s headquarters in Santa Monica since September. She explains that her team “realized that we couldn’t have every single workstation filled when we reopened. To allow for social distancing, we wanted to reduce our capacity by 50%. To do that, we needed to move to a more flexible seating arrangement."

Desks is our new hot desking solution specifically designed to help employees easily reserve a desk on days they work in the office. Employees are automatically assigned a desk when they sign in via Envoy Protect, or they can choose a different seat from an interactive map in the Envoy mobile app to sit next to their project team or claim the quiet spot by the window. Adding desk booking into the Protect registration process enables companies to screen employees through a health questionnaire, conduct contact tracing, limit physical access to the workplace, and more.To help companies manage these changes to their space and ensure employees feel comfortable working from the office, we’re making Envoy Desks available in beta to all new and existing Envoy Protect customers starting today.

Adapt your space for flexibility and collaboration

Embracing flexible work is easy with seamless desk sharing software. Envoy Desks is designed to help you quickly set up desks to ensure social distancing in your office layout. You determine which desks are available to book, permanently assigned, or unavailable so employees can maintain a safe distance on-site. Easily add or remove desk availability at each office location as your local ordinances or company policies change. Employees also have the flexibility to choose where to sit, depending on what they need to get done that day. They may need to collaborate with a project team on-site, or want a quiet space for heads-down productivity that they can’t accomplish at home.

Make it easy to find and book a desk

With Envoy Desks, employees use an interactive map in the Envoy mobile app to find and book their desk. Employees are automatically assigned a desk when they sign-in for the day and can easily find their desk highlighted on the map. If they prefer a different location, they can simply select a different available desk directly on the map.

Use your workplace space efficiently

Understanding how employees use your space will be vital in adapting to a flexible workplace. Envoy Desks includes analytics that provide insights into how employees use each floor, neighborhood, and desk. You can use analytics to know when you’re running low on hot desks and need to add more. You can also use it when you test out a new configuration of desks to see if it’s getting the usage you expect. And you can keep tabs on who is coming into the office frequently so that you know when someone might benefit from a more permanent desk. Analytics can be used by after-hours cleaning crews to know which desks to sanitize.

Desks analytics can help you optimize office layouts by reconfiguring unused space, ultimately reducing your office footprint and lowering real estate costs.

Ensure only healthy employees can book a desk

Envoy Desks is an easy way for employees to reserve a desk on days when they are approved to work from the office. Envoy Protect ensures that only employees who have passed your health questionnaire can book a desk. If an employee meets your criteria to work on-site, we’ll automatically assign them a desk for the day when they sign-in at their workplace using the Envoy mobile app.

Expect even more to come

Envoy Desks is currently in beta, with significant updates planned. Over the next few weeks, you can expect to see:

• ‍Neighborhoods, so you can automatically seat teammates by function or project team. You also can identify areas for team collaboration or quiet zones for heads-down work.
• ‍Remember my desk, where your employees automatically get the desk they picked last time if it’s available. In 2021 we’ll be releasing even more features to support flexible workplaces:
• ‍Visit planning to help managers invite their team to a group of desks for a day of collaboration. The future of collaboration is flexible, so workplaces should adapt to support teams that need in-person working days.
• Comprehensive workplace maps so as you adapt your office space, it will be up to date for employees. Employees will be able to find their desk, meeting room, visitors, and delivery areas all on the map.

Get started today

Envoy Desks is available in beta as an add-on to Visitors + Protect. You can enable easy hot-desking on any plan, including Basic.As Somaini puts it, “it’s a great end to end solution to manage visitors, employees, and desk reservations. Envoy allows us and our employees to feel confident that when they come to the office, they're safe. Plus, it’s great that it all lives in one app for our employees.”

Ready to create a more flexible, collaborative workplace? Try Desks today.

If you want to learn more about hot desking and if it's right for your company, contact us or send us a chat and we’ll be happy to help.