When Lionsgate’s offices shut down due to COVID-19 in early 2020, Heather Somaini knew that she needed to act fast to bring people back on-site safely. Somaini is the Chief Administrative Officer at Lionsgate, a global entertainment company and content platform. Their offices not only include impressive headquarters for their 1,500+ employees, but also world class motion picture and television studio operations.

The nature of Lionsgate’s business calls for people to work together in-person. This isn’t only critical for filming, but also essential to move creative work forward. Noah Wood, Lionsgate’s Executive Director of Facilities, explains that, “working in the entertainment industry, a lot of creative conversations transpire in a more personalized setting, versus over a Zoom call.”

But not every single employee would be returning to the office right away. Plus, Somaini and her team would need to provide those who are coming on-site with the space to work and collaborate with colleagues safely. Right-sizing Lionsgate’s office footprint would be essential to ensuring efficient operations throughout the pandemic and beyond.

Somaini turned to Envoy for an all-in-one solution that would help Lionsgate:

• Safely welcome employees and visitors on-site
• Provide teammates a desk to collaborate while keeping a safe distance in the office
• Prepare their office for the future of hybrid work

Safely welcoming people into the office

Even before California ended their state-wide shelter in place orders, Somaini and her team got to work. Wood said that his main concern was “creating a space that feels welcoming, but at the same time, keeps our employees safe.” They turned to Envoy Protect to roll out daily employee health screenings, manage occupancy, and trace potential COVID-19 exposure.

“Protect allowed us to ask employees questions to make sure that they were healthy and wouldn’t put anybody at risk while they were in the office,” explains Somaini. Sommer Green, Lionsgate’s Response Manager, added that, “without this type of system, I would be doing everything via paper. Envoy allows me to see all of that and makes the whole process streamlined, which saves a lot of time.”

 “Protect allowed us to ask employees questions to make sure that they were healthy and wouldn’t put anybody at risk while they were in the office”

“Implementing Envoy has really given me a great sense of comfort and confidence that we are doing everything within our power to ensure that we can provide a safe working environment for all of our employees,” says Wood. “We’re seeing that more employees are choosing to come into the office to work, or to come in and have conversations with peers in the building, versus doing it from home.”

Enabling easy desk booking

With a process to allow employees to register to work on-site in place, Somaini then needed to provide those employees with the space to work and collaborate with colleagues safely. She explains, “I realized that with reduced capacity and social distancing, we weren’t going to have every single workstation filled. We needed to move to a hot desk seating arrangement to make the most efficient use of our space.”

When Somaini found out about Envoy Desks she shared that she was “excited to have a one-stop solution for employees to register for work, answer wellness questions, then get their desk for the day too. All they have to do is open one app and everything is there.” Somaini is referring to Envoy’s mobile app which even allows employees to invite visitors to come on-site and complete their health check before arriving.

Somaini also loves that Desks gives her the flexibility to assign teams to specific neighborhoods in the office, give employees a permanent desk if they needed one, or let employees choose an open desk of their preference. “We have some employees who depend on the office to collaborate with colleagues, to brainstorm, and work together. So we’ll have the flexibility with Envoy Desks to make it work for us, depending on what each employee and team needs.”

That’s not all that was exciting Somaini. Desks also gives her and her team valuable data on space usage. “This allows us to right size the amount of space and desks that we need to have available, so we’re not wasting any space. This helps us to reduce costs and utilize our space really well.”

Preparing for the future of hybrid work

Protect and Desks has helped Lionsgate safely welcome employees onsite during the pandemic. But Somaini has a vision to use Envoy’s workplace platform well into the future, for benefits beyond just safety and automation.

“The future of the workplace is going to be very different,” says Somaini. “I think we’re going to see a reduction in our overall footprint, which allows employees to be able to work from home for heads down, focused work, and come to the office when they need to meet and collaborate with colleagues.” With Envoy, Lionsgate employees will be able to schedule days to work in the office, reserve a desk near teammates, book the closest meeting room, invite a visitor on-site, and receive notifications about a delivery—all within the Envoy app.