NAVBLUE, a subsidiary of aviation giant Airbus, focuses on providing technological solutions for aircraft operators. A global company, NAVBLUE struggled to accommodate all of their workers transitioning back to the office as pandemic restrictions disappeared. They needed innovative ways to enable the safe return of employees to offices around the world.

Adapting to the new normal with hotdesks

As countries, cities, and municipalities eased pandemic restrictions, businesses had to determine the best ways to adapt to a new working environment. When it became clear hybrid work was here to stay, NAVBLUE realized the organization had an opportunity to rethink how employees came to work and interacted with the company. 

Marit Sormus, Technical Lead at NAVBLUE, realized that they needed a hot desking application that would offer more flexibility to employees and allow the NAVBLUE team to manage the number of people in the office at any one time. Rather than keeping an assigned desk for every employee in every office, they would standardize desks and equipment so employees could work at any available desk when they came into the office.

This option surfaced several questions:

• How do you organize the desks?
• How do you ensure employees have access to the tools they need when they need them?
• How do you keep team members and collaborators close together?
• What happens when someone needs to travel to a different office? 

Envoy powers seamless desk management

NAVBLUE had previously deployed Envoy Visitors in one of their offices for visitor management. Since they liked and trusted the software, it made sense to examine other features that could help the company transition to hot desking.

That’s when they discovered Envoy Desks. Specifically designed during the pandemic to help companies adjust their workplace, the hot desking solution enables employees to reserve a desk before they come to any office. It offered a simple answer to NAVBLUE’s questions.

“Envoy is the perfect application for managing and supporting a hybrid workforce. For desk management, nothing else was even close,” Sormus said.

Onboarding was swift. By the end of 2021, the entire company handled desk assignments, reservations, and management through Envoy.

One of the most notable features of Envoy Desks is the floor map. It shows the location of every desk within an office and includes real-time displays that show who’s located at each desk and their team. Employees can also view this information for any reserved desk. These details enable any employee to reserve desks and find collaborators at any of their offices—even if they’ve never been to that location before.

"As a global company, we have employees traveling from one location to another. Having the desk feature and being able to manage the visitors from other locations has been the key.”

In addition to meeting the needs of individual employees, the analytics and reporting capabilities within Envoy Desks enable office administrators to plan more efficiently. They can see when most people plan to go into the office and when it’s best to schedule one-on-one or larger meetings.

Envoy Visitors continues to help the team manage their incoming visitors. Office admins ensure the people hosting the visitors know when they’re in the office. Visitors can also review the floor plans and other additional information ahead of time so they’re prepared before they arrive. 

“We are hybrid across all of our offices, and employees feeling comfortable knowing what desk they have available when they go into the office has been a big part of it,” Sormus said.

A supportive team for a no-fail system

Since the rollout, NAVBLUE employees continue to successfully use the application to schedule their desks when coming to the office. Despite having more than 500 employees in multiple offices across the world, employees in their North American and European offices continue to leverage Envoy to make sure they have a desk available, even when they travel between offices.

"Envoy enabled us to bring on a new way of working across the company.”  

Through the transition, the NAVBLUE team has enjoyed interacting with the Envoy team. Early in their adoption, NAVBLUE shared feedback on Envoy Desks, and Envoy was willing to listen and deploy the requested changes. Recently, NAVBLUE has begun using the chat feature on the Envoy web application. 

“It’s very quick, very efficient, and the team is always keen to help,” Sormus said. “The chat feature has been an absolute game changer.”

Hybrid working isn’t new anymore, but Envoy was instrumental in bringing NAVBLUE employees back to the office safely. The company continues to provide a smooth flexible working experience so employees can easily collaborate and connect, no matter when they’re in the office.