Rising Ground improves space management and workplace communication with Envoy

Rising Ground is a nonprofit human services organization dedicated to serving communities across New York City and lower Westchester. With over 85 locations and more than 2,400 staff, the organization provides a broad range of services, including therapy, counseling for survivors of intimate partner violence, foster care, juvenile justice programs, housing, and support for runaway and homeless youth.

Operating across such a large and dispersed network of sites presents unique operational challenges, including coordinating staff schedules, managing room and desk usage, and maintaining clear communication across all locations. Rising Ground is committed to delivering high-quality services while ensuring staff and client safety, engagement, and efficiency throughout its extensive network of programs and facilities.

Challenge: Manual processes slowed teams down and limited visibility

Before standardizing its workplace systems, Rising Ground relied on a highly manual approach to managing room and desk bookings. Due to licensing limitations, only one person per team was responsible for scheduling spaces which created delays, missed requests, and frequent double bookings.

“The manual process slowed us down the most. Sometimes the meeting would come up and the room still hadn’t been booked.”

With more than 2,400 employees across dozens of locations, this bottleneck created unnecessary friction in daily operations. If the designated scheduler was unavailable or missed a request, teams were left scrambling to find space at the last minute.

At the same time, adoption of the previous system was inconsistent. Many employees avoided using the platform altogether, making training and engagement an ongoing challenge.

“There was a lot of non-booking, and staff would shy away from utilizing our former platform."

Beyond scheduling, the organization also lacked clear visibility into how spaces were being used and who was present at each location, an important gap for both operational planning and safety.

Solution: Empowering staff with flexible, self-service workplace tools

After evaluating multiple platforms, Rising Ground selected Envoy for both its functionality and the level of partnership provided throughout the process.

“Before selecting Envoy, we went through about 10 other platforms. We ultimately decided to go with Envoy because of the customer service and because it had all the features we were looking for.”

By implementing Envoy Rooms and Desks, Rising Ground shifted from a centralized, manual booking model to a self-service approach. Employees can now reserve rooms and desks on their own, whether through Outlook, Microsoft Teams, the web portal, or mobile devices, making it easy to schedule space from anywhere.

“Now everyone has access to Envoy, everyone can just go in and do whatever kind of desk or room booking they need. We don’t have to rely on just one person.”

This flexibility has been especially valuable for a workforce that frequently moves between locations. Staff can quickly book space for planned meetings or impromptu collaboration without delays.

At the same time, Rising Ground also uses Envoy Visitors to help maintain visibility into who is coming into each site, supporting smoother day-to-day operations across its distributed locations. 

Envoy Screens introduced a more effective way to communicate across sites. Instead of relying solely on email, teams can share updates, announcements, and reminders on digital displays in common areas.

“Visible communications through Envoy Screens play an important part in reducing email overload. Staff can just sit there, look at the screen, and get the information.”

To support adoption, Rising Ground leveraged Envoy’s training resources, including admin onboarding, toolkits, and internal champions to drive engagement across teams.

Integrations that simplify scheduling and drive adoption

A key part of Rising Ground’s success has been integrating Envoy into tools employees already use every day, particularly Microsoft Outlook and Teams.

By enabling booking directly within these platforms, staff can schedule rooms without changing their workflows, making adoption more natural and intuitive across the organization.

“With Envoy, booking a room is so simple. Whether it’s through Outlook, the mobile app, or Teams, it just helps a great deal and saves so much time.”

These integrations also ensure that scheduling data is automatically reflected across systems, giving operations teams a more accurate, real-time view of space utilization across locations.

Results: Increased utilization, time savings, and real-time visibility

Since implementing Envoy, Rising Ground has seen a noticeable increase in how its spaces are used. With staff now able to book rooms and desks on their own, utilization has increased by 40–50%.

“I would measure our ROI with Envoy by utilization. It has gone up by at least 40 to 50%.”

Removing the need for a single person to manage bookings has also saved time across teams and reduced last-minute scheduling issues.

The platform has also made it easier to understand how spaces are being used across locations. Teams can now access real-time data and break it down by site or department.

“We’re able to go into the web portal and get the analytics. We can see exactly what the utilization is, and it breaks it up by departments or neighborhoods.”

For Rising Ground, that visibility is especially important for safety. Knowing who is in the building and who is expected, helps teams respond more quickly when needed.

“We want to know who’s in the building, how long they’ve been there, and even who is coming. Envoy gives you that data.”