Hot new Desks features for the hybrid workplace

Summer is here, vaccination rates are increasing, and employees are heading back to the workplace. But welcoming employees to a hybrid workplace carries new weight for workplace teams. Now that employees can choose where they work, there is added pressure to create a great workplace experience and ensure employees actually want to work on-site. Seamless hot desking is a huge part of that. Messy scheduling or convoluted seating could leave your team choosing to stick to working from home (WFH) rather than coming into the workplace to collaborate. The impact of hot-mess hot desking could be damaging to your team’s productivity and overall happiness. If teammates can’t find a desk to be productive or sit near teammates, that takes the value away from working on-site—which the majority of employees are eager to do. A recent study by Envoy found that 92% of employees want to return to the workplace at least one day a week. Fail to offer a great hybrid workplace experience and you risk attracting and retaining top talent.

Envoy Desks is here to give your employees a great experience any time they’re in the workplace. In November 2020, we launched Envoy Desks in beta to help organizations around the world make the transition to hybrid work. Today, we’re taking Desks out of beta with the release of hot new Desks features to create a great workplace experience for hybrid employees. Here’s a look at some of the features we’re most excited about.

Enable teams to collaborate in-person

For employees, one of the driving factors to working on-site is collaborating with teammates in person. But 37% of employees want to know who’ll be at work before they decide to go in. This is because work connections are important, especially with teammates. Employees want to go on the same days as their team—and make sure there’s an available desk near them so they can collaborate.

With Desks, you can designate specific neighborhoods so teammates can have the space to work near each other. But there’s still the trouble of knowing who from their team is going to be in on the same day. Starting today, employees can invite their coworkers to work on-site the same day as them. Reduce the back and forth of coordinating schedules by managing this directly in the Envoy app. When an employee sets their schedule they can see who plans to work on-site each day. If they don’t see a specific coworker, they can quickly send that person an invite to reserve them a spot in the workplace that day.

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Automatically free up unused desks

For admins and workplace teams, it’s painful to have every available space reserved, then see empty desks in the workplace from no-shows. Just as local capacity guidelines change, employees’ plans can change too. Maybe they ended up with too many meetings so WFH was better suited for their day. Or maybe they are just popping in the workplace to pick up a delivery and never needed a desk in the first place. Now, employees can free up their desk when they no longer need one so someone else can use that space for the day.But what if a no-show forgets to free up their desk in the Envoy app? Now employees can check in to their desk via the Envoy app to let you know they’re using it. If they don’t check-in by a certain time, you can automatically free it up for someone else to use so you can ensure no space is wasted. If someone misses check-in but still needs a desk, they can book another one from within the Envoy app.

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Offer more flexibility for employees

With hybrid work, employees don’t just want the flexibility to choose which days they work on-site, they also want flexibility in where they work while on-site. With Envoy Desks, it’s easy to enable both. Employees can set their schedule for the hybrid workweek directly within the Envoy app, reserving a desk for the day or in advance. They’ll automatically get a desk for each day they plan to work on-site and can easily change up where they sit to get a desk near a teammate or their favorite quiet spot by the window. But not every employee wants or can have work-related apps on their personal device. Starting today, employees have the flexibility to book a desk from a web browser on their phone or laptop. This way everyone can book a desk in the workplace.

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Make smarter decisions to optimize your space

With more employees headed to the workplace, it’s more important than ever to ensure you are making the best use of your space.With Desks, you get an accurate view of who and how many people plan to work on-site each day so you can right-size your layout to support your employees. With the new space-saving features above, you can get a better understanding of how desks are actually being used so you can optimize your workplace by neighborhood or department and minimize wasted space.With global analytics, you can see total desk utilization to understand how your spaces are used across all or at specific locations. You can even view future desk reservations so your teams can plan ahead and make cost-saving decisions backed by data.

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Customize Desks to work the way you need it to

Flexible workplaces need flexible technology. That’s why today, we’re opening the Desks API so you can make Desks work exactly how your team needs. Use the Desks API to build your own integrations and build out essential workflows. With the Desks API you can:

• Create automated workflows to reserve and check in to desks from other workplace tools and sensors
• Show upcoming desk reservations on digital displays
• Create custom analytics by syncing Envoy desk data to your existing tools

Visit our Developer hub to get started customizing Desks to meet your team’s specific hot desking needs.

Get started today

Start your 30-day free Desks trial today. Desks works best with Visitors and Protect. When you start a Desks trial, you’ll also start a Premium Visitors trial to get the most out of Envoy. Once you’re set up, share this step-by-step guide with employees to show them how to book, find, change, check in to, and free up their desk. Send this in an email, or share via an announcement in the Envoy app.

Ready to create a more flexible, collaborative workplace? Start your 30-day free trial today.