COVID-19 has proven to many businesses that most employees can be productive while working from home. Yet meeting, collaborating, and complex problem solving is still often more effective when your employees meet in real life. It doesn’t matter what your company does, what products or services it provides; face-to-face teamwork is essential to your company’s success. Smart technology and smart office integrations clear the way to a safe office reopening.

Bringing employees back to work: the benefits

Employee happiness

Returning to the office will give employees back the feeling of being part of the team. As a result of interacting face-to-face, a sense of community resurrects, employee happiness increases and work-life separation restores.

‍Effective teamwork

Seeing each other in real life and looking teammates in the eyes promotes an atmosphere that motivates your employees to go that extra mile and be supportive of one another.

‍Creative thinking

Creative thinking is an essential skill in any business today. When a group of diverse individuals comes together, they tend to be more creative, compared to the same people working alone.

‍Sensitive topics

Personal matters or sensitive topics are often most successful when discussed face-to-face. Giving your employees the opportunity to meet in real life can help turn many challenging conversations into trust-building interactions.

Work-life after COVID-19: protect office safety

‍With smart office technology, you support the flexible use of space and maximize utilization during and after the pandemic. As a smart offices specialist, we’re here to guide you through the three vital steps towards a safe office reopening.

‍1. Calculate a safe office capacity

Organizations are required to ensure their office design complies with the 1.5-meter social distancing rule. Based on this, our data shows that available desk occupancy will have to decrease by an average of 43%. Consequently, only about half of your employees can be in the office at the same time.

‍Mapiq’s Office Capacity Calculator allows you to use the space as efficiently as possible. Based on the floorplan of your office and the location of the desks, the calculator determines your optimum office capacity. From this you can see precisely how many workplaces are safe to use for your employees. Our Office Shifts functionality then helps guide your employees to the available space.‍

The benefits of the office capacity calculator:

• Gain complete understanding of your new floorplan and office capacity
• Get full insight into how many workplaces can be used at the same time
• Receive clear guidance on how to use your office space as efficiently as possible

2. Manage your building capacity

Once your safe office capacity is calculated, Office Shifts allows you to fairly and safely distribute when employees can work in the office. This web application easily coordinates when groups of employees may be in the office and where it's safe for them to be seated. Simply let employees match their workdays in the office with team members. ‍

The benefits of managing office shifts:‍

• Protect a safe  office capacity at all times
• Easily manage the capacity of multiple buildings
• Provide enough meeting rooms for efficient hybrid meetings
• Reduce manual coordination
• Easily adjust your approach when the situation changes‍

3. Book your working days

Once the exact office and floor capacity is calculated, Office Shifts allows you to fairly and safely distribute when employees can work in the office. This web application easily coordinates when groups of employees may be in the office and where it's safe for them to be seated. Simply let employees match their workdays in the office with team members.

‍The benefits of booking office shifts:

• Empower employees to collaborate face-to-face
• Provides insight into who is in the office on which days
• Eliminate manual attendance lists ‍‍

‍3. Visualize your building occupancy

Once your office capacity is determined and you have coordinated who can come to the office, it is crucial to spread employees evenly over your available space. To ensure social distancing in multi-level buildings, it's best to spread employees evenly over the different floors.

Our narrowcasting solution visualizes the exact crowdedness on any level. Mapiq’s Building Occupancy Display specifically indicates how occupancy levels on the floor allow for the required social distancing rules. You can place Mapiq’s Building Occupancy Display at the entrance of the office to enable employees to find the safest workplace on arrival without wandering around.‍

The benefits of the Building Occupancy Display‍

• Real-time insights into your floor occupancy, based on a 1.5-meter social distance
• Provide accurate information to reopen your office safely
• Let people feel safe in the building