What Is Workplace Management and Why Does It Matter?
There has always been a need for workplace management – the process of organising and optimising physical spaces, resources, and operations to support people’s needs. But, as 28% of UK working adults were reported to work in a hybrid capacity last autumn (by the Office for National Statistics), the question of ‘why workplace management matters’ is more critical than ever. Let’s look at the workplace management benefits for your operations.
Hot desk policies
Responding to evolving flexible working practices, many corporations have reduced their office footprints, taking leases in coworking and flexible workspaces. In fact, a third of companies worked from flexible office space in Q2 2024, while 42% planned to accelerate investment to find the right size footprint. However, smaller spaces come with their own challenges, namely: how do you ensure everyone can access a productive workstation without overflowing the space?
This is where hot desk processes come into play, allowing workers to book spaces as and when while maximising limited resources. It’s not just flexible workspaces benefitting from hot desk policies either. In coworking spaces, low-cost and low-commitment hot desk membership types are huge revenue generators. But, the only way to ensure profitability is to have a system with more members than desks (within reason).
For example, the Worker’s League offers several membership types to access three coworking spaces across London and Kent. Whether a coworker comes in for the day or holds a ten-day pass, they must book a desk in advance at their chosen space to ensure they have a firm workstation for the day ahead. This manages capacity, reducing the likelihood of non-paying customers slipping into the workspace unnoticed, or the negative experience of turning up for workday only to find the workspace full.
Visitor management
Hot desk policies can be managed with integrated access management systems. This ensures that someone who isn’t booked into the workspace doesn’t turn up at the workspace unannounced. But, what about people who are turning up without the workplace manager’s prior knowledge, like visitors or maintenance teams? The comings and goings in shared work environments require processes that offer a seamless visitor experience.
For instance, no one wants to arrive at a workspace for a fun social event or important meeting, only to wait ages in a queue to check in at reception. The feedback will be detrimental, causing dissatisfaction with your customers, whether they’re a company on a monthly subscription or a group hiring out your event space ad-hoc. With flexible lease agreements enabling occupiers to pull the plug when it suits them, you really don’t want to risk friction points in your everyday processes and service offerings.
Equally, your team could be doing much more with their time than sitting at the front desk all day, checking visitors in. Simplify visitor check-in by emailing them access details before they enter your workspace or enabling self-check-in via a visitor management system. The process can even be completely automated, where your customer receives a notification that a visitor has arrived to see them, without any manual intervention. This frees up your team’s time for valuable community-building activities (including organising more events)
For maintenance teams, granting remote access to your workspace also opens up the possibility of work being undertaken outside of normal working hours, keeping disruption to an absolute minimum.
Well-being and community factors
Today’s workers are sensitive to the goings on in your workspace. For example, your members want to stay informed if you have planned work going on, especially if they were hoping to come into your workspace more regularly to take important calls and meetings undisturbed. But, communication can be challenging, especially with a large membership.
This is where workplace management processes and tools come in, such as communication channels that send updates out to everyone in the workspace community about important updates. It’s also really handy for communities to connect, and stay in touch with virtual members if, for instance, your customer base is primarily digital nomads (who typically stay in one location for a certain period on an annual basis before moving on). Equally, sharing details about your upcoming social events keeps everyone in the loop, ensuring no one feels left out of your coworking community.
The person at the helm of your workspace communication is typically the community manager, or workplace manager, managing the entire workspace and community. As community managers can often burn out, due to the increasing demands of the job going beyond the scope of community building (this has even caused great community managers to leave the industry altogether), communication tools are a massive positive. Especially when managers can communicate on the go, and the community can independently strengthen social bonds with others.
The need for workplace management technology
So, while workplace management processes are essential for the smooth running of your workspaces, the secret ingredient that will simplify processes even further is technology tools. Without implementing tech solutions, your team will continue to make mistakes (we’re human, after all), and tasks will get forgotten, costing your business.
Having a unified coworking tech stack really can make all the difference. Embracing the right processes and tools to suit your business can create more efficient, productive, and supportive workspaces, for your teams and communities.
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