In recent years, the working environment has changed considerably. After years of managing transitions to and from remote work and adapting to a hybrid future, employees across industries review what they expect and desire from their companies. When these expectations change, it is incumbent on corporate leaders and CRE strategists to modify their facilities in tandem with the workforce they support.
These executives can make data-driven decisions about their workplace transformation using spatial intelligence. Rather than relying on trial and error or ill-informed employee engagement programs to improve the employee experience, spatial intelligence solutions provide essential insights into how the workplace is now used — and how it may be optimized to accommodate future work preferences.
Here’s how spatial intelligence may help companies prioritize the employee experience.
How can spatial intelligence aid employees in a more pleasant work environment?
To improve the workplace climate for all employees, the entire team must work together. By taking a holistic approach to maximizing the employee experience, businesses may solve problems before they arise and anticipate the desires of their employees. You’ll need to combine spatial intelligence techniques with real-time employee behavior data to pinpoint the source of employee dissatisfaction before it spreads throughout your company.
What role does spatial intelligence play in the workplace?
Spatial intelligence refers to a thorough understanding of how your entire facility and individual workstations are used in real-time for enterprises. Business leaders can only begin to grasp how their physical space is being used without spatial intelligence, resulting in an inability to give the most significant potential employee experience and limiting how well office buildings can serve the people who use them.
Here are four ways business executives might start using spatial intelligence to improve their employees’ work environments.
1. Assign spaces based on real-time employee data and conduct regular occupancy reviews
Business leaders may use spatial intelligence to track the actual occupancy rates of each workstation at any given time. This prevents employees from assuming the office is empty or crowded when it isn’t, increasing the number of available office spaces. As your employees’ workplace preferences grow more hybrid and flexible, using this real-time employee data to develop your workplace transformation approach will ensure that you are capturing active and passive occupancy to identify actual occupancy rates.
As time goes on, keep an eye on occupancy data and adjust your workplace transformation strategy to match current occupancy rates by floor, kind of space, or building.
2. Create dynamic work environments by utilizing networked systems
The use of facilities management technologies by corporate executives is required to prioritize the employee experience. CRE managers may employ integrated technologies to construct their ideal agile work environment from a central place. Tools like workplace analytics software and building automation systems combine with cloud-based workplace technology solutions like smart office tech to improve the employee workplace experience.
3. Use desk occupancy sensors and intelligent desk and room reservation systems to enable flexible working
Working from home is growing increasingly common, and there are no indicators that this trend will slow down. To enable flexible working in your facilities, invest in sensor technology, room booking software, and other intelligent building technology supporting the current hybrid work style.
4. Implement policy and organizational culture improvements based on spatial intelligence
Using spatial intelligence to improve employee experience can only be realized if you utilize it to develop a culture of performance-based job expectations rather than promotion based on the appearance of good work. Policy changes, workplace transformation initiatives, and business culture best practices can all be influenced by employee behavior.
Conclusion
The use and management of workspaces must be optimized as much as possible, given the investment they represent and the critical role they play in the employee experience, regardless of how much it has changed.
Workplaces have been transformed from static assets providing a regular and repetitive purpose to a space through which we pass according to our preferences and timetables determined by us, thanks to data-driven solutions. In an age where remote, in-person, and hybrid work models are the norm, and millions of employees shift between them whenever they want, spatial intelligence is required to handle the supply side of the office landscape equation.
