The days when employees had their own workspace with personal documents, notes, even family photos and plants are history in many companies. Desk sharing, flexible office, also called hot desking, are names for the workspace system that is in vogue worldwide. Associated with this is the term «clean desk» - the requirement that each desk must be left tidy at the end of the day. Personal items should therefore be kept to a minimum and re-stowed in the cupboard. That way, the next person who chooses the same workspace will be happy to see a clean desk.
Now that the pandemic has «calmed down» somewhat, it's «back to the office» for some employees. During the lockdown, companies had sought new ways to organize themselves flexibly due to the extraordinary circumstances. They tried to introduce a more agile way of working with remote work and desk sharing.
For both of these new approaches, which have become the norm within a short time, new technologies play a central role. Above all, however, it takes courage and confidence to invest in and use new IT solutions.
Find out how the new model can be successfully implemented in practice and create positive experiences so that employees still feel like they are «at home» in this article.
Tech companies in the Sillicon Valley were early adopters of desk sharing. Well-known companies such as Siemens, Lufthansa and ADAC are now following suit, and rightly so - desk sharing has demonstrated numerous advantages over the past year. The new organizational concept, which was initially popular with start-ups, has now also proven itself in larger companies. Lufthansa, for example, is already successfully implementing desk sharing.
The well-known airline is convinced that independence from the workplace is an efficient measure to make the best use of the workspace.
Siemens is also organizing itself with shared desks. The conglomerate finds that self-determination of one's own desk contributes to higher productivity and employee satisfaction. Nevertheless, not all companies can yet identify with the special workplace organization. Some business leaders complain that location-independent working means that employees no longer feel «at home» in the office (AvantgardeExperts, 2021). The fact is, however, that office space is only occupied between 70 and 90 percent of the time on average without this flexibility. The home office also contributes to an increase in this vacancy rate (Hofmann, 2010).
A prerequisite for agile and flexible working is not only good IT equipment, but also intelligent automation of processes. Digital solutions can therefore be used to create a smart workplace of the future, with which desk sharing can be implemented smoothly (Moo-con, 2021).
One digital solution that has proven popular with many companies during the lockdown is chatbots. According to the Chatbot Study 2021, the interaction method is becoming increasingly popular.
It brings a lot of advantages for companies: Around-the-clock accessibility, neutrality in dialogue, quick help, simplicity and efficiency. The user-friendly helpers are not only useful for external matters on the website, but can also be applied internally. The internal use of chatbots ensures efficient communication between different teams and supports the IT help desk at the same time.
Furthermore, IT automats are currently among the most innovative devices on the market.
Imagine you have a meeting coming up and you want to get a projector for it at short notice. Or a more troublesome scenario that everyone knows: your laptop suddenly breaks down and crashes for no reason. Or you are missing an important adapter to connect your device to the screen or a network cable at the shared workstation. You need support, but your IT supporters are not in the house at the moment, or their time is busy, or they simply can't get there quickly. In this case, you only want one thing: to find or replace the required device as quickly and easily as possible. Exactly for such situations CORA is at your disposal. The intelligent IT automat is ideally located centrally in the office, where all employees have access to it. CORA is the ideal helper as a vending machine and IT automat at the same time and can be used for various purposes as needed.
Via E-Ticket Bot, which serves as a chatbot for the IT service desk, employees can easily retrieve the desired information. Furthermore, this bot can even interact with the IT automat. For example, if employees are missing a mouse, they can chat with the service desk bot.
The chatbot then assigns the person a mouse in the CORA and issues them a PIN code that can be used to retrieve the device directly from the vending machine.
For simpler queries, the chatbot can simply redirect the user to the relevant page or, by asking for the email address, organize for the person to receive the information by email. If necessary, the chatbot then connects the customer with an expert to continue the conversation. Just in times of COVID-19, for example, an enormous number of packages were delivered. Accordingly, querying the delivery status was a frequently used function. The arrangement of appointments via bot also showed its benefits last year. Compared to telephone processing, long waiting times in the loop are eliminated and the user receives a written appointment confirmation directly and quickly. These and other numerous application areas transfer more autonomy to humans and significantly relieve the burden on companies. Chatbots and IT automats can be used in many different areas such as sales, customer service, HR and marketing in numerous industries.
Whether it's device removal at a CORA automat or chatting with a bot, the innovative touchpoints enable highly efficient performance and provide a unique user experience.
They are also perfect for supporting and simplifying the desk-sharing model. These technologies ultimately help to increase the flexibility of teams and create a modern IT workplace of the future. This allows a company to position itself as an agile and future-oriented employer and welcome its employees back to the workplace in the best possible way.