Return to the office with iotspot ESD

Following the release of the government’s “Working Safely During COVID-19 in Offices and Contact Centres” guidelines, the team at iOtSpace have been working on ways in which the iotspot smart workplace platform can be utilised to help with social distancing in anticipation for people returning to work.

The current norm for work

In the past scene (pre-Covid19) the iotspot platform was purposed to provide insight and analytics to the management on how to make better and more efficient use of office space. It also provided an enabling people experience for employees via the hospitality app and other functions.

This type of workplace experience was becoming reality for hundreds of organisations within Europe and further abroad. It is a great plug-in to an activity-based workplace.

Working From Home during the Covid19 lockdown

In March, this situation changed as companies were forced into activating a 100% working from home program resulting in thousands upon thousands of empty office space. Between March and today as this content is written (June), work from home or #WFH has become our new day to day norm. Virtual collaboration has become the only form of collaboration and teams who used to thrive in the mix of a collaborative office life have had to experience a complete cut off.

Return to the office with social distancing

However, a slow return to using our offices is happening, although it is far from ‘back to work as normal’. Governments and health services are calling out for extreme safety measures and control levels within workplace areas as well as a phased return program. Our inboxes and social media pages have been full of news about social distancing in the office, screens installed around every work-setting and hygiene stations in every open space.

It can be an extremely difficult environment for a facilities management team to control and this is where iotspot have not stood still. Iotspot ESD was launched in late March and is a hardware free software solution that brings control and visibility into the picture for facilities managers and provides employees with the tools to work as collaboratively as possible whilst maintaining a safe distance.

Iotspot ESD – How does it work?

The architecture is simple. Software is much the same and the hardware has been replaced by NFC stickers.

With a sticker on every workstation within an office, the facilities team can control how many spaces are visible to employees. One of our customers in The Hague began with a 60% cut on available workstations as their first phase of return.

return to the office desk booking system.jpg

The system works by showing available spaces to employees on the app and web portal. Employees can only gain access to the building having booked an available space. This is a very important measure if the system is to work effectively at controlling numbers. We have the capability to integrate with security access to completely automate this process.

after covid19 lockdown office access control system.jpg

When an employee is in the space he should go straight to their booked workstation and is expected to work from that desk for the duration of their time in the office.

Within the management portal, facilities teams can add or subtract available desks depending on the situation. The dashboard runs an automatic report at a configurable time in the late afternoon which shows the exact desks that were used. This data is overlaid onto a floor plan and can be provided for cleaning teams.

It is an incredibly simple set-up process and that’s what makes it work so well. A client in Benelux area had 3 locations with around 700 workstations. We provided them with the self-install portal and worked with them to complete the installation in the space of a week.

For more information talk to our workplace consultants