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Workplace management covers all facilities, assets, services, technologies and processes that enhance the workplace experience. With enhanced workplace management, organizations are enabled to achieve greater efficiency and productivity, as well as experience financial benefits.
Workplace management platforms exceed the scope of traditional facility management functions as they aim to enhance workforce productivity and collaboration. It is a strategic instrument that supports business goals and provides measurable value. Workplace management is a continuous process that allows organizations to aim for the optimum in workplace performance. Today’s top performing businesses have one thing in common: they acknowledge the role their workplace environment has to play in improving employee workplace engagement and productivity.
Whether it’s the management of a single desk or of complex worldwide real estate portfolios, workplace management software unifies all the processes that optimize your workplace, improve productivity and streamline the workplace experience; from strategic planning to operational utilization, from catering to security, and from maintenance to services management.
The benefits of workplace management software
In addition to increased productivity, professional workplace management software can contribute to cost efficiency and reduction. For example, spaces and workplaces seem to be well utilized, however research shows that occupancy rates vary. Expensive facilities like meeting rooms, fleet or special equipment have low occupancy rates relative to their costs.
Improving workplace utilization, including space, is in many cases driven by the introduction of new workplace concepts. Innovative organizations aim to increase collaboration and productivity with activity-based workplace concepts and services, allowing people to decide where, when, how and with whom they work.
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Checklist for an effective workplace re-entry plan
Download this infographic for a comprehensive checklist for creating a workplace re-entry plan.
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Planon Space & Workplace Services Management
By providing visibility into the distribution and occupation density of all space, Planon’s Space & Workplace Services Management solution enables your organization to reduce costs by ensuring the proper utilization of all space, and actually matching space utilization with departmental demands.
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Planon Workplace Edition
Planon Workplace Edition is a cloud-based, modular software solution, underpinned by smart occupancy and environmental sensors. It helps you address the twin challenges of employee engagement and business resilience.
Read moreThree levels of workplace optimization
Integrated Workplace Management Systems (IWMS) supports organizations in their continuous search for workplace management strategies on three levels:
1. Strategic level of workplace management
On a strategic level, workplace management ensures a full, long-term alignment with the company’s strategy, both in business strategy and workplace strategy. Business growth, entering new markets, cultural and demographical aspects, HR policies - they all impact the size and type of your workplace offering. Workplace strategies include transformations from fixed to flexible or shared workplace concepts, new collaboration concepts, and policies around working from home. These all affect your future needs for real estate, space, facilities, services and processes.
In addition to portfolio and actual space information, an IWMS contains valuable occupancy and utilization information that is of great importance for strategic decision making. Strategic space and workplace planning functions allow you to forecast future needs and create scenarios around different workplace concepts. As a result, you maximize alignment of your workplace strategy with core business goals.
2. Tactical level of workplace management
At the tactical workplace management level, the aim is to implement the chosen strategy successfully, monitor and validate workplace performance continuously and improve where needed. This process includes all space and workplace optimization projects as well as managing changes that are initiated by the business.
67% of knowledge workers left their previous employer partly because their workplace was not optimized for them
An IWMS supports tactical workplace management with a wide diversity of utilization, occupancy and cost analyses, and tools to plan and manage any change. In most cases an IWMS includes integration with Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems to visualize actual and forecasted utilization. Project management, movement management, scenario planning, and financial back-charge functions complete the toolbox for space and workplace managers on a tactical level.
3. Operational level of Workplace Management
Operational excellence and agility are key prerequisites for successful workplace management. Try to imagine what happens when people enter the office and cannot find a free desk to work from, or cannot collaborate with their colleagues, or discover that a meeting room they had reserved is being used by someone else. Avoiding chaos in daily operations and facilitating employees with smart solutions such as a workplace app to reserve, find or use the facilities they need drives the business value of workplace management.
An IWMS enables the reservation of meeting rooms, specific workspaces, and even the ability to book a flexible workplace ‘on-the-fly’. That information, combined with sensor technology leads to a powerful combination, helping people find an appropriate, available workspace while giving facility managers the tools they need to reduce building vacancies and align services and energy consumption to the actual usage of the building.
In the building, people are guided via screens with indicators of availability via a floor plan showing information on workspaces and rooms that are either occupied, reserved, or available. Employees can use the app to reserve a desk simply by scanning a QR code or swiping an RFID tag.
Why Employee Engagement Matters
Employee engagement describes how well employees are committed to the goals and values of their organization. A high level of employee engagement leads to increased productivity, more innovation, and better staff retention.
Workplace executives and facility managers have a significant influence on levels of employee engagement. It starts by recognizing that employees and other building users are at the heart of a successful workplace strategy.
Employees need to be able to explore, navigate, and use the facilities and services within their work environment. Smart companies are providing all employees with these capabilities via a convenient smartphone app.
A workplace app should adapt to the personal preferences of each employee to make their day at the office as pleasant as possible.
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Michigan State University Selects Planon’s Integrated Campus Management Technology
Planon announced today that Michigan State University selected Planon’s integrated workplace management system for their campus management
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Bayer Real Estate optimizes Real Estate and Facility Management
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Brown University Selects Planon’s Facility Management Technology
“The partnership with Planon will allow Brown to implement the most progressive smart campus technology for our facility management services,” said Dr. Ravi Pendse, CIO of Brown University.
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