Businesses Can Work Smarter, Not Harder
In a recent article, we discussed how businesses can negotiate the new era of workplace flexibility: the hybrid workplace. In this article, we outline the updates that ServiceNow has made to its Workplace Service Delivery solution to facilitate hybrid work environments.
The Hybrid Workplace: The Reality of the Future?
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many Americans tasted remote working for the first time. They enjoyed the freedom and autonomy that working from home gave them, and the flexibility to work when they felt most energized to do so.
Remote work has delivered some big benefits to businesses, too. These include improvements in productivity, customer satisfaction, and employee engagement.
These benefits have been so pronounced that many companies are now expecting the future of work to combine remote and on-site working – the hybrid model. Indeed, most C-Suite executives surveyed by McKinsey & Company expect their employees to spend between one and four days away from the workplace.
Of course, there are digital challenges that must be overcome. These include network constraints, communication, and cybersecurity. But fundamental to being in the workplace is the workplace itself. If your business has a hot desk policy – where some employees share desks instead of having a permanent one – how do you manage this?
ServiceNow Implements Changes for Hybrid Workspaces
ServiceNow has implemented changes to its Workplace Service Delivery solution to enable its users to facilitate easier hot desking – and all the requirements that go hand in hand with this.
These changes have been designed to enable businesses to manage their premises and facilities more effectively, allowing them to take advantage of reducing workspace needed for their company to operate at full capacity in the hybrid model without double booking of workspaces.
The new Workplace Service Delivery features include:
Single-Click Workspace Reservation
In an enhancement to its existing offering, ServiceNow has added new native mobile capability for employees to request a workspace. It has also improved the service with single-click reservation, and now employees are prompted to add any other services they require at the time of booking their workspace. All related service needs – such as lockers, parking spots, and more – are added easily and associated with the workspace booking.
Space Utilization Capability
One way to ensure that your business is maximizing its space and reducing costs is to design workspaces according to the number of employees expected to occupy them. ServiceNow has added new space utilization capabilities to its Workplace Space Management app to help make this happen.
Now, facilities teams can view exactly how many people will be in the workplace on any given day, and during any given week, month, or longer. This helps to decide how much space is required, how many floors need to be open, and how much other resource (such as food and drink, for example) they must provide.
This makes it easier for facilities teams to ‘build’ space for temporary and permanent needs, as well as retire disused spaces.
Workplace Space Mapping
One of the issues that your employees may have with hot desking is never knowing where they will be sitting. They come into the office, and the layout has been changed to accommodate different numbers of people, different work patterns, and different requirements. Desk number 142 is no longer where it was. It may not even be on the same floor. This is frustrating, time-consuming, and stressful.
ServiceNow’s mapping enhancements will help employees to find and reserve the best workspaces for them and navigate their workplace easily.
Workplace Service Delivery Enhancement – Tried and Tested by ServiceNow
In making these enhancements, ServiceNow didn’t just listen to its customers. It is putting them all into practice, by leveraging them to help manage its own hybrid and distributed workforce.
Employing around 13,000 people around the world, it is starting with Workplace Reservation Management to help its employees reserve workspace when they need it. It is also using Workplace Case Management and Workplace Visitor Management to improve its own practices and processes and save space and money.
ServiceNow has estimated that using its enhanced Workspace Reservation Management will save its employees and services teams more than 100,000 hours each year once running at full capacity. That’s equivalent to a day each year for every employee. Or, to put it another way, it’s the time equivalent to the work of 50 employees every year.
Workspace management is crucial in the hybrid workplace. How will you manage yours?
For more information about ServiceNow and how its applications might transform your business, contact Gravity IT Resources.
