Envoy Desks from Envoy is a new desk reservation system to help companies meet social distancing guidelines for employees working in the office, and provide data-driven insights to optimize their space. As companies adapt to the coronavirus pandemic by adopting a flexible model for employees to work remotely or in an office, companies are reevaluating their space and looking for ways to make it more safe, flexible, and efficient. Desks is available in beta as part of Envoy Protect, Envoy’s suite of tools to help companies safely welcome employees into the workplace.
“The future of work will be hybrid, at least for the next couple years. It’ll be a combination of working from home, the office, or even the nearby co-working space—each for only two or three days per week,” said Larry Gadea, Founder & CEO of Envoy. “There’s inefficiency in holding permanent desks for people who will only be in an office part-time. Envoy Desks solves this by making desks bookable per day, allowing companies to optimize their use of space, reduce overall square footage, and offer more flexibility for workers.”
For employees, Desks makes it easy to book a desk for the day, right from their phone. Employees have the flexibility to choose where to sit, depending on what they need to get done that day. They may want to collaborate with a project team on-site, or want a quiet space for heads-down productivity that they can’t accomplish at home. They’re automatically assigned a desk when they sign-in for the day, or they can select a different seat from the interactive map in the app.
For employers, Desks offers a way to ensure teams can collaborate in person while maintaining social distance. As companies shift toward a hybrid approach, they’re redesigning spaces previously allocated for permanent seating to more adaptable spaces that can accommodate hot desking, group work, special events, or client meetings. Envoy Desks is designed to support flexibility, especially as more people are returning to the office and there are changing guidelines around social distancing and capacity limits. Desks analytics can help optimize office layouts by reconfiguring unused space, ultimately reducing the office footprint and lowering real estate costs. Analytics can also be used by after-hours cleaning crews to know which desks and conference rooms to sanitize.
Desks is the latest product in the Envoy platform to help keep employees safe in the workplace. This desk reservation system works with Envoy Protect, enabling companies to screen employees through a health questionnaire, conduct contact tracing, limit access within the workplace, manage maximum people-capacity, and more.
Companies such as Lionsgate have been using Desks since early September when Envoy offered an early version to select customers as a way of iterating and learning about COVID-specific challenges.
“Working in the entertainment industry is a creative and collaborative process requiring everyone to work closely together,” said Heather Somaini, Chief Administrative Office at Lionsgate. “Envoy Protect has been an incredible asset to us in enabling us to safely bring teams together. Desks is a key part of our transition back to the workplace, and we see it as a permanent shift in how we design and structure our workplaces moving forward.”
Companies can start a free trial of Desks at envoy.com, or existing customers can start from their Envoy dashboard.
Great article! Thanks for sharing! This could be a useful solution for many “return-to-work” strategies. Keep up the great work!