A workplace app is a step closer to creating a great workplace experience

In an increasingly competitive business world, staying up to date with the latest trends and best practice has never been more important. But merely keeping pace is the minimum that companies need to do to remain truly relevant, attractive to top talent and ultimately, profitable. Especially in these difficult and uncertain times, companies have to quickly react to unprecedented changes and address many questions they were not ready to answer –What is the best way to approach hybrid working? How should RTO policy look like? And many more.

At UnWork, we are seeing an increasing demand for flexibility in the workplace as a natural response to the situation. Companies are inevitably moving towards hybrid working and the main questions are around how to make it work for both the company and the employees. Each company is different, so there is no right approach. Google and Apple recently announced they’d require their people to work from the office three days a week. On the other side, Twitter has told its employees it would be up to them to decide where they work from.

Whichever approach the companies choose, they will face a lot of similar challenges. Bridging the gap between in-person and remote participants is always hard. Remote colleagues can feel frustrated and unable to participate equally (this is often true for creative, innovative work involving a lot of discussions, whiteboards and idea sharing).

The office people return to must offer them a better experience than they have at home. It means companies need to provide employees with the right mix of spaces, technology, policies, and tools.

One of the most popular ways how to support the experience of transition to hybrid work is to deploy a workplace app. It is especially beneficial for room/space booking, employee scheduling, space management, wayfinding, and visitor management. So far these have been the most common requirements that companies are looking for in an app. Some vendors are already using AI technology to predict behaviours or to suggest the best place or day to come to the office. Some are even implementing augmented reality (AR) technology to their wayfinding functionality.

As mentioned before, every company is different, therefore, it is crucial to correctly evaluate which functionalities are needed and choose the right vendor to do the job. There are an increasing number of vendors with different value propositions and from our experience, choosing the most suitable one is not always the easiest thing. We recommend that companies should thoroughly research the vendor by looking at its client base, number of employees, core functionalities and integration capabilities.

It is definitely the right time to consider whether a workplace app would be beneficial for your organisation. From our experience, the market leaders are either deploying or have already deployed an app. To sum up, organisations that move forward and create workplaces that adapt, flex and accommodate everyone’s needs will attract and retain the best talent and benefit from innovation and growth. And a workplace app is a step closer to achieving that.