Jun 30, 2021

6 Technologies for Return to the Office

Over the last year, we’ve known that technology would play a critical role in a safe and engaging return to the office. Now, as companies begin their workplace migrations, it’s more imperative than ever that they do so transparently and in ways that support employees. From providing physical wellbeing to equipping employees with information, technology can help you advance safety protocols, and build employee trust and wellbeing. As long as you keep employees at the center of all your efforts.

We’ve considered every aspect of the employee experience with our return to office roadmap. And we’ve evaluated what technologies can best support your people, optimize their return to office journey, and promote health and safety in the office. Here are six that can help make every re-entry experience safe and seamless.

Create visibility and connection between in-office and remote environments.
Workplace Experience App (CX app)

Workplace experience apps can digitally replicate a company’s culture and connect employees wherever they are working, promoting meaningful activities among employees and fostering a sense of community across the hybrid work environment. Seat reservation systems provide individuals or teams with bookable spaces to work and let all users know who’s in the office. This system also empowers contact tracing if an employee becomes ill.

Encourage wellbeing and ensure safety protocols.
Temperature scanners

Employee self-health checks and mandatory temperature scanning technologies will promote safe practices, are less intrusive than hand-held devices, flag abnormal readings and manage all the data. With the right safety measures visually in place, employees and visitors can feel secure and confident returning to the workplace.

Minimize the spread of illness.
Touchless Security Access

If your employees don’t feel safe in their work environment, they can’t perform their best. Touchless security access helps enforce safety protocols and minimizes the spread of illness, so they can have peace of mind when moving throughout the workplace.

Communicate space usage and protocol at scale.
Digital Wayfinding and Signage

Wayfinding and signage help your team easily access and understand return to work policies and procedures, space type usage, and safety protocols. This type of in-office visual communication is especially important for large campus or multi-story buildings because it keeps employees in the know without making them dig for information and it can be used to support employee team building and reinforce workplace culture.

Collaborate safely and effectively.
Touchless collaboration using Katai video conference solutions

Video conferencing helps bridge the communication gap for remote, in-office, and hybrid teams. It facilitates collaborating, mentoring, brainstorming, and building camaraderie especially with the Katai high-definition camera that mimics in-person communication with speaker/attendee AI tracking across multiple angles and with any type of lighting. Remote workers feel like they are in the meeting, at home students feel like they are in the classroom, and the patient/provider experience can feel as intimate as an office visit.

See how we’ve deployed Katai solutions

Automate the cleaning process.
Disinfection utilizing the Botzee Robot

Maintaining sanitization and disinfection protocols is labor intensive and leaves a lot of room for human error –– and it doesn’t always alleviate employee concerns. We found the Botzee robot, a contactless, automated, cost effective technology that employs UVC solutions to safely disinfect surfaces and spaces in offices, hospitals and medical office buildings, and classrooms, without supervision. It maintains all travel and schedule information and even leaves behind heatmaps of completed areas to increase user confidence.

Your workplace will always revolve around your employees. So should the solutions you bring into it. That’s why we keep people at the heart of the solutions we provide. Because while technology can improve workplace safety, employee wellbeing, and productivity, it only works if it’s centered squarely on the people it serves –– and those who use it.

Our Technology team would love to talk with you more about how these and other solutions can help turn your office into a destination employees will want to visit regularly.