From 20 to 1,030 desks. How one organization scaled hot desking using ecobook.
Overview
Our customer is a leading insurance agency in Singapore spanning multiple buildings and more than 3,000 occupants including employees, and agents. They provide a variety of health insurance products for residents of Singapore.
The Challenge
Before the pandemic, each occupant had dedicated desks. Staff would come to the office every day to work and go out to meet clients. Working from home was not the norm.
When the pandemic hit, everyone was required to work from home. The offices lay empty with just essential staff occupying the offices. As the restrictions slowly lifted, many employees preferred to work from the office. This posed a challenge as COVID was still raging around the world and the risk of contagion was real. There was a need to manage the return to office while complying with regulations and ensuring the safety and health of the staff. As part of the regulations at that time, organizations requiring employees to come to work had to implement safeguards such as safe distancing and contact tracing. These were required to help in the investigation and containment of any spread.
After reviewing several products in the market, the customer selected ecobook to be a simple platform to help in safe distancing and contact tracing.
The Solution
The initial plan was to open about 20 desks for social distancing and contact tracing in the assurance department in one building. The layout was prepared and alternate desks were disabled from booking. Once set up, the employees were welcomed back to the office and they were required to book and check in to the desk when seated. If they were leaving, they were required to check out.
This significantly improved the visibility of the employee occupation and presence in the office. Reports generated provided a clear picture of the visitations to the office and who was present in the office at any point in time. This greatly improved the contact tracing ability.
As the pandemic became less threatening and more residents in Singapore were vaccinated, offices began to welcome more employees back. However, they were still required to book and check in to their desks.
Having experienced the ease with which users were able to book, check-in and check-out of their desks, and the insights gained from usage of the desks, the management decided to use hot desking as a permanent feature of workplace management.
ecobook was used to expand the scale of operations from a mere 20 desks during Covid to more than 1,030 desks. Staff were briefed on the new way of working. The combination of work-from-home and office visit rotations was planned by the individual departments for their respective teams.
With 3,000 staff, employees were required to book their desks and check in when they arrived at the office.
Now, ecobook is the standard app used for employees to use when they plan on coming to the office for work. ecobook has been rolled out to more buildings and branch offices across the country.
The Results
After more than 3 years of operations, ecobook has proven a solid platform for managing desks for the organization. Feedback from heavy users of the system included:
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A simplified desk booking platform to manage and organize the employee’s daily activity in the office.
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Being able to determine if a specific staff was in the office so they could book desks next to them to work together.
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The facilities were able to see the occupancy details of the different locations. They have made significant alterations to floor spaces to accommodate the increasing demand from staff to work from the office. For example, for the same square footage, they were able to increase the number of desks by 17.5% in the last year.
In Summary
In 3 years, the organization has transformed itself from a traditional cubicle and desk-based workplace environment to an open office with hot desks across the whole organization.
ecobook has proved to be a resilient platform that was able to scale along with their needs. What started as a tool to manage the pandemic has turned out to be the default tool to manage the entire office space.
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Employees had better visibility into desk availability and staff presence.
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Facilities were able to view insights into the occupancy rates and better manage the re-working of floors that seemed to be under-utilized.
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Management has better visibility into the utilization of spaces and plans their investments in real estate.
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