What You Need To Know About the Workplace of the Future

Why Do I Need A Campus App?

We now live in an engagement economy. It’s a new era where everyone and everything is connected.

Contracts and renewals are given to the companies that provide not only a good or great product but also to those that match their level of customer experience and service with the quality of their offering. Better yet, surpass it.

This is also true for hiring, tenure, and HR practices within an organization. Employees want to work for the best companies that treat them well. Organizations that offer more than just a job, are outpacing those that are negligent when it comes to employee engagement.

When it comes to your corporate campus, the workplace of the future is here. No, we don’t mean floating buildings and teleporting to your cubicle (although that would be pretty cool). But a smart campus where mobile-first, cloud-connected, IoT experiences connect employees to the physical spaces around your venue as well as digital touchpoints that enable them to communicate with colleagues, collaborate, and stay informed - is what the digitally connected world we live in demands.

In an engagement economy, experiences are the currency.

Reflecting On Employee Engagement

Let’s take a quick inventory. Of the list of tasks below, add up how many of you do once a day for work:

• Read the news
• Check on company updates
• Go to meetings - we indoor map guidance
• Schedule a meeting and book a conference room
• Plan out your lunch arrangement (brown bag it or eat-out)
• Reference the workout schedule
• Check for messages from team members
• Assess whether you have time to grab a coffee
• See if there are any events happening today
• Book a desk or workspace
• Traveling from one campus to another

How many do you do? One or two? More than 5? All of them? In my case, I fall into the 5-6 range. Like many of you, I like to start my day informed. And that means referencing different sources to filter through all the things I need to or want to know before I grab my nonfat vanilla latte.  

What These Markers Mean

What we find is that, naturally, we (as a workforce) already perform a consistent amount of tasks and actions each morning, while getting ready, walking on the treadmill, or during the morning commute. It’s not only about information accumulation, but also about acquiring the tactical details that will enable us to operate a smoother more efficient workday.

Based on these behaviors we’ve found:

There Is An App Overload

The average number of apps people use daily is 9, monthly is 30.

I’m not saying death to all apps. Quite the contrary. You just need to have the right tools in place to maximize your workforce productivity. Think back to the tasks above, what apps or how many apps or systems do you use to perform them? Mail. Messaging. iCal. Outlook. Intranet. Wiki. Events calendar. Stock ticker. News feed. The list probably goes on…

What I’m saying, is organizations need to streamline their communications and work portals into what we consider a central hub for the campus. A mobile app that can work independently and seamlessly with existing applications to reduce app overload.

Imagine being able to access all of these things from just one app? Sounds great right! With a campus-specific app that leverages an intelligent partner ecosystem, you’ll increase personal efficiencies while increasing work-related awareness and productivity.

Actual Desk Time Is Decreasing

On average, employees spend 5 hours a day in meetings and 4 hours preparing for them.

It’s like eating your own dog food right? The more apps, and connected spaces we create, the less we are actually sitting down at a wired workstation. As such, employees are constantly on the go. Back to back meetings, lunch, more meetings, coffee, all hands meeting, drop-off dry cleaning, commute… your day probably looks a little like this right? My favorite is having a meeting, to schedule another meeting. When does work actually happen?

Instant access to alerts and notifications, streaming company news, and even available desks or meeting rooms will increase employee satisfaction by providing them with instant access to tools and channels they need to move about their day effortlessly. Overall morale might even go up, as they’ll likely feel more freedom to be outside or take a 5 minute break (yes it’s needed) and less burdened with hustling to and fro.

For example: A longtime friend and colleague of mine has worked for a Fortune 50 company in Silicon Valley for 15 years. They have a large corporate campus with over 30 buildings and he gets invited to a minimum of 10 meetings each week, and admits to often not knowing where the conference room is, only the building and floor number. So each week, when he goes to these different meetings, he spends a good 10-15 minutes just trying to find the room in a building, certain floor (for example). The paper maps on the walls tend to be outdated or rooms get renamed. It’s a struggle, and quite frankly a waste of his time. So when he thinks of what would help him manage this use case, he gets excited by the idea of an app that sends him a notification prior to the meeting and offers up click-through directions via real-time map guidance that can direct him exactly to the building, floor, and conference room. Time saver!

See more obstacles we’re trying to overcome in the modern workplace here: The Smart Campus Solution.

Matters of Safety & Security Are Increasingly Important

Because of an increasingly complex security environment, enterprises must often co-manage man-made or natural disasters alongside public safety agencies.

The average corporate campus in Silicon Valley probably has anywhere from 250 - 2,000 people coming through their doors everyday. And because most corporate offices are dynamic, in the sense that departments and team members are constantly changing locations internally, it can often be a challenge to remember or keep track of key hot spots or locations across your venue, especially if your new.

Of the Big Four technology companies:

• The new Apple Park stretches over 175 acres and 2.8million square feet in Cupertino, CA
• Google (the Googlplex) sprawls across over 3 million square feet in Mountain View, CA
• Facebook, designed like a village, most recent location grew to nearly 500,000 square feet, with plans to expand an additional 25,000 square feet of retail space and 1.75 million square feet of office space by 2021.
• And our friends in the Pacific Northwest, Amazon covers a whopping 13.6 million square feet across 45 structures in Seattle, Bellevue, Queen Anne and South Lake Union in Washington.

That’s a lot of space, a lot of people, and a lot of opportunities for chaos. Which is exactly why large public venues need to have a Campus App, with a safety and security component, that provide peace of mind. This should include campus assessment, resource allocation, ingress and egress flows, emergency response, as well as safety plans and protocols.

Key Pillars Of a Good Campus App

Companies need to be innovative when it comes to integrating tech into the workplace. Attracting top talent and customers requires a workplace that is as agile as the technology employees use every day. We’re mobile creatures, and our primary method of communication is increasingly mobile.

A 2018 Gallup report found that 63% of workers are disengaged at work. That’s ? of your workforce. Think about the teams you’re a part of. Let’s say you manage a team of 10, only 3 people on your team are enjoy working for your company or enjoy their job. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to aim a little bit higher!

So when it comes to improving the workplace experience, as organizations and managers, we have to meet our employees where they are with the things they want that will help them do their job better and enjoy it more. When we set out to build the CXApp for Campus, we factored these 3 key elements into the overall structure to make sure we were delivering on that promise.

• Engagement. The app has to be feature-rich and compelling enough that employees will not only want to, but feel the need to come into the app at least once per day.
• Leadership. A company’s culture is heavily influenced by the key personnel that lead it. Information, energy, and influence trickle from the top down, so employees need an easy way to stay up-to-date with company executives and thought leaders.
• Real-time. What happened yesterday or 5 minutes ago is just as important as what is happening right now… or even tomorrow. An engaged workplace requires instant access to news and updates that impact the company as a whole, departments, and even at the individual level. Whether it's fun, informative, or safety related, real-time communications are critical for the modern workplace.
• Reliability. an active tool that allows me to do basic items directly from my mobile app, anytime anywhere.   

Taking these 4 key tenants into consideration, factoring in employee needs, campus size, and the output of smart, connected devices, a campus app is the logical connection point for the workplace of the future.

Check out the CXApp for Campus!