Scheduling Chronicles

As an increasing number of companies are consolidating their workspace to save money they are finding that cutting down on their corporate real estate footprint has a significant impact on more than just their bottom line.

The Wall Street Journal noticed that businesses aren’t expanding as much as they used to as a result of the unstable economy.  However they learned that the economy isn’t the only reason expansion has decreased; companies “are figuring out how to use less space per employee by setting up more-collaborative work environments.”

Companies are beginning to design workspace that will improve productivity in their organization while increasing actual space utilization.  “Corporations moving into new offices often are asking architects for open floor-plans and fewer offices.”  A perfect example of this is NRG Energy Inc.  In Houston, the company “is moving out of 260,000 square feet across two buildings into less than 220,000 square feet of office space in a new property, Houston Pavilions.  The New Jersey-based power company’s employees will work in a space with no enclosed offices, reducing the amount of space per employee the company needs to pay for, and, executives say, helping people work more efficiently.  “You get efficiency from a real-estate standpoint, but you gain even more efficiency from the way people interact or share information,” Denise Wilson, NRG’s chief administrative officer, says.”

This trend in space consolidation is not only affecting the organizations implementing the changes but those who make the physical changes as well.  “Interior architects and furniture designers are taking advantage of the movement by working with companies that want to squeeze more people into less space and create more collaborative work environments.  Andrew Garnar-Wortzel, a principal at architecture firm Gensler, said flexible workbenches that allow different numbers of people to occupy the same work space are increasingly common.”

Many companies are able to make the physical changes in their organization but then find that they have difficulty implementing the new work environment and managing it efficiently.  With the right room and resource management software, like PeopleCube’s Resource Scheduler, managing the mobile workforce and scheduling rooms and resources is simple and efficient.  The software allows users to book not only meeting rooms and resources, but enable mobile workers to reserve shared workspace, accommodating a newly consolidated work environment.  Plus, by pairing PeopleCube’s PeopleCounter with Resource Scheduler, you can enhance your workplace business intelligence to get the most out of your scheduling software.  For example, use PeopleCounter to understand how your space is currently being used, allow architects to design a space based on that information to accommodate the flex work program, and then use Resource Scheduler to continually manage the program.

Efficient scheduling and management software can further enhance an efficient workplace environment and encourage productivity improvement.