Enhancing Workplace Experience in the Era of RTO: Ep 24

Jennifer Heath 0:14
Hello everyone and welcome. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of the Hybrid Hangout podcast. My name is Jennifer Heath. I’m the Director of Product Marketing here at FM:Systems.

Brian Haines 0:26
And I am Brian Haines. I manage strategy at FM:Systems.

Jennifer Heath 0:30
And today we are going to talk a little bit about one of the impacts of the huge trend right now, of RTO, Return to Office. One of the things that has sort of come out of that- we’ve talked a lot about RTO mandates in terms of, how do you measure them? How do you measure their effectiveness? How do you enforce them? How do you track things? But on the other side of that, what if people just wanted to be in the office. What would that look like? And what has emerged as a result of that question, in response to RTO, is really, what is workplace experience? What do we want a workplace experience to be? It has really shifted after this kind of experiment with remote work. People have really different expectations now for what their work day should be like, what they want it to be like, what they need it to be like. What are you hearing from our clients and business partners on how they’re thinking differently now about workplace experience?

Brian Haines 1:38
Well, a big part of it, Jen, I think, is that they just expect greater availability of information that helps them, you know, know more about what’s going on in their day. I think, you know, we’re seeing, we’re seeing a kind of a couple of things really sort of converge here. One is a lot of people talking about, you know, in the sort of air quotes thing, sort of platform technologies, or, you know, a lot of organizations wanting to standardize on a smaller number of solutions to solve issues within their organization. And the same thing that we’re seeing from like occupants and visitors and people coming to facilities, they sort of expect a better experience. You know, it’s interesting because, you know, when, when we’re all on the highway and we’re driving along, we just flip up, you know, Google or Apple Maps and we and we just get navigated to wherever we need to be. And we’re not really thinking about it other than the journey. We’re just thinking about, you know, we type in where we want to go, and then we sort of get this journey planned for us. People are starting to really expect that same experience to happen at the workplace. You know, through this sort of period where we saw sort of a transition from, you know- a lot a lot more remote working was happening just a few years ago. A lot more hybrid. Now a lot of people are returning to the office. A lot of these people have maybe not been to the office that much, you know, and so they’re looking for a better experience when they go. So we see a lot of our clients talking about doing things such as changing the nature of their space to be more we-space and less me-space. We see the availability of understanding, like, who’s going to be in the office? You know, what’s it going to be like when I get there? Is there a space for me? And they’re asking all of these questions, and all of it’s really sort of pointing towards unifying, you know, technology. I think primarily technology and information around making the workplace experience and transitioning into the workplace, working within the workplace, and then transitioning out at the end of the day, more seamless. I think that’s really what’s pushing a lot of it, and the technology is finally there to do this.

Jennifer Heath 3:57
Exactly. I thought that a lot that we’re at such an interesting crossroads, because these ideas of what we want our workplace experience to be like, there is now an abundance of technology that can help facilitate some of these different things. So one of the things that I when I think about technology in a return to office setting, one of the first things I think about is wayfinding, because for a lot of people, there’s a few different scenarios. Maybe this is a brand new office. You know, your organization has shifted. They’ve opened a new headquarters, and everybody’s going back in for the first time. Well, nobody knows where anything is or how you’re going to get around. If you’re in a scenario similar to how we are across FM:Systems and Johnson Controls, where you have a lot of different locations. Maybe I’m, you know, primarily in the Raleigh office, but I’m going to go and spend a week in Cork, or I’m going to go spend a week in Traverse City, Michigan. I’m walking into a totally new place, and I’m going to need some help in getting around. And I think that’s one of the first things that people need to think about in that seamless experience. Is just that very simple, how do I know where I’m going?

Brian Haines 5:08
Yeah, and it’s sort of a blend of, you know, I was mentioning earlier mapping technology like Google or Apple, which I use constantly whenever I’m driving somewhere. That’s sort of the external wayfinding experience that we’re all probably taking for granted now. I mean, I can’t get into my vehicle without flipping up, like, where I’m going to go, right and typing it in. That same capability is actually available inside of a building envelope. And where, I think that really shows its value is not only just like transitioning from that experience of being in a vehicle or mass transit or something and knowing where you’re going to, you know coming into a building and knowing where you’re going, but it’s between buildings. Think of a campus setting. Think of a higher education or a healthcare campus, and you’re told that you need to go to some office or some department that you’ve never been there before. You don’t know how to get there. And you know, signage can only do so much. But if you could just simply type it in and get directed there, that’s going to be a much better experience for you. It’s going to save time, it’s going to make you feel less stressed out. It’s probably going to give you a very good estimate of how long it’s going to take you to get there. You know, all of this, everything we’re talking about is improving the workplace experience, and that’s why this technology, I think, is being asked for so much right now. We’re hearing it constantly. What do you have for workplace experience? What do you have for making it better for our employees or who are returning? And it ranges from you know, those sort of, like operational capabilities, such as finding where I’m going to sit, to, you know, things that are a little bit softer, like, maybe, like, can I order lunch, can I have it delivered, can I have a meeting catered. Like, all of those kinds of things. Can I if I go into the conference room and the projector is broken, can I simply enter a service ticket right there, where the ticket knows where I am and automatically dispatches it so that when I come back in, it’s, you know, it’s been taken care of. Or, even better, how about I knew that, that that there was a problem with that projector before I booked the room, so I didn’t book it right? That better experience, right? Just the information’s there. We’re now putting it together in a way that’s we’re listening to all of the data that’s coming in, and we’re presenting it in ways that’s making it easier for us, I think.

Jennifer Heath 7:33
And it makes it increases our overall efficiency so much when that information is just readily available. You didn’t waste time trying to fix the projector or find a different room you already knew you were able to deal with it. You’re able to move forward with whatever the task at hand was. And I think that’s such a benefit of where we are right now, is that things are available in near real time, all different manner of things. When you talk about how clients are asking for workplace experience. There are so many different pieces that go into that. So wayfinding is a small piece. Maybe finding a desk for a conference room, submitting a work order ticket. Those are all kind of the, you know, the nuts and the bolts of putting together your work day. But what if we think about it beyond not just workplace experience, employee experience, occupant experience. Then you get into some of the different people that are coming and going, and you think about things like visitor management. And what is your badge strategy, your visitor security, your access strategy. Are you going to have badging through your phones? Are you going to have a traditional card that people have to wear around their necks? There’s, of course, a big shift right now towards biometric screenings, like there’s all these different components that come in. What do you think are maybe, let’s say the top three. If you could pick three technologies to fuel a great workplace experience, what would they be?

Brian Haines 9:02
So I’ll, I’ll give you a kind of a journey that will highlight what those things are. So, you know, I think about workplace experience a lot because we now have, you know, we have technology, Jen within the OpenBlue portfolio, that’s targeted towards improving this experience. And stuff that we’re going to be talking about for a while. So last week, we held a big meeting here in Raleigh where we had an all hands and we had a lot of people come in. A lot of them had never been here. And Raleigh Ironworks is where our FM:Systems headquarters is, and it’s sort of a mixed use development with a lot going on. There’s office space, there’s retail, there’s lots of restaurants, there’s a, you know, a high rise apartment building. There’s multiple places to park. It’s often not easy to wayfind, the signage is not that great. So, to me a wonderful workplace experience would be, listen, I’m going, I’m going to the Raleigh office for an event, show me where I can park. That’s one, that’s step one. That’s like, just wayfinding, right? Like, show me where I can park, and then show me the availability of that parking. So one of the things that we have here is a big parking deck, and it’s now got a lift gate. So wouldn’t it be great to just come up it knows I’m coming. I just hold my phone up. I badge in. So there’s number two wayfinding, and then being able to badge in- phone is a badge for anything, right? So whatever I’m able to do, what I’m allowed to access the phone can allow me to do that. I get out of my car. I look at the map. It shows me where the office is. It gives me a walking route. I walk to the office, and when I walk up to the office, I badge in. So once again, seamless, easy, I badge in the office knows I’m there now because I’ve badged in. You know, there’s a lot of value to that. Other people could get notified that maybe me as a visitor has shown up, and, you know, they may want to come out to greet me, or maybe I’m coming in and I need to find a desk for a day. So that’s the third thing. So, you know, summing it sort of up, technology is sort of like phone as a badge, wayfinding, and then just providing me and the people I’m meeting with information about the fact that I have arrived and that we’re going to meet in room X, and that, here’s the conditions of room X. It has a projector. The indoor air quality is great. It’s got a good temperature. There’s nice light. Everything’s available. We’ve got good connectivity. All of that, so as I, you know, smoothly go into that room, everything’s ready to roll, right. And so to me, that’s a really nice experience, especially if I’ve never been here before. I come in not stressed out, but knowing what I’m going to experience, and the people I’m going to meet with are going to know that I’m there. I think that those three things in combo, and there’s a lot more that we could talk about. Those three things just for that one simple journey would have made it so much better. And I could tell you, it’s not like that when you get here now, especially if you don’t know where you’re going. I can’t tell you how many people have told me we had such a hard time finding your office.

Jennifer Heath 12:16
I’ve been there multiple times, and somebody has to come and help me every time.

Brian Haines 12:20
I know I typically go down and meet people as they’re coming out of their Uber. I’m like, it’s not easy. I’ll come to you.

Jennifer Heath 12:27
Well, it’s funny. So I will shamelessly plug a previous episode, because we did a whole review of the new office there at the Raleigh Ironworks. So if you want to go back and watch that episode. It’s a good one. And I will say as well, you touched on two other ideas that I think are really interesting. And this one extends beyond the workplace, and it’s one of my favorite applications of sensor technology right now, is in parking garages like thank goodness. Finally, it’s easy to see without going up and down through. And I remember working at a huge corporate office in Denver and having to build in time to just get through the parking lot and to find a place to park and walk all the way across to where I had to be. So I love that application of sensors to have smarter parking. Again it’s just making us more efficient. Let’s not waste all that time when there’s technology that can make it super easy. I need to go to level 4 row D. There I am.

Brian Haines 13:32
Yeah, and I was thinking of that because it’s, you go into the parking deck and it’s just got these lights. It’s like, red, green, right? So if it’s green, oh my gosh. A half mile away, I can see that green light. I start motoring that way to find the spot. The same thing is with where you park your body within an office, we have the same technology, red, green, is it available or is it not? And I can, you know, I could, I can make a beeline for that office knowing that it’s available and I’m going to be able to get it. So it’s kind of funny that you mentioned that, because I was thinking of like, parking your car, parking your body. All of those are better if you know that spot’s going to be available.

Jennifer Heath 14:09
Absolutely. Another one that you touched on that I think is really interesting, and this one’s a little bit more complex. It’s the idea of comfort controls. So for many years, I was freezing. I was just cold all the time, like I was one of those people that, like, always had a little space heater under my desk and an extra jacket. And now I’ve, you know, rolled over into the other half of life, where now I’m just hot all the time. So when I think about going into the office versus being at home, where I can control my temperature, I can open a window, I can, you know, do different things, to change my environment, and that really impacts my comfort level, my ability to focus, my ability to concentrate. I think that’s a really interesting advancement right now, again, it’s complicated, it’s hard if we’re sitting right next to each other and I want to be at 68 and you want to be at 75 like that’s hard to balance that between two people. But we’re starting to create those opportunities to adjust the room level of your conference room, or to even have technology built into your desk, for your little cubicle that allows you to adjust your personal temperature. And going back to the idea of that seamless technology, having all of that together in a single platform, where the same place where I’m going to go to access the map, to get to the next place, to reserve my desk, I can set my temperature. I can, you know, access my badge for whatever reason. I think that’s such a unique opportunity to again, just make it so efficient, make everything so streamlined and seamless for employees.

Brian Haines 15:53
Yeah, I was mentioning this something similar to this last week. I was doing a presentation at a conference in Florida, and I was sort of bringing up this concept, and asking people when they think about making their building smarter, because you just talked about indoor air quality technology. It’s not magic. You have to put a sensor that measures the indoor air quality, and then it starts sending out data. So a lot of people have technologies like this in their facilities maybe now. They may have lighting systems, they may have badging systems, they may have all kinds of things that building automation system. And those systems are talking, they’re sending out data, but often people aren’t listening, right? So it’s just this data that’s just being collected but not really being used. It’s one of the primary reasons why we see buildings on when no one’s there, because the building saying I’m on, it’s really simple, turn me off right? Like, turn out off the building when no one’s here. Like, all of this kind of information is being shared. What we have now is technology, and a lot of this workplace experience talk is really centered around technology, as I was saying, and improving the workplace experience. And it’s all just a matter of listening to what the building is telling you, and then providing that information to an end user. Occupant could be could be employees, could be visitors, could be faculty, staff, students in higher education could even be patients and staff doctors, etc. In a healthcare setting, I mean, there’s so much information that can be given to us, either in a mobile device or on the desktop, that the building is simply giving us this valuable information, and we’re taking advantage of that. On the flip side of that, we’re also giving information back. We’re giving information back, such as, how is the space being utilized? Are people picking certain spaces because of environmental factors that we’ve not been taking into consideration? Do people like sitting close to sunlight? Do they like sitting in warmer spaces or colder spaces? Do they like using conference rooms or huddle spaces more than workstations. Like because we’re interacting and we’re gathering that information through sensor technology and through connected systems, we are then able to take that data and provide better space back over time, like we can reconfigure our space. And so this, in my opinion, like workplace experience is not just about the end user, but it’s about iterating your space and your operations to make them better over time, so that you’re continually improving the experience. I really think at some point we’re going to be kind of to the point where we’re sort of Airbnb’ing our space. And what I mean by that is like we’re providing so much information to you to help you make a choice about where you want to sit, including like, who are you going to be sitting beside? Where’s your department going to be sitting for the day? How close are you going to be to the break room? How close are you going to be to the amenities? How close are you going to be… like all of that is available to you and could be part of your decision making process as you decide where to sit, and then I think the day of the five star review is going to come to space, like, I’m not going to sit in that in that workstation. Like, 157 people have given it two stars because it’s close to the doors. It’s maybe close to the bathroom doors coming open and close, or maybe a high traffic area, or it’s really loud, like, I think eventually that’s going to make its way into the workplace, experience, if you will, as we choose to, you know, listen to this data and then provide it. So that that’s kind of where I think it’s going to go.

Jennifer Heath 19:37
So another sort of interesting trend related to this, and this has been around for a few years that I think it’s really bubbling up more now is the concept of workplace experience as a career path. Like a lot of people now have workplace experience, managers, directors of workplace experience, and we talk a lot over the years about what I call it, the trifecta. Which is probably not really the right word, but that Trifecta inside an organization that is facilities, HR and IT- those are the ones that really have to work together to create that complete end to end employee experience, the tools you use, the role that you play, the facilities and spaces that you have access to. It’s interesting to me to think about all three of those sort of coming together in this concept of a workplace experience manager. And do you see it that way, that it still really has to be all three of those components. You have to have the HR perspective, the IT and the facilities insight.

Brian Haines 20:41
Yeah, and for multiple reasons. One is, we’re also seeing kind of this blend of operational technology, like these really sophisticated building control systems that are starting to be more open and accessible, mobile apps that are helping us, combining with getting the blessing from our IT partners on using these technologies to enhance, you know, the experience for everyone, plus these technologies get certified. You know, they’re secure. They’re available to all employees. They’ve got user access controls built into it. So we can say, all right, this employee could do this, this employee can’t do that. So it’s about creating that handshake relationship. You know, I think gone are the days where you know someone just sticks a device on the wall and connects it to your network, like without thinking about IT, security, and working with your IT team as a partner. That then combines with like workplace experience, to me, is completely an HR sort of topic, right? Because HR, really, in a lot of ways, is responsible for gaining, gathering that feedback from how employees feel about working for an organization, employee retention, employee wellness. I mean, these are all HR components. As well as you know, often we see a lot of organizations where facilities management, you know, often rolls up to HR and a lot of organizations, so it’s interesting. And as I see, the blend of those- gone are the days of the FM in the basement somewhere, working as a lone entity. And it’s really about teams enhancing that experience. And that’s where the workplace experience push is coming from Jen. It’s not just like a facility manager saying that, that we need this. It’s organizations coming together saying this is going to make it better to work here. It’s going to help us to attract talent. It’s going to make our employees happier. They’re going to experience a better feeling of wellness. They’re going to know when their team’s going to be in, so they’re going to come in those days. I mean, this all the stuff that just makes it better. And I think it is the trifecta of those three.

Jennifer Heath 22:47
So the last trend that I have to comment on, because it’s really important. I just found this out today, and so you and I need to be thinking about this. Another big area where RTO is having an impact is fashion. Fashion week in New York. RTO was a major theme. Lots of suits and blazers. I get ads all the time about my return to office wardrobe and do I need a refresh so? So now that’s a little pocket of the economy really benefiting from return to office.

Brian Haines 23:24
That’s interesting. I have not thought about that angle, but I’m going to think about it, because I just, you know, for the user conference every year, which is coming up soon, I always go get a nice new jacket. And I like to kind of zhuzh it up a little bit. And this amazing woman was helping me, like, pick things and try stuff on, and she came over with a tie. I’m like, nobody wears- I’m sorry, no. The tie was, I used to love ties. I’m like, no. I have not seen a person wear a tie in so long. I don’t even know why you guys are still selling them. Who knows? Maybe Fashion Week is going to bring the tie back.
Jennifer Heath 23:59
Yeah, no, they were saying that a lot of retailers that have, classically, you know, focused on business attire have really struggled in the last five years.

Brian Haines 24:12
Think of all the attire we were wearing when we were all at home. It’s like sweat pants and workout attire.

Jennifer Heath 24:17
Yeah, they were talking about that- how there was this big spike in like athleisure brands, because everybody’s at home and they’re in yoga pants, and now it’s swinging the other way.

Brian Haines 24:27
You know what? I’m gonna think about this. But, probably not for very long. But, I’ll probably think about it.

Jennifer Heath 24:41
All right, I think that’s all the time we have for today. Brian, it’s always great to see you and catch up. And we will do this again here in a couple of weeks, I bet.

Brian Haines 24:52
Thank you. Jen, always fun. I appreciate it.

Jennifer Heath 24:54
Thank you. Thanks everyone for listening. We’ll see you next time.