The client.
This client case study has been written about one of the UK’s leading and best-loved professional services companies with 21 major office facilities across the UK and Ireland.
Freespace has helped a leading professional services company create a safe and compliant return-to-office solution for its employees resulting in high levels of employee attendance and approval during a time of change and uncertainty.
Freespace helps them sustain an efficient and productive environment by providing a wide range of workplace optimization technologies, including 20,000 occupancy sensors and 250 digital screens used for information and wayfinding.
Industry: Professional services.
Location: United Kingdom.
Deployment Size: 22 sites (UK national rollout); 20k sensors, 250 screens – 85 floors with unique SD designs.
Product: SPOT Tags for social distancing plans (and signage integration).
Solution: Return to office.
The challenge.
In 2020 and with the advent of Covid, a leading professional services company sought our help in designing a new workplace solution that accommodated the new social distancing rule. The solution had to remain accessible and flexible as part of their return-to-office strategy.
Freespace developed new socially distanced space plans and introduced new color-coded desk SPOT Tags (individually numbered and colored QR codes) across our customers’ offices. Different colored SPOT Tags identify the desks that employees can use on days of the week.
Minimizing the potential risk of spreading the Covid virus (through physical separation) and that office cleaning is efficient and targeted, with only used areas during the workday cleaned on any given day.
The socially distanced color-coding system integrates with the Freespace sensor network and digital signage. Employees can quickly and easily identify the color of desks to use on a given day, and on arrival, the location of free desks in the building.
The color-coding system is applied both to desks and meeting spaces. The desk sensors allow in-use spaces to be identified and removed from digital signage and booking systems until they are clean and sanitized.
Return to office.
Accessible and flexible workplace solution accommodating socially distanced return-to-office strategy.
Employee experience.
Quick and easily identifiable in-use workspaces and the location of clean, free-to-use desks in the building.
Socially distanced spaces.
Color-coded system across office and spaces, to identify desks that employees can use on different days of the week.
Targeted cleaning.
Minimizing risk of infection with used areas during the workday cleaned on any given day.
The solution.
Freespace has developed a social distancing alerting platform within our client reporting dashboard. Based on the established business rules, sensors will pick up and report anyone sitting at a non-socially distanced space on any given day and trigger an automated alert to the facilities team.
✔ Prompting facilities floor hosts to engage users, educate them about the social distancing measures, and relocate them to a safe space.
✔ Fitted in washroom and toilet facilities, the Freespace sensors recognize the number of people within the space compared to maximum permitted levels, based on social distancing rules.
✔ Provides employees with the assurance and necessary information that the space they want to enter is safe to use on the live signage screens installed outside the restrooms.
Our impact.
Occupancy levels increased.
Return-to-office occupancy levels have steadily increased as time has gone by; 20% of employees returning initially, subsequently to 30%, and more recently 40%.
Safe distancing guidance.
As guidance changes and the proportion of employees returning increases, Freespace has been working with customers to modify and update our color-coding system. Our system now accommodates safe distancing guidance alongside the increasing number of employees in the workplace.
Leading with technology.
As a result of the return-to-office measures, the leading professional services company was one of the first to invite its employees back to the office.