Historically, companies had large offices able to house all of their employees in one workplace, with a personal desk for each person.
However, with the spread of remote work and “flex office”, company premises have gradually emptied and generally do not exceed 50% average weekly occupancy.
To make the most of this new on-site presence time, companies have reduced their office space (generating savings) and adapted their workspaces: individual desks, collaboration areas…
Nevertheless, for these shared desks to work, it is essential to “standardise” workstations as much as possible so that a user can find a comfortable workspace and settle in at any seat in the building without being affected. Indeed, an employee comes to the office because they can find equipment there that they do not have at home: air conditioning, an ergonomic chair, space to receive visitors…
A shared desk, necessarily standardised, generally consists of several elements such as:
- One (or more) screen(s) on a stand or an arm,
- Accessories: webcam, keyboard and mouse,
- An ergonomic chair,
- Power outlets to charge this equipment,
- A desk lamp,
- Ideally a wifi network connection (or wired)
If all of these criteria are met, the user will be able to settle at any workstation without noticing a change that could negatively affect their experience.
Standardising workstations is also a way to improve support processes. Indeed, local support staff who know exactly what equipment is installed can resolve an incident more efficiently, which results in better employee satisfaction.
In conclusion, a successful standardisation can be measured by the teams’ ability to move into the premises without calling on the IT teams.
Our experience on a workspace renovation project
As part of one of our recent assignments, we helped our client offer a workstation that is simple to pick up and adjust, so that an employee is ready to work and comfortably settled in a few seconds.
To make this workstation easier to pick up and use, we decided that the user would plug in only a single cable. Any other cable needed for the workstation to work properly is made inaccessible to the user to avoid any unnecessary handling and limit equipment downtime.
Indeed, one of the drawbacks of “flex office” is that incidents caused by faulty equipment go unreported. When an employee ends up at a degraded workstation, they are more naturally inclined to change seats without reporting an incident.
The technology available to us today allowed us to put in place simple, competitive and effective solutions.
For this project, we chose to equip each workstation with two 24’’ screens. The first screen integrates a docking station and a webcam; the keyboard, the mouse and the second screen are connected to it, so that the user only has to connect a single USB-C cable to their laptop to benefit from all the equipment and to charge their device.
Scheduling the work: the key to being ready for the first users
In a full renovation of a building, IT equipment is the last thing to be installed. We therefore worked on our schedule so as to anticipate and prevent any delays from the other trades, in order to be certain of delivering equipment that was installed, tested and cleaned before the first users arrived. Around 1,250 workstations had to be ready on day one to receive the users.
Faced with this logistical challenge, we mobilised only four technicians for a period of four weeks to deliver the floors that were already equipped, and took the opportunity to train those who became our “team leaders” during the big moving weekend. This strategy proved extremely effective, allowing us to quickly train around fifteen technicians in less than an hour. This allowed us to begin the mass installation of all the workstations across the building.
Given the tight deadlines to finish installing all the workstations, this approach saved us precious time. In the end, it allowed us to meet the deadlines and be ready for the employees’ arrival.
In addition to this deployment, and to improve the employee experience in the open space, we also equipped them with new headsets suited to this type of environment. 1,000 headsets were thus provided to employees when they arrived on site.
To conclude, this experience shows us that a large-scale deployment of workstations must necessarily be thought through and prepared in advance. Indeed, at crunch time it may be easy to install a few workstations, but suitable organisation and supervision are critical to meet the schedule but also (and above all) the client’s expectations.
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