One of the biggest potential benefits of hoteling (otherwise known as "hot desks") is its role in attracting and retaining NextGen workers. The millennial generation has an entirely different attitude about where and how they want to work. While the idea of calling the "office concierge" or "hoteling administrator" to book a work station may have sounded convenient a decade ago, millennials want airline style applications to accomplish the same task, and more.
A recent post on NAIOP quoted Paul Paradis (senior managing director at Hines) on the role technology plays in attracting the next generation of talent, "The Twitters, Facebooks, all the software-type tenants — these companies are attracting younger employees who are growing up in a different way, with smartphones and the Internet. Their lives are based around the new model of living with all these technologies."
NextGen workers expect an environment that promotes autonomy, agility, and collaboration. Integrating indoor location technologies with systems such as Crestron Fusion, Archibus, and Active Directory structures, delivers a single integrated experience — putting the office concierge in the palm of their hands. Creating a more productive environment, where resources can be scheduled on demand, meetings rooms scheduled based on proximity and location, and people can easily locate one another to collaborate.
People-finding features help employees find colleagues based on their location, reserve a nearby hot desk, and configure telephony and office resources at their selected workstation; via a mobile application. Helping individuals and teams self-organize their work locations based on projects.
With a desk booking system, employees have the freedom to book a new work location each day, based on their working preferences and requirements. Using the indoor navigation feature on the app, they can then navigate from their parking location to their reserved workstation or conference room, making navigating complex spaces simple with precise step-by-step directions.
The combination of scheduling, navigation, and location aware technologies means that employees can be sent notifications based on their estimated travel time to a meeting or event. Using the employee's current location, the app calculates travel time and sends a notifications to the employee based on how long it will take to get to the venue. An employee may receive an alert that a meeting starts in 8 minutes and estimated time to walk to the venue is 6 minutes.
NextGen employees want more flexibility and the opportunity to shape the work environment. To attract and retain top talent, companies must fully leverage technology by accelerating the integration of technology into the workplace. In the NextGen workplace, location aware technologies, the Internet of Things, and business applications are integrated into employee experience platforms - a platform that promotes employee flexibility and efficiency through a single interface.
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