There can be several reasons why you might have to change your existing office seating arrangement. From the requirement of a new work desk to moving into new office premises, to adding new amenities, multiple causes may convince you to change your current floor plan.
How to reconfigure your floor plan to maintain social distancing?
A PwC survey states that 65% of CFOs would prefer to reconfigure their worksites to promote physical distancing and 76% are considering masks and testing for the workplace. Slowly more and more companies are allowing their employees to resume work from their offices. Certain actions to execute as employees return to the workplaces from the Covid-19 induced lockdowns would be:
- Increasing spaces between desks and workspaces
- Repurposing common spaces like large conference areas into workstations to maintain social distancing protocols
- Limiting the number of people in shared areas like bathrooms, elevators, break rooms, printer areas, etc at any set time
- Setting sanitization schedules for work areas according to their usage, especially for frequently used places and spaces
- Ensuring 40-50% humidity, proper ventilation, air circulation, and increased natural light
- Adding signs reminding employees to wash their hands, wear masks and follow social distancing norms
The importance of a well-designed office seating plan is unquestionable in terms of its effects on the overall productivity and unhindered coordination of the workforce.
Following are the 6 ways in which office seating plan software will solve your workspace dilemma:
Evaluating Structural Limitations
Some structural aspects, like the available area and its layout in terms of walls or floors, are constant and cannot be changed. The office seating plan software takes into consideration these inbuilt limitations before suggesting a viable seating plan.
Mapping Out desk Locations
Depending on your unique needs, the office seating allocation software maps out the area where the work desks would be potentially placed. Whether it is safely seating the members of a team together or multiple desks concentrated in one location or individual desks scattered around the workplace, the software provides you the perfect fit as per your needs. You might also want to design sanitization stations at the workplace or plan easy access to soaps, sanitizers, paper towels, etc for employee safety.
Satisfying Workforce Demands
Based on whether the workforce would work collaboratively or individually or opt for WFH, the office seating plan software provides unique solutions that ensure maximum workplace productivity. For example, the exclusive departments may be given separate floor space and designing safe yet welcoming spaces for interactions with your clients and customers.
Dragging and Dropping to New Locations
From individual desks to entire departments, the office seat planning software enables the users to drag and drop seating arrangements to an ideal location. The spaces previously underutilized before the pandemic could potentially be repurposed e.g. large private offices and meeting rooms that weren’t used much. They may be redesigned to be smaller meeting rooms or workstations for multiple employees. To avoid crowding too many people in one area, rearrange seats, tasks, and schedules with this software and update it as needed.
Sharing Updated Seating Information
52% of CFOs anticipate change and alternating shift schedules. While the office seating plan software helps you visualize the ideal desk location, it also keeps a record of the changes in a single dynamic directory- available to all the stakeholders. This sharing of updated seating information enables ease of business by minimizing unwanted confusion while locating work desks. Keeping in mind the current pandemic plans to update the seating arrangements may be needed. Frequent video conferencing instead of actual meetings may require logistical upgrades. You could also design flexible desks to be used by different employees on different days and/ or shifts using the hot desking software.
Executing Smooth Transitions
To bring your virtually planned workspace into real-life existence, the best office seating space plan software provides you with various tools to measure and map your achieved change. Tools like task delegation, action planning, progress tracking, and so on offered by the software will ensure hassle-free and timely workplace relocation. Also, it can help to plan and implement bringing in the workforce gradually and preferably splitting the employees into shifts.
To visualize and implement these changes, use the space management software from QuickFMS. This innovative software ensures both employee safety and optimum space utilization during the uncertain Covid-19 scenario.
Amit Prasad is the founder and managing director of SatNav Technologies and has business interests in a wide range of IT products. SatNav Technologies is an IT products company focusing on cloud based map data products and a pioneer in GPS, FMS & LBS Technologies. The product suite includes SatTracx in-the-field location based solutions and A-mantra in-the-office facilities management solutions. QuickFMS from a-mantra is a cloud based facility management system which enhances organization’s efficiency.