The COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt future planning, especially when it comes to reopening offices and welcoming workers back into workplaces. Yet it isn’t enough to simply focus on the goal of opening the doors alone. 

For employees, the emotional fallout from COVID’s impact and uncertainty has taken a major toll on their mental health – and it’s important that companies keep this in mind as they welcome their cohorts back. For guidance, many companies have sought the expertise of organizations that build and design plans for offices

We all look forward to a time when we don’t have to speak of the “C” word. As for today, as COVID-19 dictates how economies open and employees reunite in person, we pause to take the temperature around the world of business.

Offices are in some stage of reopening all over the world as companies welcome employees and clients back in the ways that work best for them. We’ve formulated the top-5 questions we think are most urgent for companies determining how a return-to-the-workplace plan is best deployed. 

As the return to the workplace sets up to be flex-first for most companies, assigned seating will give away to the need for hot-desking, hoteling, and neighborhood arrangements. With any strategy, the ability for employees to find and reserve a desk is key to productivity and a frictionless experience. 

As the return-to-the-workplace picks up steam, with companies plotting when and how to restart physical operations, we can see that flexible work is here to stay. Nine-to-five is a distant memory. Hybrid models, with employees commuting into the office on specific days for specific purposes only, are quickly becoming a popular return to work strategy for many large organizations.

This new office paradigm demands a thoughtful approach. It is imperative for business owners to consider their commercial real estate space: how it’s used, maintained, and the experience of those working inside it. All answers are ultimately rooted in data. 

What’s your strategy to return to the office? If you’re like most of our clients, you’re likely most focused on the short term goal of simply getting people back to the office. Longer-term decision-making seems like a luxury and yet you’re probably also tasked with rationalizing your portfolio while stepping forward as a workplace transformation leader.

So what happens when the physical nature of your office, the people in it, and legal policy collide? A new requirement of workplace and facilities teams emerges - corporate compliance data and reporting.

The office isn’t dead. The office as we knew it, is. For many of you this statement comes as no surprise. While we’ve proven that working from home is doable, many have recognized that this dramatic shift was not without its negatives.

We’ve previously explored why an all-or-nothing work-from-home strategy isn’t realistic for the future of work. The reasons are many: employees are fatigued, boundaries around work hours are blurred, culture is suffering, and productivity has taken a hit. Still, the reality is that COVID-19 will need to be managed well into 2022.

InnerSpace predicts 2021 tech trends for how the office will transform this year including the critical role of workplace experience managers and fully interconnected office buildings

Changing information. Indecisive governments. Unclear direction. While our modern lifestyle thrives on instant knowledge, it is taking a long time to understand how this new coronavirus threatens the way we live and work – even for those who are best equipped to give the answers.

The pandemic has changed how we've worked for the foreseeable future. Companies are determining how, when and why they'll return to their office space. 

We’re now six months into a global pandemic. Spring lockdowns gave way to gradual reopenings, and now the threat of closures loom large again as case numbers in many regions creep upwards. For retail owners, office managers, and campus administrators who are trying to keep people safe and their doors open, there’s never been a more critical time to manage how many people are in a space. Enter: occupancy data.

It’s not long since “digital transformation” first became a business buzzword. In the 90s and 00s, the concept spoke to the opportunity to digitize an organization, to shift from manual input, to bring a business online, to deploy the latest e-solutions.

Just as society is opening back up in stages, InnerSpace believes the workforce will follow a phased approach too

Whether an office has already re-opened, is planning to re-open, or never fully closed during the COVID-19 crisis, each business shares two common goals: 1) keep employees and visitors safe; 2) keep the doors open. 

InnerSpace, the world’s most accurate WiFi-based indoor location intelligence platform, announces WiFi based contact tracing solutions InnerSpace inTRACK.

A popular question as we think about going back to the office is: how will I know if someone I work with has been infected? For a CEO, the question becomes: how do I avoid shutting down my business should one of my employees become ill?

Three-part series. Companies retuning to the office after Covid-19. Part 1: https://blog.innerspace.io/helping-businesses-come-out-the-other-side-of-covid-19

In cities across America, office towers are vacant. Museums are empty. Sports are cancelled. Live events postponed. Many of us, the ones who can, have put outdoor adventures and office life on hold to help stop the spread of an extremely contagious virus. The escalating health and economic consequences of COVID-19 are ones we will talk about for a very long time.

We take a look at the data to see how businesses responded to the wave of news that initiated from China in December 2019 and quickly swept the world.