Fifty-three percent of remote-capable businesses are expected to take on a hybrid model of work post-pandemic: some days will be spent in the office and, some days, working from home. Hybrid is the new way of working.
With more businesses and companies turning to hybrid work-models than ever, it has become increasingly difficult to be an office manager. Some companies even created their own approach to hybrid working. With Dynatrace for example, employees can choose between different work models. Employees that are over 3 times a week in the office, can select a dedicated desk, while those coming in more sporadically, can book a place at a shared desk. These situations can show how crucial it is to have a simple desk-booking software. Keeping track of who is in the office when, and ensuring there is enough office space for all employees while trying to maintain efficient costs, is a complex balancing act.
To make matters even more complex, many countries have introduced new legislation, such as the home office legislative package, which requires a better overview and even more attention to detail. However, there are ways to simplify things. We're going to show you the top five ways to make office managers' lives a bit simpler. Follow along to find out!
1. Team-Work Friendly Work Space
Keeping a happy team moving towards a common goal makes a manager's job much easier. The fewer stumbling blocks in the way, the better.
A team-work-friendly workspace is about maintaining flexibility and choice, while enabling frequent opportunities for in-person interactions and community building. It's simpler to keep in touch with coworkers and employees when you have a system that gives an overview when your colleagues are going to be in the office. This way you know who is coming in on Mondays and when to schedule a face-to-face. Are there any free spots available at the shared desk area? No idea, just have a look at the system!
These days, managing flexibility means structure. Maintaining an overview and a sense of order can greatly improve the workload of office managers. FLEXIDESK gives managers the ability to go back in the office schedule and see who had a desk, in what room, and on which day.
Desk booking software programs cultivate teamwork and freedom. In the past, you would arrive at your workplace, hoping a desk would be available for you. With the possibility of having a desk booked ahead of time, the choice is yours, and you can be in close proximity to the people you need to be working with.
For this reason, FLEXIDESK simplifies the lives of all departments, office managers and employees.
2. Adapt the Means of Communication to the Message
The Covid-19 pandemic forced businesses and employees to find new ways of communicating and hosting meetings. Relegated to working from home, different programs providing conference calls and messaging became more utilized than ever.
Not every meeting can be in person anymore. With varying schedules in and out of the office for every employee, it's important to learn to adapt through different channels.
For example, programs like Zoom, Teams and Slack are great ways to have informal, quick conversations through direct messaging to replace the slower-moving responses of e-mail.
Combining such tools with organizational tools, like FLEXIDESK, you can get the most out of conversations, based on the channels or setting needed for the topic. By having a real-time overview of who will be in the office and who is working from home, you can use these programs to have collective meetings regardless. Employees can select the right channel of communication depending on what topic there is to discuss, either by scheduling video calls or more personal meetings in the office. In this way, the communication flow in your company becomes more clear, focused and productive!
With FLEXIDESK, you can book desks in advance next to colleagues for in-person collaboration. If another colleague has to work from home that day, you can video conference them in together.
Simply book private desks or rooms remotely!
3. Invoicing: Meals
FLEXIDESK provides you with a way to better account for meal allowances. It's hard to keep track when you don't know who is coming or going.
With employees having the ability to select their desks on certain dates, managers have a simple way of tracking how much to allow for each employee every day of the week. Instead of having to keep a tally through yeses and nos via Slack or E-mail, managers can look at the desk-booking plan and know exactly how many to expect. It's easier not to fall behind and be sure every employee has what they need.
It’s simple to go back to the booking plan and see in-office attendance over a selected period of time. It shortens the massive amount of individual communication, and gathers all information in one place.
4. Taxes: Home Office
Since 2021, new legislation has surfaced regarding home office (allowances) and home office flat-rate. A maximum of 300 EUR per calendar year can be granted for home offices.
That means that this allowance can be given as 3 EUR for each home office day, up to one 100 days a year. It is a non-taxable rate that is exempt from non-wage labor costs and social security.
PwC also states, “If less than the maximum amount of flat rate expenses is claimed, employees will be able to claim the difference as income-related expenses in their annual income tax return (maximum amount minus the flat rate granted by the employer).”
This legislation also means that employees working remotely from home can deduct expenses for work furniture. Before, all employees had a dedicated office space, now they don't necessarily have anymore!
With FLEXIDESK, office managers simply can figure out allowances for each employee. It also makes it easy to calculate home office days for tax purposes.
5. Strategic Office Layout For Long-Term Office Planning
Being able to navigate who will be in the office on certain days makes it easier for long-term office planning. Seeing desk schedules laid out in front of you in a booking plan gives insight into the future, to make long-term office planning decisions on rent, size, acquisitions and needed supplies.
Now that employees can work from home, some decide to downgrade to a smaller office space and save costs. In these instances, some companies can create shifts in their booking plan, to automatically assign employees to a certain desk on their in-office days.
At the moment, there is an abundance of vacant office spaces on the market. Do you really need all that office space? Downsizing can have environmental considerations and help decrease operational costs.
Having a way to track occupancy week-to-week and month-after-month enables you to get a grip on the particular office needs of your company. FLEXIDESK is a simple way of understanding what you actually need.
Additional Thoughts
People's schedules and lives change rapidly. It's hard to keep up with many offices, work models and varying personal schedules. Behind the job title, there is a person. Your employees have their own lives, and sometimes, as an office manager, you also have to manage how the personal aspects impact day-to-day activities. Someone may not be able to make it into the office because they got sick. Another might have to keep their child home from daycare.
Being able to put some responsibility back into the employees' hands, takes just a little work off of an office manager's plate. Instead of managing phone call after phone call from who can't make it in, employees could simply press a button to let everyone else know their desk is now available.
FLEXIDESK provides just that. A simple and fair way to incorporate office life into the lives and schedules of every employee.
FLEXIDESK simplifies
FLEXIDESK offers long-term office planning capability and an easy-to-use way for employees to keep colleagues in the know. It helps with day-to-day operations as well as keeping a team-work centered environment in a hybrid work model. Simply, everything at a glance!
FLEXIDESK provides a flexible workplace while eliminating wasted utilities. It simply saves time and money. Its self-service capabilities take a burden off of managers. FLEXIDESK simply means freedom.
Office managers everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief knowing their job is made easier in tracking and logging hours while cutting down hours spent invoicing.
FLEXIDESK simply works! Check out our features and pricing.