Evolving a Workplace App from ‘Required’ to ‘Desired’

Modo Labs’ Daniela Axinte shares how a world pharmaceutical firm developed its office app from a return-to-office software to an engagement engine.

Gartner’s analysis exhibits that just about 50% of workers will work remotely at the least among the time within the post-pandemic world. The office digital infrastructure has needed to evolve to maintain tempo. Within the radical ramp-up to assist totally distant work, corporations beefed up on instruments for video conferences and challenge administration to maintain folks productive. As workplaces re-opened, they added extra apps like desk reservations and well being checks required to allow a protected return.

For a lot of corporations, these fundamentals at the moment are lined. With hybrid work the best way ahead, new research present that the query is not, ‘how can we make hybrid work occur,’ however ‘how can we make hybrid work extra partaking?’ This query is crucial on condition that workers who usually are not engaged value the world $7.8 trillion in misplaced productiveness.

Wanting on the app journeys of Modo prospects like Goldman Sachs, Okta, and Schneider Electrical, we’re seeing that corporations succeeding in hybrid work are delivering a unified digital expertise, centered on each productiveness and engagement.

Right here’s what that journey appears to be like like at one Fortune 500 pharmaceutical firm.

PHASE 1: Allow a protected return-to-office with an accelerated timeline

The corporate started its cell app initiative in 2020 as a method to information workers within the return to workplaces. Step one was gathering worker enter. Subsequent, they categorized the several types of experiences the cell app may allow, then prioritized them based mostly on significance and decided integrations and content material necessities for every. Lastly, they prioritized the checklist by necessities and nice-to-haves. The outcome was supply of a digital expertise, restricted in scope and centered on out-of-the-box options, in an accelerated timeline. The app centered on 5 must-haves.

1. Location consciousness

With workplaces around the globe, it was crucial that the app would ship notifications and alerts related to every location whereas supporting the flexibility to rapidly adapt to altering circumstances. Workers obtain notifications as they drive to or enter the workplace based mostly on their geofence. For instance, “Right this moment the fifteenth ground is in use all day so keep away from going there.”

The app additionally alerts workers coming into a constructing to fill out an in-app well being evaluation type and/or remind them to make sure they’ve reserved a workspace. By calling on the app’s capability to detect an individual’s location, the group localizes the app expertise to make sure everybody adopted the brand new pointers and protocols for protected work.

2. Workspace reservations

Via the app, workers can reserve the fitting to be in sure areas of the constructing and on sure flooring, even earlier than they arrive on the workplace. This helped implement social distancing on the time, guaranteeing a restricted variety of folks within the workplace, on every ground, and in each part of every constructing.

When requesting areas, workers can examine real-time density and availability, together with indoor maps exhibiting seating and convention room choices. Primarily based on geofencing, workers are prompted to examine in through the app upon arrival to an workplace so the group can preserve observe of tendencies in actual time. Seats could be launched routinely if workers don’t  verify their reservations through the app.   

3. Proximity-based wellness check-ins

To protect a protected work surroundings and adjust to authorities rules and company coverage, the group enabled wellness reporting within the app. Utilizing their native language, workers can self-assess and report any signs, and are cleared for coming into if their well being is as much as par. Gathering this data day by day, the corporate stored tabs on the wellness of its in-office folks and will react rapidly if wanted.                                                         

4. Present steering on a altering office

Whereas the group’s workplaces appeared the identical when workers first returned, the in-office expertise was fully totally different. By offering workers with a information to the brand new work world, the group helped them really feel comfy about returning. To make sure it developed its app to fulfill folks’s wants, a Fast Ballot on the app’s residence display screen requested folks their greatest concern about returning to the workplace.                                                        

5. Entry to well being and wellness assets

The app ensured all workers knew the place to find and how one can request every little thing from masks handy sanitizer and gloves. They had been additionally capable of request sanitization of kit and areas.

PHASE 2: Interact workers wherever they’re

 As the corporate settles into hybrid work, they’re evolving the app to fulfill new wants; to simplify the complexity of working between many various apps and instruments, and to assist folks have interaction, collaborate, and progress of their careers. The group revisited its preliminary precedence checklist and launched a second spherical of inside polling to gauge worker priorities. Listed here are among the capabilities part II is including.

• Collaboration alternatives – The group is implementing Modo’s MyCircle capabilities that allow folks to sync schedules and seating with colleagues to profit from time within the workplace. They will additionally leverage digital areas for scheduled or ‘drop-by’ on-line meetups.

• Socializing and engagement – Folks can arrange strong private profiles and interact with curiosity teams and social sharing, gamification and challenges, with opt-in/opt-out flexibility.

• Occasions – The group just lately used the app to facilitate a management occasion on website, publishing an Occasion characteristic with the agenda, orientation information and logistics for individuals.
• Integrations to take away friction – Whereas the corporate’s app contains hyperlinks to a wealth of companies only a click on away, the ‘code switching’ required to leap out and in of various apps could be irritating. To simplify the expertise, the corporate is exploring bringing generally used options from widespread apps instantly into the office app by integrating firm methods for facility requests, meals ordering and menus, and accessibility.

Continued Evolution

The office is wherever workers are. This pharmaceutical firm is regularly evolving its digital expertise to fulfill them there – because the office continues to alter. The Modo platform has enabled them to flex with the instances and rise to fulfill their workers’ new wants.