RTO Dashboards Provide Data Needed to Guide Workplace Decisions

We are excited to announce the release of several new dashboards on the VergeSense Platform— the Return to Office Workplace Analytics Dashboards. With these new product enhancements, it’s easier than ever before to get actionable workplace data to bring your return to office strategic visions to life. With real-time access to people counting and building utilization data from the VergeSense Area & Entryway Services and new Analytics Dashboards, enterprises will have the most comprehensive understanding of their spaces to guide decision-making at scale.

These dashboards have been tailored with business leaders, facilities managers, and real estate decision-makers in mind, many of whom are in the midst of navigating a return of their employees to the workplace. With changing timelines and decisions, analytics are critical for accurate planning.

Using the Return to Office Dashboards, VergeSense users can quickly and accurately see how every office and space is being used day-to-day and week-to-week,, so they can strategically plan for optimal facility management and employee support. The platform provides the ability to review real-time and historical data at a glance so that users can optimize workplace operations and design in a dynamic, flexible way. 

With access to detailed workplace analytics, organizations can create hybrid strategies that are both customized to their team and flexible— allowing companies to consistently meet the evolving needs of their employees.

Designing a Strategic Return to Office Strategy with Data

For enterprises forming a return to office strategy that focuses on employee experience, people-counting technology is essential. VergeSense’s enhanced Workplace Analytics Platform is the most accurate and comprehensive solution available on the market today. Each new analytics dashboard enables users to answer key return to office questions that drive profitability and lead to better business outcomes all while enhancing the employee experience. 

“As employees return to the office, corporate real estate and workplace leaders need data to answer pinning questions. These dashboards address these questions.” Faran Najam, Product Manager, Workplace Data Platform, VergeSense

What are the New Return to Office Dashboards?

The VergeSense enhanced Return to Office Dashboards provide a quick snapshot of real-time workplace usage data, including handy analytics cards that provide information including:

• Real estate portfolio capacity
• Real estate portfolio inventory
• Person attendance across real estate portfolios
• Office utilization
• Hourly/daily utilization
• Workplace utilization trends

Why Did we Develop the New Return to Office Dashboards?

In response to both world events and direct customer feedback, we uncovered a need for analytics that could tell enterprises how their employees are working, not on a general basis, but on a detailed, day-to-day basis, with detailed reporting on workplace utilization. 

For the return to office specifically, organizations are looking for the ability to take a quick look at office or space usage to determine how to best support their newly hybrid companies.

“VergeSense has been collecting feedback from its users. We’ve asked what is keeping them up at night as they plan and execute their return to office strategies and what questions they want to be able to answer using VergeSense,” adds Najam.

VergeSense users want to be able to answer:

1. How many people are in the office today?

2. Are my employees returning back at the pace I expect?

3. How are my employees utilizing the spaces made available to them?

4. Are my employees happy about the workplace they're coming to?

With the new VergeSense dashboards, they will be able to answer these questions in seconds.

How Can the Return to Office Dashboards Help Companies Optimize the Workplace?

As companies approach their return to the office, they are rethinking the ways that they use space on a greater scale. How is their corporate real estate portfolio looking? Are spaces being used appropriately? Do employees have access to the spaces they need? What do employees need from their workplace right now?

With data based on specific employee demographics, including where in the world they are working from, companies can create custom strategies that work for them. Not a one-size-fits-all strategy. Perhaps your team based in Argentina doesn’t use the office much during the summer, but your Seattle office uses their space to full capacity year-round. Or your office space in the city is seeing more and more hybrid working, shifting how often they’re in the building, but your offices in the suburbs are overflowing with employees.

Using workplace analytics, companies can create detailed return to office plans that fit each team’s unique ’ needs.

How many people are in the office today?

VergeSense users can see same day analytics that are refreshed at the top of the hour. Users can use the data to better understand the pace at which people are coming to the office. The data will help users better understand which spaces are being used and not being used so they can prioritize use cases around cleaning. Additionally, users can turn to VergeSense for occupancy compliance— the platform highlights spaces that have exceeded their capacity.

How has the office been utilized in recent weeks?

With the VergeSense Dashboards, users can view an aggregate of a week’s worth of office usage data. In addition, users can now access more detailed filtering to help understand what time of day or day of the week are popular. Users can find out whether people prefer using spaces that are classified as collaborative spaces over individual spaces, then tailor office design around these preferences.

How are my spaces utilized?

The VergeSense Dashboard highlights use cases around how much time spaces are in-use or free. For those accounts that have spaces with VergeSense Signs of LifeTM enabled, the dashboards will delve into how Signs of LifeTM impacts overall utilization. This feature helps users answer whether there is a squatting problem in any of their spaces.

"VergeSense's capabilities are flexible, and as our users better understand what the future of the office entails, they’ll continue to use VergeSense as a guiding light.” - Faran Najam, Product Manager, Workplace Data Platform, VergeSense

Using VergeSense Workplace Analytics to Approach the Return to Office

VergeSense users can use the data from the new dashboards as directional guidance so they can optimize their workplaces as they see fit. Incorporate data into every aspect of return to office planning, and make decisions as specific to each location or team as possible to improve workplace operations

Using workplace analytics data in smart offices equipped with people counting sensors, companies can improve cleaning schedules, be more efficient with utility usage, provide more collaborative vs individual spaces depending on a particular location’s needs, improve employee experience, and redistribute their real estate portfolio to maximize use.

Access Workplace Usage Reports with Premade Templates in the Card Catalog

The VergeSense Workplace Analytics Platform includes analytics cards that show a real-time snapshot of office data, no coding or developer work required.

Analytics cards, or premade reports, include:

• Space, floor, and building capacity across real estate portfolios
• Average and peak person attendance across portfolios
• How space is used, on average as a utilization percentage over time
• Daily, hourly, or aggregated utilization

Additional features of the VergeSense product enhancements include the option to use Webhooks for event triggers like buildings, floors, and spaces that can be customized by users, and two API endpoints to retrieve person count data. With the detailed capabilities of these updates, users can separate floor and building capacities, and access data from individual Entryway sensors.

How can Users Best Take Advantage of the New Return to Office Dashboards?

Faran Najam, Product Manager on our Workplace Data Platform recommends, “VergeSense users should look at the question and answer framework embedded in the dashboards. They'll want to evaluate how their organization is answering those questions today, and how VergeSense data can provide additional input to answer those questions with higher quality and confidence.”

These dashboards aren’t the last that customers can expect to see. “We will be rolling out additional dashboards based on the feedback we receive from our users. We always keep our user top of mind and build accordingly,” Najam adds. 

Ready to raise the power of your square foot? Explore our workplace analytics platform and other products here. VergeSense users or those who are interested in learning more— join us for a live product walkthrough on September 14th, 2021: How to Answer Critical Return to Office Questions with VergeSense.