Manage the safe return of your workforce to the office with TIMIFY

Set up a digital booking system to allow workers to book access to workspaces in controlled groups and time periods

Having to find a system to limit how many employees can enter your own office spaces at the same time to thwart a global pandemic was not something many businesses planned for in 2020.

It wasn’t a planned feature of TIMIFY either. However, we are heartened to find that our software’s flexibility and robustness is providing crucial new services for enterprises across the globe.

With many regions reopening offices and facilities, a key concern is how to manage a safe flow of employees while maintaining social distancing and home working where possible.

TIMIFY allows you to create a digital reservations system for your workforce to easily book individual hot desking, larger scale office access for teams, and the use of shared spaces.

Below, we provide more detail on how best to use TIMIFY’s online scheduling functions for managing office access in different situations.

Using TIMIFY for access to office space by individuals and small teams

• WHO?:

  One scenario is managing how individuals book a normal work session at their usual desk, or a hot desk, in a specific team area.

• HOW?:

  • TIMIFY’s booking software allows you to add your resources to the system, such as employees, equipment, and meeting rooms.
  • To manage office access, use this function to add an individual desk or other type of workspace as a resource. 
• BENEFITS:

  • You can then allow your team to use online booking to reserve specific time periods to use these resources (e.g. hourly, half day, full day).
  • This creates a clear schedule of office use, visible within departments or across the whole business, allowing safe and responsible planning of on-site attendance.
  • You can even customise notifications for certain workspaces, informing whoever needs to know of when a resource is booked, cancelled, or rescheduled.
  • This use of TIMIFY is perfect for small office spaces or enterprises where perhaps only three of your six employees can be on site at a time.

Using TIMIFY for teams and large-scale office access

• WHO?:

  • This above solution is ideal for small enterprises or teams, but for larger companies it isn’t feasible to manually add every desk or workspace to your system.
  • If you are managing access to offices and work areas for large teams, entire departments, office events or even external visitors, TIMIFY offers another solution.
• HOW?:

  • Our Group Bookings feature lets you create an event in your online bookable calendar, setting a limit on the number of attendees allowed and the duration of the event.
  • As an example, you could create a Group Booking for every department in your office, setting the attendee limit as 12 for HR, 15 for Sales, and 20 for PR. Schedule it in your calendar from 9am-1pm.
• BENEFITS:

  • Now, a maximum limit of 12 people from your HR team can reserve a place in their office area in the morning session. Copy that group event to run from 1pm-5pm to offer a separate afternoon session.
  • It’s simple to set Group Bookings to repeat automatically throughout your calendar (e.g. morning and afternoon sessions every Mon-Fri for the next six months). 
  • This allows you to launch an efficient, online bookable system for office access in no time.
  • Digital automation means very little oversight of the system is required, while notifications are automatically sent to whoever needs them, informing of bookings and cancellations. 
  • If someone cancels their place in a particular session, this will instantly be available for others to book and – if required – every team member can be alerted to the newly available spot.

Calendar management and video conferencing

Of course, TIMIFY can do much more than managing access to your workspaces during COVID-19.

Robust internal schedule planning across all business functions has never been more fundamental. TIMIFY provides one single schedule shared across your entire business, helping to organise:

• Employee work schedules, sick days, and holidays
• Booking Links – create shareable links showing not just your availability, but the shared availability for any custom group of employees or resources
• video conferences – new TIMIFY apps for GoToMeeting and Zoom allow you to easily set up a video conference for any meeting in your calendar
• dependencies between a booking type and its essential resources. If your team meeting always takes place in a particular room, always needs a TV, and always needs the Head of Finance present, set these to be auto-booked when you schedule that meeting
• Fast Booking widget – search the entire business calendar in seconds, according to a wide variety of variables. Great for receptions, PAs, and other regular meeting bookers

The above instructions are an overview of the possibilities for managing access to workspaces with TIMIFY.

With many businesses needing to launch such a system as soon as possible, and without teething issues, we strongly recommend contacting our team to assist with the detailed setup options. 

Visit our website and start a conversation with our team today, they will be happy to provide a step-by-step walkthrough.