Knowing when your team are available and where they’re working in a hybrid world.
Hybrid working isn't a new thing. Many teams used this method of working before the pandemic, heck it's the reason we created Team Today. We saw first-hand the issues with hybrid working such as turning up to the office and no one being there or not knowing if the CTO was on holiday or just working from home.
But before we offer some solutions let's first dig into Team availability tracking and see (a) what problems we are trying to solve and (b) whether we need to solve them at all.
Well it depends.
If you are a fully remote company then the answer is probably no.
If you are a company that is fully in the office then again the answer is also no.
But if you are a hybrid workforce or a team that is regularly out of the office then it makes sense to have an idea of where your team is.
There are multiple benefits to knowing your teams location:
When you create a Team Today account with team members you are instantly given access to a simple dashboard view.
This lets you see who is working from home, in the office or on holiday for the upcoming week. Brilliantly this also links to your Outlook calendar as well meaning that when you set your planned whereabouts it will automatically update your Outlook calendars. This obviously helps with availability tracking, letting you see when booking a meeting who is in the office on a given day.
It doesn't end there though, with Team Today you can create multiple offices, custom locations and whereabouts and have them instantly available for your team.
Whereabouts can also link with Desk Booking if you wish, meaning that teams are given information on desk availability when they input their whereabouts, and managers have a high-level overview of where teams are distributed.
The Team View gives you the overview of the week, whilst the Company View gives you the overview of wider teams and also access to any Floor Plans you have in place. And all of the information is available to view in Work Planner, so you can see how everything fits against projects and deadlines, to enable efficient planning and to be able track and manage holidays and even, if required, team absences.
Staff can use the information to coordinate with each other when they will be in the office together, to plan work or even just to catch up socially over lunch, for we shouldn’t forget the importance of social connections for our wellbeing.
Giving colleagues control over their working week enables them to have ownership of how they manage their hybrid working, but also to see how they are an important part of the wider company.
You don't have to worry about remembering to update your location. We will send you an email each week to remind you to input your location for the following week. This will become a natural habit, like checking your emails or updating your to-do list.
Our system uses simple icons to visually show where a colleague is located, such as a house for working from home and an office for the office. We also use this system to indicate the presence of specific role holders, like First Aiders, Mental Health First Aiders, Key-Holders, and Fire Wardens, to ensure that there is always someone in the office who holds these roles.
While its primary purpose is to support the smooth operation of your hybrid work schedule, Whereabouts also helps managers with long-term planning. Managers can generate reports with data within a customisable time frame, organised by team if necessary. These reports can provide a general overview of how the hybrid work schedule is working overall, or they can be used to gather more detailed insights, such as how frequently offices are being used, if there is a preference for one location over others, or if there are patterns emerging around work projects or key times in the year. These reports can also be useful for analysing and reviewing the overall effectiveness of the hybrid work schedule for the company and determining if any changes need to be made.
Now you’ve been introduced to this feature, why not have a look at how you can manage hybrid teams with real-time whereabouts visibility here. And remember you can always contact us with any questions or to arrange a demo at hello@team-today.com.
