Flip-flops, vaccines, and office reopenings

TWO-DOSE SUMMER

We’ve rounded the corner into the second summer of the pandemic, and despite the lurking Delta variant, the vaccine rollout has breathed new life into hope for an expeditious return to some semblance of normalcy.

About 10 percent of the world is now fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and the WHO is reporting the lowest global number of cases and deaths since February. In Canada, border measures are easing for fully vaccinated residents who can soon leave and return without quarantining when they get back.

Speaking of travel, there’s just one month to go until the Tokyo Games. Yet with just a fraction of the nation’s population currently vaccinated, several companies have joined the effort to speed up the rollout there, including energy and tech giant SoftBank, who plans to vaccinate employees and their families at 15 WeWork sites. Rakuten, Sony, Panasonic, Fujitsu and NEC are also assisting in an effort to pick up the pace.

Back here in North America, major corporations are forging ahead with reopening plans. Vaccination status looks to play a key role in the return to the office. Bank of America expects all of its vaccinated employees to return to the office after Labor Day in early September, and will then focus on developing plans for returning unvaccinated workers to its sites. Apple executives are grappling with pushback from employees who seek more flexibility in the company’s return to work plan, which currently requires employees in the office on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays beginning this fall, with remote work twice a week. Despite a shift from Apple’s pre-pandemic culture, which discouraged work- from-home, it’s still far more conservative than the flex approaches of other Big Tech players like Facebook and Twitter.

DESK RESERVATIONS 2.0

It’s clear that the return to the workplace must be a flexible one. With hot-desking, hotelling and “neighborhood” arrangements set to take off, employees will need a precision method to find and reserve a desk.

To develop a desk reservation system, many companies have historically considered seat sensors or occupancy sensors – but these are very limited, often costly to install, and require maintenance. A more reliable and cost-effective solution is a desk reservation 2.system using WiFi-powered location data. Benefits of this approach include:

Finding available workspaces including neighborhoods, collaboration spaces, and meeting rooms
Identifying, measuring employee demographics
Allocating resources based on employee needs
Spotting density hot spots and risk areas
Bringing trusted data to employees to make informed choices

Check out our new article where we break all this down with specific scenarios.

MEASURING DENSITY 2.0

We’re always pushing past the minimum to get you thinking at a 2.0 level – and that applies to how we measure density, too. A successful return to work requires accurate intel around the density of people in the office. This isn’t just the number of people in a space, but instead understanding where people are working in real time and what zones and rooms are preferred areas.

Occupancy 1.0 is essentially dividing the number of people in a building or floor by the square footage available. That’s a good starting point but is just one piece of the puzzle. Occupancy 2.0 uses indoor location technology to answer questions like: Are collaboration zones being used as projected? How does hot-desking density compare to assigned seating density? Where do staff tend to congregate?

There’s a lot at stake, from employee health to a company’s long-term sustainability. See our new article for more.

NEW IN SMART TECH

Hong Kong’s Easy Health has its sights set on Smart food packaging – with experiment designs ranging from edible to water soluble to environmentally adaptive to self-cooling and -heating.

In South Korea, one city is testing Smart mobility technology intended to help people with impaired vision travel and use transit more independently.

In Prince Edward Island, one Canadian company is banking on Smart balsam fir seedlings to transform the Christmas tree market.

Over in Detroit they are planning to embed a range of Smart technologies in the Gordie Howe International Bridge, opening in 2024.

Our homes have been ground zero for everything from homeschooling to office space during the pandemic, but they’re also predicted to become much Smarter. Sensor technology will find its way into clothing and furniture, allowing homes to adjust the temperature based on the occupant’s biometrics. Biometrics are even driving security systems, with rooms only accessible based on approved biometric readings of people living in the home.

IN OUR SPACE ...

Our founder, James Wu, was interviewed for a piece in Real Estate News EXchange about the unique benefits of the InnerSpace platform. From a pure objective standpoint, worth a read!
James also joined a panel discussion in early June on how PropTech is creating new opportunities, hosted by real estate and land developer ULI Toronto.
A mix of in-office and remote teams will require new avenues of communication that have the right feel and bolster productivity. We’ve developed a top-10 list on how to build a “new workforce conversation” – including holding regular non-work chats, like our popular Question of the Week session here at InnerSpace.
ICYMI: Find out what industry experts have to say about how to return to a better workplace in our new guide.