Over the years, there has been an upgrade in the outlook of office spaces. With modern furniture and beautiful architectural designs, you could conclude that office spaces now look modern. However, this is not just enough because even though they give employees a relaxed feeling, they cannot ease their stress when it comes to doing their jobs. A smart office, the solution to this, is a hi-tech hybrid workplace that uses the best management tools, analytics, and connected technology to help people work more efficiently and productively. Here are seven smart office features that you cannot overlook:
- Smart Lighting and Intelligent Climate Control: Smart lighting helps a workplace reduce carbon emissions and save energy costs. Intelligence climate control helps to detect employees’ preferences and usage patterns and regulates temperature accordingly. The most commonly used workspaces are thermostats which can be controlled via mobile applications or web browsers. This gives employees control over their workspace, which in turn, helps to boost morale, productivity, and staff retention.
- Modern Video Monitoring: The use of camera technology in smart offices helps in preventing internal thefts and other fraudulent activities. Security cameras help to collect data and analyze how office spaces are being utilized. It has wide-angle views, low light capabilities, and impressive zoom features. With the split screen feature, you can monitor different locations within the office space at the same time from a smartphone or computer. The activities of people being monitored can be stored on Cloud and downloaded whenever it is needed just by searching the date and time.
- Digital Wayfinding: Digital wayfinding tools, such as indoor maps, can help employees and guests move around the office floors quickly. They serve as tour guides within office buildings. With them connected to phones, once inside the office building, people do not need to ask assistants for directions. They can easily find meeting and conference rooms with the help of indoor maps, thereby creating an organic guest experience.
- Voice control: As a form of digital assistance, voice control is one very prominent feature of a smart office. Apart from making your work easier, your establishment also looks sophisticated because of the high technology involved. Through voice commands, you can send emails, start phone calls, and book conference rooms. It helps to enhance productivity and resource utilization.
- Collaboration tools: These help teams to work more closely and cohesively. They are used to enhance swift productivity in the office workspace. Some commonly used collaboration tools are communication software like Skype, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom; project management software like Asana, Jira, and Monday; and virtual whiteboards like Mural, Miro, and Limnu.
- IoT Security Solutions: Though the IoT(Internet of Things) has a lot of benefits, it also has unique security threats. Through them, intruders can install malware into a company’s system and copy or misuse their data. However, there is software to combat these threats. A smart office should have risk assessment tools such as an antivirus program, two-factor authentication, and data encryption protocols that can help protect company and employee data.
- Smart conference rooms: These help to schedule meeting timings and ensure seamless and organized collaborations. They enable users to record and analyze their usage data and help companies understand how best employees work to support them by providing needed utilities. Smart conference rooms have intelligent screens outside each room, which display who is using the room, for what purpose, who has an upcoming reservation, and for how long. They may even have an intelligent visitor management system that automates the visitor check-in and helps them find their way to the reserved conference room. They are used to prevent unintended meeting interruptions.
It is worth noting that the location of your office space affects productivity significantly. Companies that have their office spaces in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, can say a lot about this. Coupled with Santa Monica’s serene and climate-friendly environment, smart devices are already being utilized in their office spaces and they have flexible pricing plans ranging from hours to days and months.
Smart offices are more secure, give greater convenience, and help improve efficiency among employees because it helps them to understand how they can use the environment to best serve the people. If you want your clients to have the ultimate experience with your services, then you should consider transforming your modern office into a smart office.
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