How Smart is your Hybrid Workspace? – Cisco Blogs
In this installment of our “Networking for the Hybrid Work Era” blog series, we explore the benefits of creating smart, intuitive spaces to maximize space utilization and improve workplace health and safety.
We’re more than 1.5 years out from the moment our lives became unrecognizable. Now, COVID-19 vaccination offers some small sense of control over our situation and many organizations are making their gradual transition back to the office. And those choosing to return to the workplace— especially those in a shared office space or larger building—are thinking about logistics and maintaining the wellbeing of workers and guests.
How, in the new hybrid era of work, can organizations take measures to work safer and smarter while ensuring productivity?
A Hybrid Workspace that Works
The hybrid working environment doesn’t just refer to the blend of remote and on-premises work. It also refers to a promise—of a new model of work, dependent on the integration of physical and digital realities. A workplace that works by translating the movement of people and things through space into tangible data and insights.
Closing the gap between the physical and the digital becomes a necessity with today’s renewed focus on employee health and wellbeing. By monitoring buildings the same way we might monitor our vital signs, we can assemble crucial data about how these facilities are being used.
And imagine if buildings could make sense of that data, and then self-regulate accordingly? What would these smart buildings do?
Where Smart Work Starts
If leadership wants to deliver, they’ll have to consider the details when preparing for a safe return to office. Will there be increased sanitation for offices, rooms, and devices? Fewer people allowed in meeting rooms at the same time to encourage social distancing? How will distancing rules be enforced in the elevators? Can we expect a decrease of desk-sharing?
Smart buildings should be able to help address such questions. Imagine, for example, how an organization would benefit from rooms that turn up ventilation as occupancy increases, trigger autonomous disinfecting procedures upon evacuation, and display a change in light colors to indicate overcrowding.
When buildings are equipped to elevate hybrid work through advanced AI and machine learning, the results are transformative—not just for employees, but for maintaining our overall wellbeing. This kind of technology allows employers to standardize the protection of employee health, enabling a more sustainable and ethical workplace.
How Cisco Smart Building Solutions are defining the future of work
You can meet growing demands from employees and guests by adapting your workspaces for the hybrid future. Cisco Smart Building Solutions create greater security and flexibility while minimizing energy and operational costs. Through design with technology, deliver great user experiences, enable productivity, and optimize your building’s capacity with health and safety in mind.
Our smart building technologies imbue the workspace with the ability to sense and interact with the environment, just like a living organism. With this newfound intuition, a smart building can make decisions that impact itself and its occupants, putting humans and their devices at the center of a Hybrid Workspace ecosystem that:
- Protects personal health
- Personalizes facility resources
- Offers unique opportunities for collaboration
- Enhances personal efficiencies
- Keeps users and their data secure
- Improves building efiiciencies
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