This years Orgatec is about culture@work and visionary concepts for a new working culture. Officerepublic is interested in how participants in the Orgatec describe the culture in their own company and their vision on the workplace of the future. To clarify this vision, we asked five questions to more than 400 participating office furniture manufacturers. We publish the answers we receive in a series on OfficeRepublic: “Culture @”. This article is about Culture@Locatee with CEO Thomas Kessler
#1 – Culture is sometimes defined as all that man produces in material and immaterial sense. The culture of a people, or a group of people, includes its beliefs, values and customs. If we look at your company, how do you describe the current culture in your company?
It is our vision to help large companies to establish a work environment where employees want instead of having to work. Right from the beginning, we therefore have implemented a culture of trust and open communication, which we are very proud of The employees are encouraged to have a can-do attitude to ensure our customer’s success. We are also very proud of the fact that Locatee is not only a community of purpose but we care about each other and have fun together.
This ,and our passion for what we do, unites us. However, as a fast-growing company with a diverse team we are constantly exposed to change, including structure, processes and new colleagues. We have noticed this particularly in recent months, as our workforce has doubled. This requires flexibility and agility and is also reflected in the way we work.
We practice what we preach to our customers: We have introduced a “Work Wherever You Want day” and moreover every member of Locatee is entitled to a “Work Wherever You Want week“, during which they get to work from any location around the globe. The objective is to find new sources of inspiration while breaking free from established routines. To enrich this experience, it’s possible to extend the workweek by adding vacation days. This enables them to combine leisure and work in an optimal way.
#2 – What changes do you see taking place in the culture within companies in the coming years? Which external and internal developments will affect our ‘work culture’?
“In the past years, the way how people work or at least how they would like to work, has changed. Workforce is more mobile and flexible than ever. Although it is getting more and more common that people are working at home, on the go or elsewhere, there are still companies that don’t allow its employees to adjust their working rhythm to their way of life. This cumbers an equalised work-life balance. One thing is clear: Companies must adapt their working concepts to respond to the changing needs of employees. This not only entails a changing mind-set but also a rethinking of processes and the way how decisions are made. Fact-based decisions will replace gut feelings.
A good example is the chronic underutilisation of workspace: Corporate Real Estate Managers and Facilities Managers often do not know how space is used. As real estate is a company’s second biggest expenditure you can imagine how much costs can be saved by increasing space efficiency, ensuring people-oriented facility operations and simultaneously improving employee experience based on objective decisions.
Three steps to people-oriented office buildings
In the future, companies need to provide more people-oriented office buildings. There are three steps companies must consider establishing truly people-oriented office buildings: In a first step it is important to understand how people behave across the entire real estate portfolio. Second, layouts and processes need to be changed based on people’s behaviour. Finally, companies should let their employees interact with their work environment. These three steps help companies to identify and realise savings potential and reinvest money in workspace quality.
Thankfully, with the advent of big data, the Internet of Things (IOT) and machine learning, platforms have evolved to support more accurate real-time insights, revealing previously hidden patterns about the actual use of space.
#3 – What developments can we expect from your company in the coming years?
We will further develop our smart building platform which provides organisations valuable insights into their corporate real estate portfolio in real time. The main goal will stay to help companies identifying and realising savings potential but also personalising the workspace experience for its employees. For that we identified several use cases to solve the challenges that companies are facing, respectively will be facing in the future.
One of those use cases is optimising the meeting rooms availability & offer by detecting no-shows and rightsizing the rooms by understanding the actual demand. Another one is simulating growth and consolidation scenarios on a portfolio level to maximise space usage efficiency and to ensure that no utilisation bottlenecks will occur.
#4 – Do we already see some of that development on the coming Orgatec, and what will be the eye-catcher of your trade show presentation?
Yes. We will showcase all our solutions at our booth. We even use a practical example to show you how work experience can be personalised. Everyone is invited to experience what our smart building platform is capable ofand to discuss use cases.
In general, our software solution is often an eye-opener. Unlike other competitors, our smart building platform allows the analysis of different data sources from a company’s existing IT infrastructure in real-time. The main advantage is the scalability and the cost-efficiency: Large organisations get a complete overview of their whole real estate portfolio, no matter how large it is or how many locations it contains.
With Locatee Analytics, our customers can make objective, data-based decisions to optimise their office spaces and creating more occupant-oriented office buildings.
#5 – Where can you be found on the Orgatec?
As a partner of Vitra we showcase our solutions in their hall (5.2) together with other companies of their partner eco-system. Visit us in hall 5.2 at booth nr A-021.
About Locatee
The Swiss company Locatee develops the smart building platform Locatee Analytics. The patent pending Big Data technology analyses different data sources from the existing IT infrastructure in real-time, thus providing companies with valuable insights for optimising their office spaces and creating more occupant-oriented office buildings. More than 20 companies world-wide rely on Locatee Analytics, such as Zurich Insurance Group, Swiss Post, UPC, Biogen and ABB.