Need your organisation to run more effectively? Want to alleviate employee frustration? Fancy keeping your meetings running on time? Sounds like you need a room booking system!
What are room booking systems?
Room booking systems have been around since 2014, following the rise in popularity of co-working spaces. However, it wasn’t until the dramatic adoption of flexible working practices, and the opportunity to downsize floorspace post-2020 that the benefits of a quality room booking system became truly appreciated.
The number of meetings held daily across companies has increased vastly in recent years as a result of hybrid and remote working practices becoming commonplace. So today, countless offices, meeting rooms and other professional shared spaces reap the rewards of a booking system. For example, office space is not exempt from the increasing costs of rent. A room booking system allows you to track if your business is effectively using its space.
Benefits for employers
Room booking systems bring some great potential benefits for employers, including:
- Saving on overheads like floorspace and utility bills
- Gaining valuable insight and analytics on room usage. For example, finding out exactly how much office space you need long-term
- A team who work smarter and manage their workday
Benefits for employees
The perks of room booking systems aren’t just for employers. Employees also can see benefits, including:
- No interruptions
- No double booking
- Ability to book rooms even when working remotely
- Easy integration with calendars and video conferencing software such as Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and Zoom.
More technologies
Room booking systems are just one part of the suite of smart office technologies that can benefit you and your business. Aside from the platform that allows employees to book a room, there is also physical tech like room panels and room controls.
Room panels are display panels that sit outside meeting rooms, usually displaying the room number, current/upcoming bookings and signal lighting (green for available, red for booked) easily visible at a glance. Room controls are panels that sit on the table inside meeting rooms and allow users to keep an eye on upcoming bookings and edit their current booking. These technologies not only eliminate any confusion as to whether a room is available but also ensure ad-hoc catch-ups can also be accommodated.
Worried that booked meeting rooms won’t be used by those who book them? Most quality systems have a feature that will ask employees to sign into the room at the beginning of their meeting.
Conclusion
Effective meetings are crucial to a successful workplace. So whether it’s a team stand-up, company-wide conference, or last-minute check-in, a room booking system is the perfect way to optimise your office and get the most out of your meeting rooms.
