Smart Offices — A revolution of workplace and work style

As the Internet of Things (IoT) helps to connect people and things, it unleashes many exciting opportunities to make workplace smarter. To transform a workplace into an intelligent ecosystem, numerous IoT-enabled connected devices are combined with smartphones, sensors, beacons and wearables. Such IoT applications help to monitor, control and manage various business operations and working conditions.

The smart office market is expected to be valued at USD 46.11 Billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 12.94% between 2017 and 2023. — MarketsAndMarkets

A smart office solution can improve workplace productivity, save energy, simplify routine tasks, and make safer and more comfortable working environments for your employees, which is why more and more enterprises are developing smart office applications to increase workplace efficiency.

Here are some specific applications that demonstrate how the IoT has enhanced the existing workplace.

Digital signs

Digital signage with IoT connected visual displays has the capability to sense the person standing in front of them. Such signages can engage interactively with employees, visitors and customers in so many ways. In the workplace, digital signages are used as digital bulletin boards that display company-related information pertaining to social events, company announcements, or training opportunities for employees. Also, these signages serve as office hoteling solutions helping employees in finding an available desk, vacant meeting room, direction and more within the corporate facilities. They can be placed outside a meeting room to update the information in real-time and indicate the agenda of meetings, time duration and when the room will be available for any other ad-hoc meetings.

AI-enabled chatbots

One of the biggest challenges currently faced by various industries is the shortage of skilled and experienced employees. To fill this increasing skills gap, enterprises are adopting artificial intelligence (AI) to automate their mundane routine tasks. Enterprise adoption of AI in the workplace helps employees in engaging with chatbots for tasks like scheduling a meeting, travel booking for an official tour, raising IT ticket, generating the day-to-day report and more.

Healthy wearables

Employees spend a lot of time sitting at their desk in workplaces. This kind of deskbound life is proving to be detrimental to the workforce. Such a sedentary lifestyle leads to poor health, poor results and dissatisfaction too. There are some offices that offer standing desks or offer subsidized fitness programs for their employees, while others are adopting high-tech options. Many companies are providing wearables to field workers to help them track their health and take precautions if needed well in advance. For example, access to wearables may encourage employees to instill better habits and have a safe and healthy lifestyle.

Time tracking

Modern workforces prefer automation of task instead of doing it manually. One of such tasks is tracking employee attendance. Some offices have opted for IoT-enabled solutions combined with beacons that make everyday attendance and time tracking seamless with a simple login and logout process. Employees IDs replaces Card Beacons which will automatically register when an employee enters and exits from the premises. With this smart office tool, HR and employees can keep track of attendance, leaves and early exits.

Smart lighting

With an IoT-enabled smart lighting solution, offices can reduce energy bills. Offices are installing wireless lights that employees can manage to receive the right amount of lighting around the workplace. Such IoT-based LED lights have amazing capabilities like it can control outdoor lighting from a mobile phone. Not just that, this smart light also offers an immersive visual experience to users by matching the lighting hue with the colors that are emitted from presentation videos.

Conditioned climate

By estimating the ideal requirement, IoT manages to regulate the temperature of the workspace. This makes the work environment much comfortable for employees with no distraction. A convenient workplace enables employees to focus better on their work which in turn improves productivity.

Space management

IoT has the capability of storing a huge amount of data. This gives the workspace a paperless environment making more space in the office for productive office work. Moreover, IoT enables enterprises in optimally using the space by generating reports and deriving insights about the usage of office space.

The final say

These are just some of the IoT use cases in a workplace environment that has transformed the traditional business infrastructure into a modern smart office. Companies are adopting smart office solutions to make the workplace more comfortable and collaborative for employees and employers. If you are looking to develop a smart office solution for your workplace, talk to our experts.

Originally published at https://www.softwebsolutions.com on July 17, 2019.