How to integrate workplace management with your HR systems

The world of HR, People Operations, and Workplace professionals is changing every day. Apart from the unique challenges arising for People teams in 2022, there is also the challenge of their workflows relying more on automation, technology, and software. While automation is more than helpful and makes lives easier for most People professionals out there, it can sometimes get overwhelming to jump from system to system.

Juggling employee retention, inclusive leadership, and employee experience is complex in and of itself, but now there’s a new player in the mix: workplace management. Workplace management is becoming more and more critical in the hybrid workplace every day, and People teams are catching up. Employee experience and business insights are some of the key factors impacting HR technology decisions, according to a recent HR Tech survey by PwC.

We fully support the growing interest in implementing workplace management and designing a flexible workplace experience employees will love. But on the other hand, we understand the need of People professionals to have all their tools and systems integrated and working together seamlessly.
So let’s dive into the benefits of workplace management, why it should integrate with your existing HR stack, and how to achieve that:

Workplace Management Software And Its Benefits

Workplace management systems have been growing in popularity in the past year, as they are a vital part of enterprise HR tech stacks. With workplace management software, People Operations and Workplace managers can design, implement, and manage remote or hybrid workplace strategies that employees will love.

Providing workspaces for employees in different locations

With the right software for managing a hybrid workplace, you can really make a difference in your company’s HR operations. One of the ways to do it is to provide workspaces to employees in different locations. Workplace management software enables you to find, onboard, and offer workspaces across locations - all in one platform, with only a few clicks.

Providing what employees need

In a remote-first company, it’s likely your employees have different workspace needs, based on not just their location but on their role, department, and responsibilities. For example, some of them need access to hot desks to focus on their work outside of the home. Others benefit from regular brainstorming sessions and meetings with their team.

Your managers may need to use workspaces more often than other employees, primarily if they conduct more meetings, reviews, or 1-on-1 sessions. Additionally, when it comes to departments, some job descriptions require more frequent use of workspaces of various configurations. All these needs can be easily accommodated with a good workplace management partner, making it easy for Workplace, People Ops, and HR teams to provide the best experience possible.

Finally, HR teams benefit from workplace management by gaining the ability to measure, analyze, and manage the hybrid workplace effortlessly. Getting real-time insights into usage data, satisfaction rates, budget spending, and even employee productivity is a gamechanger for People teams who can make better, more informed decisions about their workplace with information like this.

Integrating Workplace Management With HR Systems

We’re well aware of how HR tech can overwhelm People teams, especially if you have multiple software options that don’t integrate with one another. As a result, you end up jumping from one software to another, often unable to get the whole picture of your operations.

This is one of the obstacles towards a wider workplace management adoption - the inability to obtain a holistic view of your entire People Operations and Human Resources workflows. Streamlining workplace operations only works if you’re able to synchronize it with the rest of your HR tech stack and see how your workplace functions into the broader HR landscape. Here are some benefits of a workplace management system that integrates with your existing HR tech.

Benefits Of An Integrated Workplace Management System

If you’re aiming to provide the best employee experience a hybrid workplace can give, you will want to offer workspace options to employees. But, as we’ve mentioned above, it’s not always straightforward.

Understanding which employees and departments need access to workspaces the most is a critical first step in establishing a hybrid workplace, and software integration with a workplace management system can help tremendously. Even if you decide to combine flexible workspaces with your existing office spaces, you’ll benefit from having an integrated solution to manage workspace offerings and their usage.

People Ops, Workplace, and HR professionals can use the integration of workplace management and other HR software to allow managers to approve requests for workspace usage based on the employees’ needs, providing employees with different workspace setups.

Additionally, if your HR stack is fully integrated, you can track the workplace management data and overlap it with your other HR data to better understand employee satisfaction and feedback in the hybrid work environment. Finally, having a clear picture of usage and budgets for the workplace functions makes it easier to manage, report on, and predict for the future.