The Key to Wellbeing in the Office

• By Matt Welty
• Nov 12, 2024

A few years ago, all we saw in the news was the ‘great resignation.’ Now we have another ‘great’ to deal with. According to CBRE, 2023 was the start of the ‘great return’ as office workers returned to their normal offices after working from home. The data shows that two-thirds of all U.S office buildings were more than 90% leased as of Q2 2023.

Just as we heard a lot about the great resignation, the great return is prompting similar talking points as people are once again confronted with the downsides of office life. The knock-on effect of these downsides has been a demand for better initiatives and policies to support employees’ wellbeing. If they must return, many employees feel they need to be supported.

The forms of support vary from hybrid working to gym memberships or hot desking between office locations. Common to them all is the need for effortless access control and flexibility as people find their way back to shared spaces and open-plan offices. In many instances, the responsibility of making things run smoothly falls on facilities managers, office managers and installers. To ensure success, smart locking solutions are a necessity. As we will see, many organizations have used them with notable results.

Meeting in the Middle
The return to the office has not been welcomed by all. There are clear dividing lines between employees and management. Gartner research shows that 48% of office employees believe that return to office policies prioritize what leaders want over what employees need. The only solutions that avoid things like quiet quitting and plummeting wellbeing are ones where employees and leaders meet in the middle.

Hybrid working, where employees spend several days in the office and several days at home, is the perfect agreement. It boosts employee productivity while also allowing in-person collaboration.

To facilitate hybrid work policies and preserve employee wellbeing, offices need access control solutions suited to the task. They must be flexible, integrate smart technologies and be easy to use.

Faced with this challenge, companies can use ‘hot lockers’ for their hybrid employees that could be shared by different people on different days at varying times. Look for locks that allow facilities managers to give all employees unique, card-based access to each locker, saving the time and money needed to cut thousands of unique locks for individual lockers. Thanks to the RFID technology and central control system, facilities managers are also capable of overseeing employee access for all lockers simultaneously and remotely.

As for employees, the process of using the ‘hot lockers’ is frictionless. They simply use their card to access and lock the locker when they need to store their belongings. When they are not in the office, the locker is available for other employees to use. Some companies have multiple office locations and the added benefit of a system that uses card-based access is that it can be implemented across several office sites, giving employees the freedom to choose which office they want to work from without facilities staff or office managers having to coordinate new card access.

Wellbeing Benefits Beyond the Office
Employee wellbeing goes beyond the four glass walls of the shared office, which is why we are seeing many organizations offering gym facilities for their staff. An active lifestyle has many health and work benefits that cannot be overestimated. Regular exercisers are 129% more likely to report feeling more productive at work, and, on top of this, and 73% of employees who exercise in the morning say they are more satisfied at work. Having exercise facilities at work, therefore, improves employee performance and makes the office a more desirable location to work.

For office workers, keyless access is a massive bonus. Many gyms in office buildings require people to bring their own combination locks. When you forget it, they make you buy one at an inflated price. As well as being an unnecessary expense, this is also frustrating. For a workplace gym, this would not help with morale.

Due to the keyless access, facilities managers have saved a significant amount of time not having to manage locks. The locks largely take care of themselves, and the additional capacity has given them time to focus on other high-priority tasks. The same goes for gym staff, who, rather than dealing with locks, can focus on supporting gym users. If something does go wrong, such as an employee leaving their belongings behind or forgetting their temporary access code, the key override function means the problem can be swiftly resolved.

From hassle-free access to effortless key override, when it comes to employee wellbeing, the less friction, and more flexibility, the better. As things are made easier to use, and employees are given choice in how they use them, employee morale and productivity is likely to increase.

This article originally appeared in the November / December 2024 issue of Security Today.