Optimizing Meetings with a Conference Room Booking Solution
Covid-19 has initiated a hybrid workplace culture in response to employee safety concerns. And given employees can work remotely or from the office, the structure of office meetings has changed dramatically. For one, the number of meetings has increased significantly. And secondly, there has been a shift from largely in-person meetings to a mix of in-person and virtual meetings. Safe to say, conference room utilization has shifted too, and now there are new management troubles as well.
A conference room booking solution enables your team members to easily book meeting rooms based on real-time availability, manage meeting schedules, automate the sanitization processes, and more. But how does one optimize meetings with it? Let’s take a look.
Six Ways to Optimize Meetings With a Conference Room Booking Solution
1. Get Meeting Room Recommendations
Every meeting differs in terms of the number of attendees, space requirements, amenities, etc. Yet more often than not, employees book meeting rooms without taking them into consideration, resulting in inefficient utilization of meeting rooms. A conference room booking solution addresses this and offers recommendations based on the purpose of the meeting. This helps employees book a room that matches their exact requirements and promotes better room utilization.
2. Get Real-Time Meeting Room Details
Manual room booking systems make it hard to track meeting room booking status, availability, and plenty of other details in real-time. Thankfully installing a conference room booking solution can help with it. Here’s how.
- Conference Room Availability Display
With a conference room booking solution, you never have to double-check meeting room ability. This is because the software automatically updated meeting room occupancy details to a centralized dashboard that everyone can access easily.
- Conference Room Capacity Display
A conference room booking solution also displays meeting room occupancy and booking capacity to facility managers. This helps them block certain meeting rooms for a larger number of attendees. Contrastingly, if the number of attendees is lesser, the software can block smaller meeting rooms instead.
- Meeting Room Details
Displaying meeting details like the organizer, attendees, and schedule helps the attendees to know if the room is correct and understand the meeting agenda before entering the room. Additionally, these details also help with contact tracing, in the event of a virus spread. And a meeting room booking software allows both of these.
- Conference Room Location Details
Most conference booking solutions come with a flooring plan to help employees locate meeting rooms easily. This cuts down the time spent on locating meeting rooms dramatically.
3. Automate Meeting Room Check-Ins
It is crucial to ensure meetings start and end within the scheduled time. To do so, you can set a meeting check-in window by using a conference room booking solution. If none of the attendees check-in before the window ends, the booking gets canceled automatically. It makes the room available for others to book and improves room utilization.
4. Handle No-Show Meetings Automatically
Often, employees do not show up for a scheduled meeting, thereby blocking room bookings and wasting time and space. Thankfully, a conference room booking solution provides an antidote to this.
With a conference room booking solution, facility managers can schedule a time-out in advance. This way, when nobody shows up after a specified amount of time, the meeting room status automatically changes to unoccupied and free for booking. Thus, a conference room booking solution ensures efficient room utilization despite no-shows.
5. Track Key Metrics With a Conference Room Booking Solution
With a conference room booking solution, you can gain real-time insights into critical metrics to ensure the effective utilization of meeting rooms.
Wondering what are the key metrics a conference room booking software automatically tracks? Here are a few. Meeting room occupancy by the time of the day, week, month, and year, number of cancellations, meeting room utilization, number of attendees, and so on. With such granular data, facility managers can understand if the meeting rooms are being utilized to their fullest. If not, they can decide to convert unutilized meeting spaces into seating areas or convert seating areas into meeting rooms if there is a greater demand for them.
6. Integrate Conference Room Booking Solution With Other Apps
Integrating a conference room booking solution with other applications like Outlook, Google Calendar, Microsoft Teams, etc., offer a seamless experience to employees. How? Well, the employees can sync their calendars and stay updated about meeting schedules, meeting dates, room names, their colleagues’ schedules, etc. Moreover, they can be informed about a meeting room booking or a scheduling change instantly. This saves a lot of time and improves employee productivity. Thus, a robust conference room booking solution addresses every meeting room concern and enables the smooth management of meeting rooms.
Final Word
The hybrid workplace model has made organizing meetings challenging, but the conference room booking solution alleviates this burden while providing employees with a seamless digital experience. It further assures employee participation in major discussions, maintains morale, and boosts productivity. By following the checklist mentioned above, you can optimize meetings in the best possible way using a conference room booking solution.
And if you don’t have a conference room booking solution for your office yet, get WorkInSync. Our features include scheduling meetings, space planning, determining booking purpose and capacity, real-time tracking, notifying capabilities, a centralized dashboard, amenities management, and more. WorkInSync with all these features is bound to make meeting room management a breeze while promoting optimal utilization of meeting rooms.