4 Benefits of Real-Time Meeting Room Calendars

When the office is difficult to navigate and lacks a clear purpose, people understandably think twice before making the commute. A Future Forum report finds that 74% of workers visit the office to interact with other people – to collaborate with colleagues, build camaraderie, and have in-person meetings. Nobody comes in wanting friction and frustration.

For those responsible for an organization’s workplace experience technology and hybrid work approach, having the right workplace experience platform in place makes life so much easier (for you, your people, and your organization’s bottom line). This post focuses on how meeting room scheduling software and a real-time meeting room calendar offers big benefits, helping you solve multiple challenges around people coming into the office to meet.

Benefit #1: Reducing meeting-related wastage of time and money.

Companies lose over $37 billion annually to unproductive meetings. So many things can go expensively wrong before, during, and after a meetings, including:

• The meeting room was changed at the last minute and employees go to the wrong room and then need to spend/waste time figuring out what to do next.
• The meeting was canceled at the last minute, but people still show up to the right room at the right time and now have to figure out what happened.

The answer. Fortunately, there’s a technology platform with real-time meeting calendars that helps organizations manage and communicate about meetings, ensuring that everyone shows up at the right place at the right time. With real-time meeting room calendars, no-show meetings become relics of the past, because each attendee gets notified (not just via their calendar, but also automatically via Slack and MS Teams) whenever a meeting gets canceled, rescheduled, or otherwise changed.

In addition, the best conference room booking software provides solutions for wayfinding via real-time office maps, and digital display/signage so people can better locate the appropriate meeting room.

Benefit #2: Save time and frustration when booking meeting spaces

Like any business resource, meeting space is subject to scarcity and competitive pressures, which is why it’s typically treated on a first-come, first-serve basis. You need to book prime meeting space far in advance, and it can take lots of time and effort to find just the right space on just the right day to fit the needs of your attendees.

Steelcase, an office furniture provider, found that two out of five employees (40%) spend more than 30 minutes each day booking office space. That adds up to at least 10 hours per month searching for meeting space. Clearly, streamlining of the room booking process is long overdue.

The answer. You need room scheduling software that gives people real-time visibility into available meeting spaces, helping your teams save time while reducing the friction associated with booking meeting rooms. Empower your teams to access the rooms they need and limit frustration. Meeting room schedule displays can help improve visibility into which spaces are truly available.

Robin’s real-time booking solution allows you to input the type of space and amenities/tech you’ll need for a meeting, then shows you what meeting spaces are suitable and available.

Benefit #3: Avoiding Double Booking Mishaps

Imagine a marketer who arrives at conference room X to discuss new campaign ideas only to find the Finance team already using the room to discuss their new data governance framework.

When meeting spaces get double-booked, teams can be left unable to complete their important, strategic tasks – double-bookings can also create festering tensions among departments competing for limited meeting space – a headache that senior leaders must seek to resolve (amicably, if possible).

The answer. Robin’s conference room management software, an important part of our comprehensive platform, allows your organization to set clear policies and guidelines for how and when meeting spaces can be booked, so you can avoid productivity-killing calamities such as the double-booking scenario described above.

Benefit #4: Optimizing Meeting Room Utilization

Unused or underutilized office space wastes your organization’s limited resources, costing you money on rent or overhead that might otherwise be allocated to actually growing your core business. It’s even worse when you don’t have visibility into how you’re wasting money; you can’t fix problems you can’t see.

The answer. With meeting room management software (including real-time meeting room calendars), you can collect data and run reports on your organization’s space utilization, identifying usage patterns. This incoming data helps you understand which meeting spaces are being utilized and underutilized (i.e., spaces that likely need improvement). Insights like these support better decision-making about office (re)configurations.

The Bottom Line

To get hybrid work right, including organizing effective meetings, you need the right technology platform. Give your people what they need to connect with the office and with each other. Solving the challenges described above means having the right tools, including office space scheduling software that integrates with people’s calendars in real-time.

Organizations have already started taking steps in the right direction, as Robin data illustrates:

• 87% of organizations we surveyed have fully or partially implemented room and desk booking software.
• 66% of surveyed organizations have adopted space and occupancy tracking.

To learn even more about how meeting management solutions can help your organization enhance productivity and employee experience, visit Robin’s room scheduling page here.