Introducing Office Pass: An easy way to start with hybrid work
Over the past 7 years, we've powered millions of events and helped thousands of work days run smoothly. Along the way, one thing was clear — people do their best work when they have access to the right people and resources to support them. The pandemic accelerated flexible work adoption by changing the relationship most people have with their office. Even if your office is open, you’re probably still reading this from home. After a year of working remotely, we know most people won’t use the office every single day, but it will remain an important part of the week.
Workplace teams (a mix of IT, Facilities, and People Ops) have a big challenge ahead of them, supporting a mix of remote and in-office days (aka “hybrid work”).
Office Pass is for hybrid work
Office Pass updates key parts of Robin to support flexible workplaces and more directly, hybrid work. It is built with employees at the center. Over the coming week, we’ll roll out these updates to all customers. They focus on three areas of improvement:
- Managing access to the office
- Coordinating team collaboration in-office
- Previewing and booking resources in the office
Highlights
- A brand new mobile experience designed to help workplace teams introduce hybrid work. These updates give employees full access to the workplace before arriving. Useful for deciding when (or if) to integrate the office into your week.
- Pass Management gives admins new ways to organize teams and schedule customized access to the office by day.
- A daily office roster shows admins which people are in the office, and which steps each person completed prior to arriving — including health checkpoints for safety, verifying desk reservations, and managing capacity requirements.
- Simpler in-person desk booking with “tap-to-book” interactions (beta) powered by touchless-enabled stickers you can deploy and grow without expensive hardware.
Passes are customizable to support different types of work
When you issue a pass to someone, it gives them access to use the office in a certain way. For example, a sales team which needs to book desks Monday thru Wednesday in the Boston office vs. a facilities team going in daily to assigned seats. To start, passes now give admins the power to schedule access for specific days, making advanced desk strategies like shifts for different groups possible.
Passes are designed to feel familiar and simple, which make them easier to introduce to your employees while giving admins controls needed to manage how and when people coordinate resources in the office. In the coming months, you’ll see more customization and branding options to make sure they have exactly what they need for a successful day in the office.
Why mobile is important for hybrid work
We're starting with mobile because many of the decisions people need to make about their workweek will happen at home first. Adding passes to mobile also unlocks simpler in-office interactions like "tap to book" desks and eventually even opening the front door.
Plan trips to the office with your team
With hybrid work, the office becomes a hub for teams to work together. We've designed the mobile app to make coordinating trips to the office easy and solve common communication problems. By adding coworkers you work with closely, you can instantly see which teammates are in the office this week and plan to join.
Reopening safely, with confidence
For offices opening this year, meeting safety requirements is the most important step to reuniting your teams. Health checkpoints can now have required answers to pass successfully, and notify specific people when someone fails so your team can respond accordingly.
Our roadmap to support hybrid work
Today’s release marks the first of three phases designed to support workplace teams in the process of reopening and reintroducing the office to their people. With a flexible workplace, integrating more of these seamless and small interactions will make the office easy to work with.
