People before places: Putting a spotlight on team collaboration

There are a lot of things to love about working remotely and a ton of advantages, but there’s one thing that a home office cannot replicate: face time. There’s just no digital tools that can quite recreate the effectiveness, the efficiency, the energy or the connection of a white-boarding session, an enthusiastic team celebration with everyone together around a big table or a perfectly-timed one-on-one catch-up in the kitchen over coffee.

At Robin, we’ve collectively talked to hundreds of customers and employees about their opinions, preferences, needs and challenges when planning to make hybrid offices work well. That’s why we know that one of the key drivers — maybe the most critical driver — for employees to go into the office will be collaboration and socializing with their friends and co-workers. 

Let’s say you know you want to visit the office on a specific day next week. You know what you need to accomplish and who you want to talk to, but when you don’t have an assigned desk anymore, it’s hard to know what to expect. Questions that used to answer themselves, like “Where is my desk?” and “Where is everyone else?” are now variables at best and obstacles at worst. 

You need the right desk and the right spaces with the right amenities in the right part of the office. And you need the right people. Not only do you have to figure out where your most trusted engineer and your go-to sales manager are sitting on a given day, but you have to figure out if they’re even in the office at all.

And at any point, the people you care about connecting with in the office may be different. In reality, an org chart will never tell the whole story of who matters to you at work. 

Depending on your company, your role and your current set of priorities, your personal team could be any arbitrary collection of people: others in your department, a group of peers, your boss, your direct reports, a project team, a cross-functional bunch of collaborators, or just your handful of close work friends. 

Just last week, we released new features allowing employees to create their team of people right within the Robin mobile app with just a couple taps. And you can change up who’s on your team anytime with just another tap or two. 

For organizations looking to welcome people back to the office, building the momentum and energy in the workplace can be a challenge. Making the trip back easier to plan can make the “return” a success and help alleviate some workplace reentry anxiety.  

Once you create your team, we know those people are important to you for collaboration so we surface them throughout your Office Pass experience. We make it easy to see their schedule along with other information like which days you have access to the office, what resources and amenities you need, where everything is and what steps you have to take to visit your office safely according to your company’s corporate policies and procedures. 

Then we highlight when your team will be in and where they’re sitting so you can easily book desks and spaces nearby. We even help you compare and contrast their schedules with a “team view” that lets you find the best date to book and place to sit to suit your needs and goals for collaborating during any given visit to the office.

With Robin, we don’t tell you who’s on your team; you tell us. Nobody knows you and your job better than you do, so the definition of your team is in your hands. And then we tailor your Robin-powered visit planning experience based on that. 

Robin’s workplace platform is the first one that puts people before places. And we know that in a hybrid work situation, people are often the reason employees are going to go in. So we’re committed to helping you maximize your time collaborating together with your co-workers. That way, you can make the most of your in-office time focusing on catch-up coffee chats and jamming out in those white-boarding sessions.‍

Reopening your office this year?

Robin gives companies the tools to manage a safe return to the office and people the power to make the most of their workplace again.

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