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Financial institutions are split on how to move forward with their work policies. Proponents of the office argue that in-person work improves collaboration and culture, but many companies ask, “At what cost?”
One thing is certain: banks must provide high-quality office spaces to support their workforce in doing their best work. Citigroup invested in amenities in its London Canary Wharf offices to entice its staff back. JPMorgan opened a $3 billion headquarters in NYC with smart technology and 2.5 million square feet of flexible and collaborative space.
In the future, office spaces must meet these criteria: employees’ evolving needs and work patterns, flexibility and resilience to changes, and the ability to integrate with the latest technology to support productivity and innovation.
Whether managing the balance of on-site and remote workers or ensuring spaces are available for confidential conversations, Skedda can help banks meet security and space requirements to focus on the financial services critical to their customers and stakeholders.
Mitigate Security and Compliance Risks
Banks must maintain strict security protocols for their physical and digital assets. Compliance with financial regulations requires secure handling of sensitive data, even in flexible work settings.
Skedda’s compliance with GDPR and SOC2 Type I certification ensures that customer data is protected under the highest standards.
Skedda’s secure booking system ensures only authorized employees can book and access specific areas (e.g., trading floors, compliance efforts, executive rooms). Skedda’s robust custom rules and roles engine allows you to set role-based access so only certain employees can book sensitive areas.
- Booking conditions: Establish specific restrictions and limits for each booking, including setting restrictions on who can book specific workstations, the booking time frame, and any additional requirements. For instance, banks can decide that only “Branch managers” can book certain spaces.
- Repeat bookings: Grant or limit the ability for employees to create recurring bookings. Recurring and priority bookings can be helpful for leadership and essential personnel to pre-book critical spaces while maintaining flexibility.
- Quotas: Limit the overall usage of spaces (by individuals or groups) within a given time to ensure various teams or roles can book these spaces.
- Buffer time: Create time gaps between consecutive bookings, which can be helpful for setup and cleanup. This is especially useful when you need to put away confidential documents before the next booking starts.
- Advanced booking window: Decide how far in advance users can make bookings, ensuring equitable access and optimal planning. Different workspaces may have varying booking windows based on specific requirements or levels of importance.
Skedda’s access control integration with Kisi ensures that only workers with the correct permissions can book and access high-security areas. Banks can grant access for the entire duration of a booking or just the initial minutes, ensuring access is always tied to a reservation. This makes
Skedda also keeps a log of booking activity that is useful for audit trails and reporting. This helps banks maintain records of space usage for compliance with financial regulations. Skedda Workplace Intelligence, which includes occupancy tracking, provides an additional layer of trust by providing insights into who is in the office.
Achieve Efficient Space Utilization and Cost Optimization
Large bank headquarters may see fluctuating occupancy, leading to wasted space and high operational costs. Ensuring real estate is optimized for hybrid work while keeping prime locations for customer interactions is key.
Skedda Workplace Intelligence helps organizations better understand how they use their spaces to prevent overuse or underutilization.
This information is essential for banks to know where to downsize or repurpose office space. Less office space means reducing leasing costs. Additionally, having insights on utilization by days, weeks, months, and more can help the facilities team adopt smart energy use. They can automatically adjust lighting, heating, and cooling based on occupancy levels, which also helps reduce costs spent on energy for unused spaces.
Within Skedda Workplace Intelligence, the automated check-in capability prevents ghost bookings, where someone books a space but fails to show up. Skedda will release unused bookings if employees don’t check in, preventing wasted space.
Balance Branch Networks and Headquarter Dynamics
Retail banking branches require consistent staffing, while corporate offices may shift to flexible work. Some roles (e.g., traders, compliance officers, customer service reps) require on-site presence, while others can work remotely. Thus, banks must align space management strategies between branches and central offices to balance these in-person and remote needs.
Skedda enables multi-location management by allowing banks to customize policies by location.
Managers can apply different booking and access rules to headquarters versus retail branches. One space management platform means banks can manage multiple office locations and branches from one centralized system. Using one centralized system also makes it easier to share spaces across different locations. Employees can quickly book the workspace they need through Skedda, no matter where they work. Different locations can rest easy knowing their specific rules will apply to the bookings without explaining them to visitors coming in for the day.
Skedda’s user-friendly scheduling helps banks streamline space allocation, ensuring that all workers can coordinate usage efficiently.
Banks can easily manage employee shifts at multiple branches by using Skedda’s tag-based segmentation, which lets administrators assign user tags to individuals based on specific criteria (e.g., job title, responsibilities, access level). Leveraging different user tags can help manage and schedule staff rotations. It also allows people with specific tags to reserve desks or workstations for particular shifts or time slots, ensuring adequate coverage and smooth transitions between shifts.
See why Skedda was named #1 in Space Management on G2.
Find the Right Space at the Right Time With the Right Resources
All employees—regardless of job title, department, and location—need easy access to booking systems for desks, meeting rooms, and private spaces. Ensuring the right mix of workspaces (e.g., individual desks, collaboration rooms, client-facing spaces) to meet various needs is complex.
Skedda’s dynamic seat assignment enables hot desking and dedicated seating options for teams and individuals with different needs.
Banks can allocate some desks as permanent seating for executives and managers, leaving the remaining desks bookable for other employees. Using this functionality in tandem with Skedda’s custom booking rules helps prevent overbooking, ensure fair access, and enforce workspace policies.
Skedda’s custom interactive map makes viewing all bookable spaces and the resources in them easy.
Banks can see a detailed map of their various locations on their computer or mobile devices, making bookings easily accessible. It enables flexible work by giving employees control over where and when they work while ensuring operational efficiency.
Skedda’s Space Attributes simplifies space selection, helping employees find the ideal spot in fewer clicks. Employees can filter for specific resources they need in the space, such as double monitors, standing desks, or printers. Administrators can also see the popular filters, informing them of what resources employees use more.
Ensure Sufficient Tech Integration To Enhance Workplace Experience
Employees expect seamless office experiences that ensure they have the right resources and technology to do their best work. For banks, this means providing secure networks, trading floors, and specialized software to run their business. Banks also need to ensure that their clients experience a welcoming experience when they step into the various retail branches.
Skedda’s integration with popular work apps supports workplace productivity and efficiency.
Integration with Slack and Microsoft Teams allows you to easily see who’s in the office to encourage workers to go into the office and streamline in-person collaboration. Skedda’s two-way calendar sync with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace makes booking meetings and inviting attendees easier by using the apps many already use for work. This reduces the chances of error as all changes are made in real time and are on all platforms no matter where you make the changes.
Skedda Visitor Management ensures a great guest experience from start to finish.
Banks are client-facing and want to ensure customers have a good experience so they return to do more business. Skedda Visitor Management lets clients self-check-in when they show up for their appointments. The platform automatically notifies the host when their clients have arrived, allowing the host to quickly greet them and make the whole experience more seamless and welcoming. By checking in and out this way, Skedda also keeps a digital log of visitors and statuses, which can be helpful for safety and security purposes.
The Power of Banking Better With Smarter Space Management
Space management software can help banks address their unique space challenges by providing smart, data-driven solutions that enhance security, optimize space, and improve the employee experience. By using Skedda, banks can maintain security, improve efficiency, and create a flexible work environment that meets both regulatory needs and employee expectations.
If you’re ready to manage your workspaces more effectively, create your free Skedda account today.
