Changing ways of working
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Brown Bag Films faced a challenge: to comply with social distancing they had to shut down their office. Their 300 or so animators, who required specialized equipment and ultra-powerful computers with advanced graphic cards, could not simply bring a laptop home to work. Animators use equipment on a daily basis that is anything but portable, and even the most powerful laptops paled in comparison to the large processing power of their office desktops.
Like many other companies, they had to innovate. Through remote access, employees could use the processing power of their office desktops with a laptop that “functioned as a dummy mouse and keyboard for the machine that’s sitting in the office,” explained Aidan Murtagh, Director of Workplace Operations and Facilities at Brown Bag Films. In the process, they transformed how their creatives worked and changed their relationship with the office.
When they eventually returned to the office, the desktop was no longer a marker of an assigned seat. Instead of requiring permanently assigned desks, drawing pads, and an assortment of other tools for each animator, Brown Bag Films found that they could now share these resources among staff.
“Because each person has a laptop that connects to a desktop underneath a desk, it doesn't matter where they are working now. They can work from home or they can come into the studio—the laptop always connects to the more powerful machine,” said Aidan Murtagh, Director of Workplace Operations and Facilities at Brown Bag Films.
With this newfound flexibility, they started to reconfigure their office space. “Today, 90% of our desks are spaces that are available as shared spaces,” said Murtagh.
Brown Bag Films realized they needed a system to manage their shared spaces, one that:
- Allows for different types of users and spaces: In addition to animators and creatives, Brown Bag Films also has business and administrative teams whose needs are different.
- Is easy to use: Brown Bag Films needed a system that was easy to use and that could be adopted by its team members quickly and in great numbers.
- Helps them measure occupancy: With the changing ways of working, it was important for Brown Bag Films to measure how spaces were being used and ultimately how many times folks chose to come into the office.
The Solution: Managing the Change with Skedda
Brown Bag Films’ Dublin headquarters chose Skedda because of how easy it was to use, and how simple it was to adjust Skedda’s settings to work with the studio’s unique use case. Several key features sealed the deal for Brown Bag Films.
1. User Tags
Skedda’s user tags allow Brown Bag Films to account for their distinct type of employees and the different equipment they need to use. Because they are an animation studio, they have employees whose work requirements vary from the standard two monitors with a keyboard and mouse setup all the way to a drawing table with an A4 drawing pad with a color-calibrated monitor.
“In each physical location of the studio, there are different role type setups, so there will be different equipment related to that role, and the user tags, that we have assigned to each user, determine their ability to book there,” said Murtagh, adding, “there’s no point in a 2D artist booking a desk where I sit, because they won’t have any of the equipment they need.”
Brown Bag Films uses over 20 different user tags to identify a certain user’s desk requirements. For example, only users who have the user tag “Post” can book desks equipped with post-production editing hardware; and only users with the tag “Finance” can book desks in a private room that allows the team to talk through any sensitive topics. This system allows team members to hit the ground running, with all the equipment they need wherever they choose to work— making productivity levels soar.
“I couldn’t live without user tags,” reflected Murtagh.
2. Ease of Use
Skedda’s easy-to-use interface was a key factor for Brown Bag Films.
“Somebody can book a desk in four or five clicks. It takes 30 seconds to book a desk,” said Murtagh.
The simplicity of the system has made it really easy for people to adopt this new way of working. As a result of the high usage rates, Skedda has become the preferred tool for managers to track when their team is in the studio or working from home, making it easier to plan in-person collaboration and meetups.
3. Insights
Skedda’s insights panel allows Brown Bag Films to review how their space is being used, and which spaces are most popular among their staff. Skedda bookings also enable them to verify that employees are complying with the set return-to-office policy.
The Result
Through using Skedda, Brown Bag Films also identified opportunities to reduce their office size.
“We were using Skedda for a while and realized through the bookings data through the bookings data that we could condense some of our space,” said Murtagh, adding that, “this probably would not have been possible without Skedda.”
Brown Bag Films reduced their real estate expenses with these insights.
In addition, Skedda helped increase in-person collaboration at Brown Bag Films. The teams frequently change as team members move between productions. “An animator may join the team for one film or series, but move on once production has been completed,” explained Murtagh. As a result, team members are constantly meeting each other.
“We’ve found that having people’s pictures on the map actually helps integrate people into the studio, because you can quickly see what someone looks like and know where they are sitting, which often incentivizes folks to go over and have a chat in person,” said Murtagh.
Ultimately, the team finds that Skedda has helped increase collaboration at Brown Bag Films. “It helps staff members see who is in the office, so they can go in the same day and collaborate in person,” said Murtagh.
