u/Ok_Pride_6746

so leadership keeps asking me for  utilization numbers and that phrase means ten different things depending on who's asking. i'm realizing the metrics i could pull only look nice on a slide but don't mean anything really. 

the stuff i keep coming back to is peak day occupancy because the average hides everythin and then the gap between desks booked vs desks used which is the ghost booking number and it's always hgih and then room vs desk demand separately bc they trend totally differently. but idk if thats the right stuff to be doing desk utilization tracking on or just the stuff thats easy to export. for anyone who reports this up whats on your dashboard?? and what did leadership end up caring about vs just nodding along and ignoring

I'm running things half on paper half digital for a while now, intake is still mostly paper forms we scan in after, scheduling is a shared google calendar, billing is separate, etc. But I saw that most of the clinics stopped doing paper stuff and just moved to everything digital

We're still small, maybe 15-20 patients a week, so I'm not sure if going fully digital at our size would even pay for itself right now or if we should wait till were bigger??

I'm thinking of just switching intake first since that does feel like it would make things tangibly easier, and leaving scheduling and billing alone for now unless that ends up being a mistake too, but idk if that's good approach or should I just switch everything all at once and be done with it

I'm running things half on paper half digital for a while now, intake is still mostly paper forms we scan in after, scheduling is a shared google calendar, billing is separate, etc. But I saw that most of the clinics stopped doing paper stuff and just moved to everything digital

We're still small, maybe 15-20 patients a week, so I'm not sure if going fully digital at our size would even pay for itself right now or if we should wait till were bigger??

I'm thinking of just switching intake first since that does feel like it would make things tangibly easier, and leaving scheduling and billing alone for now unless that ends up being a mistake too, but idk if that's good approach or should I just switch everything all at once and be done with it

Trying to compare options in this space is hard  and I don't think it's an accident. One vendor charges per user one charges per desk one invents a "resource" that is a bundle of things, rooms, and parking and good luck mapping that back to what you need. 

The result is you can't line up two quotes side by side anympre which conveniently means you can't tell who's cheaper. For a hybrid office where half the team is not in on any given day the model you pick swings. Does anyone feel like they got a straight, comparable deal out of this?

Iv started working as a freelancer recently and got my second client (yay) and now I have to help them set up a small clinic and we’ve been looking at Fresha as one option. We love fresha and it really looks like a good options for bookings and the client side of things, etc so no issues there.

What I’m trying to figure out is if Fresha would still be good alter on like if they start needing more than scheduling cause they are growing really fast. They are not a big clinic which means that I don’t want to overcomplicate things, but I also don’t want to pick something and outgrow it in a few months.

Is fresha the best option here or should I look at something else? 

Also open to hearing about integrations and etc if fresha is indeed the best option out there.

Imo flexible seating looks great and can feel awful when it's run with out any system behind it. Sit anywhere turns into a morning scramble amd people stop feeling like they belong somewhere. I don't think the problem is flexibility itself. Its that people dont like using crappy tools!! There are so manyt tools and we just want something central and easy with out a bunch of stuff to click every day. But no tools makes it worse because we need organization obviously. 

When there's no visibility in to where people are sitting, no way to land near your team, no structure at all of course it feel cold and chaotic. The question I keep coming back to what separates flexible seating that feels good from bad and what could my team do to make them feel more at home with flexible seating. Is it tools and a process? What is it 

The offices where it works clearly figured something out that the rest didn't.

There's a special kind of mad for the meeting room hoarders. Vent incoming , the recurring booking that locks the biggest room every week for a meeting no one goes to. Th actual teams who need to get in a room are circling the floor like a parking lot sea gull. The maddening part is almost always plenty of room capacity on paper  it's just locked up by bookings nobody cleans up. And calling it out feels petty even though everyone's mad about it. Why is the basic act of booking meeting rooms fairly such an unsolved problem in so many offices when the rooms clearly exist??

thanks for the help in my other post! Looking for advice.. so many of our booked meeting rooms go completley unused plus a smaller chunk of desk bookings where people dont show. People book then forget to cancel meanwhile other teams can't find a room. make it make sense?

the tools i been looking at talk about auto release for desk booking and meeting room no show management like book a room and if don't check in within 10 -15 minutes the system releases it. Does it work for people to rebook tho? Like do other people check in and book or just take the empty desk without booking?

Does auto release show someone mid meeting and the room shows "available")?

Have your ghost bookings gone down?

Looking for recs AND policy ideas. I am tired of being the room police and ghost hunter

hey everyone. I’m interested to know if anyone is using Growth hub from OfficeRnD? I keep seeing it pop up in the OfficeRnD updates and I am trying to figure out if it is worth it.

I am also interested in how it handles the checkout process since that is usually where we lose people.

Please let me know. I’m hoping to get more insight about it or alternatives

years into managing this office and we switched when we downsized and on paper it made perfect sense - fewer desks than people, hybrid schedule, book what you need and some people sit at the same desk every day but act surprised when someone else "took their spot". Other people don't book at all and show up and sit. The desk reservation spreadsheet I made isnt working because team thinks it's optional. we need a desk booking software but every time  leadership says "is the spreadsheet not working" and I have to find new words for no. If you've moved from spreadsheets to office software did it help or did people complain a new system? don't know if the problem is the tool or the people.

Feel like office managers do a ton of invisible work that nobody notices til something breaks. If the office is running smoothly nobody thinks about it. But the second something goes wrong suddenly everyone cares.

Curious if office managers get much respect/recognition at your workplace or if this is pretty common everywhere..

how do teams figure out how many meeting rooms an office needs? hybrid work is making this way harder to predict (or maybe I’m losing something, not sure). some days the rooms are completely empty, other days they’re all booked before lunch because everyone came in.

Using a 50 person office as an exmple: is there an ideal amount of rooms to have? Considering that most of these people come to the office at least twice a week.