How Logitech Collaboration Solutions Optimize Hybrid Work

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4 min read

3 Ways to Make Hybrid Work More Productive

An in-depth look into how we optimized our headquarters with our own solutions

A zoomed-out view of the lobby of the Logitech SVC headquarters.

The prevailing sentiment among business leaders is that employees should be working at least some amount of time from an office. How often is up for debate but, according to McKinsey, 82% of employees spent two or more days per week in the office in 2024 (up from 56% in 2023). With office use on the rise, organizations not only need to ensure their facilities accommodate employees but deliver a hybrid work experience that enhances collaboration, innovation, and fun.

At Logitech, we considered this need back in 2022 when we opened our new office in San Jose, California to our newly hybrid workforce. While our return to office policy was optional, the rationale behind our design choices were much the same as companies face today. We asked ourselves questions like…

“How can we make the in-office experience worth the commute?”
“How can we make collaboration easier and more natural?”
“How can we make the office more flexible and functional?”
"How can we create spaces that feel familiar and meet the expectations employees cultivated while working remotely?”

“How can we make video interactions as accessible and productive as they’ve come to rely on?”

Our end goal was to create a world-class experience for employees—one that gets the most out of everyone’s time with more personal and productive interactions that, in turn, establish a culture of collaboration and innovation. To achieve this goal, we placed our own solutions at the center of our office design, empowering employees to seamlessly integrate our devices into their daily routines while enabling our facilities team to track and adapt to workspaces.

Since opening the office, we’ve learned quite a bit about employees and our office utilization. With that data, we continue to find new ways to adapt and improve our office space. Now, it’s your turn to do the same. Let us show you how.

Turn Booking Automation into Room Optimization

Impromptu meetings are a natural part of the workday and a healthy indicator of collaboration. However, finding a collaboration space often proves difficult with employees wandering the office to locate an available meeting room. In fact, 40% of employees spend an average of 30 minutes per day searching for an available meeting room or space to collaborate, according to a report by Steelcase.

Sure, you can check the room schedule for availability, but that will only show you what was properly scheduled. Any other activity or lack thereof (other impromptu meetings, canceled meetings, early endings to meetings, etc.) is only visible to the naked eye.

We solved this issue by introducing Auto Book and Auto Release capabilities to our Logitech Room Booking service. Now, any room equipped with a Rally Bar or Rally Board 65 can detect room occupancy (or lack thereof) and automatically update the room status accordingly on linked workplace calendars, to then reflect on the Tap Scheduler scheduling display and in Logitech Sync for occupancy trends.

A woman views Logitech Tap Scheduler as she walks by an occupied meeting room.

With occupancy data updated quickly and accurately, employees have no trouble finding available meeting space. This not only fuels collaboration but provides our organization with valuable information about how rooms are used on a daily basis. This enables us to make timely adjustments to rooms (e.g., seating, video conferencing equipment needs) to optimize their value to employees.

Open Spaces, Open Minds

The concept of open workspaces has been around for ages. Created with the intent to foster better communication and collaboration among employees, it is a popular design choice for modern offices. It also has its detractors who are keen to point out its lack of privacy and increased noise level. While all are valid concerns, we have created a solution to address them and get more from our open spaces.

Enter Rally Board 65. Literally. This flexible and easy-to-install video conferencing device gives you a portable, 65-inch touchscreen that you can roll into any open space, town hall, or other meeting location for engaging video collaboration. Rally Board 65 features built-in AI-powered intelligence that not only helps to remove unwanted noises and bring clarity to participant voices but better frame and focus the conversation on the people in the meeting.

Logitech Rally Board 65 in an open workspace.

By adding Rally Board 65 video conferencing devices to several open spaces, it has become significantly easier for teams to meet whenever and wherever they want. And it doesn’t matter where you wheel your Rally Board 65 off to as you can easily orient the camera angle with a quick flip of the screen to meet the eye level and view of meeting participants. This gives you the flexibility to meet anywhere, be it sitting at a high-top or standard table, or standing for a quick huddle.

Goodbye Cubicles, Hello Flex Desks

Companies are quick to point to better collaboration as a driving force behind returning to the office. But if employees are returning to the office to sit in enclosed cubicles, how are you contributing to that goal?

For our San Jose office, we wanted to ensure that employees were not adding a commute just to continue working in isolation. Our solution to this was to create shared workspaces consisting of banks of flex desks that anyone can work from on a given day. While there is comfort in coming back to the same desk every time you’re in the office, we found there to be immense value in giving employees the power of choice, both in terms of collaboration and social satisfaction.

Empowering this sense of flexibility was made easy with Logi Dock Flex and our Desk Booking service (accessible through Logi Tune and managed through Logitech Sync). Through this hardware/software combination, employees can easily view desk availability and select their ideal workspace (next to teammates or filtered by location, equipment, and type of workspace). They can even notify others of their location to coordinate arrangements and simplify collaboration sessions.

Logi Tune and Logi Dock Flex.

But desks aren’t the only thing we’ve made easy to find and book. By adding interactive wayfinding maps to office touchscreens via Logitech View, it is significantly easier to locate the people or rooms you’re looking for, eliminating valuable time typically spent wandering the vast expanses of your office space. When efficiency is crucial, those saved minutes can make a noticeable difference over time.

While this desk booking solution is of great benefit to employees, it also delivers valuable occupancy data to you via Logitech Sync that can help you evolve and maximize your space. For instance, you can view weekly patterns to determine when employees are in the office most frequently. You can see whether they’re reserving their spots or just walking in. You can dive even deeper to see whether certain teams are in the office on certain days and if they’re frequenting the same spaces.

With all of this data, you can become more proactive in adapting your office footprint. You can cater to the people who are actually in the office rather than trying to solve for all people. This creates new workplace efficiencies and fosters a better overall employee experience.

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When we set out to design our San Jose office in 2022, we had three primary goals in mind:

Prioritize the employee experience
Inspire teamwork
Embrace flexibility

Every design decision we made revolved around these goals, and every change or enhancement we’ve made since has followed suit. We may not have hit the mark with every decision but what kept us moving forward was our people-first priorities and our ability to rely on data and to adapt and innovate to better meet the needs of our employees.

So as you embark on your own return to office journey, remember that collaboration and productivity are less a product of people being present in the office than it is how you empower them when they are there. Because let’s be honest; not everyone will be thrilled to spend more time in the office. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make it worth their while.

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