Workplace Core

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 6 minutes to read
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    Summary of Workplace Core

    The ServiceNow® Workplace Core application enables organizations to manage a safer, structured return to the workplace through phased employee re-entry, workspace allocation, and operational scheduling. It supports creating distancing plans, managing shifts, scheduling sanitation, and controlling workspace reservations to maintain workplace safety and compliance. Workplace Core is also a key component of the broader Workplace Service Delivery suite.

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    Key Features

    • Space Administration: Workplace administrators can define all workplace locations, including employee workstations, conference rooms, cafeterias, office buildings, campuses, and regional sites. This enables planning for phased employee returns by controlling workspace availability and supporting physical distancing, with the ability to upload floor plans to aid employee workspace selection.
    • Shift Management: Managers can create and assign employee shifts, schedule specific work times, and allocate workspaces accordingly to control occupancy levels. Shift owners can review and adjust shift details and monitor workspace reservations linked to their shifts.
    • Workspace Reservations: Workplace managers can reserve spaces for individual or multiple employees, with notifications sent to both parties. Employees can request workspace reservations through interactive floor plans for specific dates or hours, with optional approval workflows based on organizational policies. Automatic workspace assignment is available when employee workplace profiles are configured.
    • Workplace Tasks: Scheduling and monitoring of maintenance activities per shift, with reporting capabilities to track progress and ensure workplace readiness.
    • Workplace Dashboard: Visualizes workspace availability, occupancy levels, and task status to provide real-time insights into workplace utilization and safety compliance.
    • Safe Workplace Guided Setup: Provides a structured configuration path to implement Safe Workplace and Emergency Response Management applications efficiently within your ServiceNow instance.
    • Integration with Safe Workplace Suite: Workplace Core works seamlessly with other Safe Workplace applications such as Employee Readiness Surveys, Employee Health Screening, and Personal Protective Equipment Inventory Management to comprehensively prepare and protect the workforce during emergency situations.

    Use Cases for Federal Customers

    Federal customers operating in IL4 or FedRAMP environments can install Safe Workplace suite applications on nonproduction instances without special requests, though production use requires licenses. These customers must configure applications to meet U.S. federal regulations. Specific installation instructions are available based on commercial or federal hosting models, including on-premise deployments.

    Important Notices

    • Organizational Responsibility: Organizations retain full responsibility for ensuring compliance with applicable laws and regulations, including data protection and employment rules. ServiceNow does not guarantee legal compliance or provide legal advice through application content.
    • Government Agency Usage: The application is offered free of charge for government agencies under specified terms and does not create payment obligations. Agencies must confirm ethical compliance and remain responsible for adhering to applicable laws and customizing templates as necessary.

    Use the ServiceNow® Workplace Core application to create safer, managed processes for returning employees to the workplace and staying open. Establish distancing plans, shift assignments, and sanitation scheduling and manage workspace allocation in stages. The Workplace Core is also available as a core application in the Workplace Service Delivery suite.

    Workplace Safety Management overview
    Space administration
    Your organization's workplace administrators can add details for all workplace locations, such as:
    • Areas such as employee workstations, conference rooms, and cafeterias
    • Office buildings and campuses
    • Regions of all locations

    By tracking the availability of workspaces, workplace managers can plan and implement a phased return of employees to the workplace. For example, after the COVID-19 pandemic, your organization might want to allow a certain percentage (for example, 20%) of the total staff to return at a time at each office location, based on office configuration, local health recommendations, and other factors. Workplace managers can indicate workspace availability, leaving space for physical distancing. They can evaluate the situation periodically and make more workspaces available as conditions improve.

    As a workplace manager, you can upload floor plans of your organization so employees can more easily view and select available spaces when they request workspace reservations.

    Avoid large gatherings or long queues for locations at your workplace such as the cafeteria, gym, and entry and exit gates by defining arrival intervals and having employees schedule their arrivals.

    Shift management

    Workplace managers can create shifts for employees and schedule them for specific times and days. They can use this data to start planning for the occupancy levels of your workplaces by allocating employees and available workspaces to specific shifts.

    For example, workplace managers can create a morning shift schedule with work hours of 08:00 to 13:00. They can then assign available workspaces to this shift based on organizational guidelines. These assigned workspaces can then be reserved for employees operating from the office during this shift.

    Shift owners can review and modify the details of the shifts that they own. They can also view workspace reservations and requests made for the shifts they own.

    Workspace reservations

    Using the information about available employees and workspaces, workplace managers can reserve areas and workspaces for employees. Workplace managers can also generate reservations for multiple employees at once. Both the employee and the workplace manager are notified of reservations through email.

    Employees can request workspace reservations when they are ready to return to the office. Using interactive floor plans, they can choose to reserve workspaces for a specified date range, a single day, or a few hours. Depending on your organizational guidelines, reservation requests might require an approval for confirmation.

    If the workplace profiles of all employees are set up, the application automatically assigns available workspaces for employees based on their date and time selection when they make a reservation.

    For more advanced workplace reservation options, use Workplace Reservation Management in the Workplace Service Delivery suite. For more information, see Workplace Reservation Management.

    Workplace tasks

    Workplace managers can monitor maintenance activities that are scheduled in the workplace for each shift. They can also schedule planned or on-demand maintenance tasks, and generate reports to track the progress of these activities.

    Workplace Dashboard

    Using data visualizations, you can evaluate the availability of workspaces and occupancy levels of your office locations, and monitor the progress of workplace tasks on the workplace dashboard.

    Use guided setup to implement Safe Workplace suite apps
    The Safe Workplace guided setup provides a sequence of tasks that help you configure the Safe Workplace and Emergency Response Management applications on your ServiceNow instance. To open the Safe Workplace guided setup, navigate to Guided Setup > Safe Workplace Guided Setup. For more information about using the guided setup interface, see Using guided setup.

    Use with other Safe Workplace suite applications

    Workplace Core is part of a suite of ServiceNow® Safe Workplace suite applications. Use it with these other applications to help your organization prepare its workforce and workplaces to resume operations after emergencies and pandemics like COVID-19.

    All Safe Workplace suite applications are available in the ServiceNow Store.

    Safe Workplace suite for federal customers

    Federal customers using IL4 or FedRAMP environments will see the Safe Workplace suite applications ready and available to install on their nonproduction instances without having to make any special requests. Licenses are required to use Safe Workplace suite applications on production instances. Customers are responsible for configuring the apps to meet U.S. federal regulations and guidelines.

    Table 1. Installation instructions for self-hosted and federal environments
    Type Instructions

    Commercial on-premise

    Visit the ServiceNow® Store to download and install the application.

    Federal hosted

    See the Federal downloads for the Emergency Response Management and Safe Workplace suite apps [KB0030260] article in the Store Help Center for more information.

    Federal on-premise

    If you are a federal on-premise customer and you would like to install this application, reach out to your sales representative or open a Now Support or HIWAVE ticket. In the ticket, request to be routed to the SHOT team.

    See the Federal downloads for the Emergency Response Management and Safe Workplace suite apps [KB0030260] article in the Store Help Center for more information.

    On-premise

    See the Commercial downloads for the Emergency Response Management and Safe Workplace suite apps [KB0030258] article in the Store Help Center for more information.