Managing workplace reservations for employees
Summarize
Summary of Managing workplace reservations for employees
This functionality in Workplace Core enables workplace managers to reserve physical spaces and areas for employees to ensure efficient office use and adherence to physical distancing guidelines. It supports both individual and bulk reservations for employees based on shift schedules, while allowing managers to review and manage reservation requests. Notifications are sent to employees once reservations are made, providing clear information about their designated workplace locations.
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Key Features
- Area Reservations: Managers can reserve entire areas within office floors for employees, limited by the capacity set for each area. Areas with no defined capacity cannot be reserved.
- Single and Bulk Space Reservations: Create reservations for individual employees for specific days or multiple days using predefined shifts. Bulk reservations allow assigning multiple employees on the same shift to spaces simultaneously, ideal for departments.
- Child Reservation Records: Each parent reservation generates child reservations for each applicable working day within the specified date range based on shift schedules. Conflicts with existing reservations result in skipping that day’s child record, with manual resolution options.
- Pending Reservation Requests: Employee requests that cannot be fulfilled due to unavailability are flagged as pending. Workplace managers can review these requests and reassign available spaces to complete approvals.
- Capacity Management: Defining capacity per area ensures that reservation limits align with safety protocols, controlling the number of employees allowed per space.
Practical Use for ServiceNow Customers
ServiceNow customers managing hybrid or returning-to-office scenarios can use these features to centrally control workspace allocation, maintain compliance with health guidelines, and optimize space utilization. The ability to handle reservations in bulk and manage conflicts through child reservations streamlines administrative tasks. Reviewing pending requests helps quickly resolve scheduling conflicts and improve employee experience. Setting accurate capacities supports safety and operational planning.
Reserve available areas or spaces for your employees and review pending reservation requests from employees in Workplace Core so you can verify physical distancing measures when they return to the workplace. Once you make reservations, employees are notified about the locations to which they have access. The Workplace Service Delivery also offers more advanced workplace reservation options in the Workplace Reservation Management application.
Creating workplace reservations for employees
- Reserving workplace areas
As a workplace manager, you can make reservations for employees for areas on the floors of your office buildings. When employees return to the office, they can work from any of the spaces from the reserved area. The number of employee reservations that you can make for an area of your workplace depend on the capacity defined for that area. If the Capacity field of an area is set to 0 or left empty, reservations cannot be made for that area.
- Creating a single space reservation
- Using the shifts that you defined, you can create a space reservation for an employee for a single day or multiple days.
- Creating space reservations in bulk
You can generate in one action reservations for multiple employees who are assigned to a shift for a specific date range. For example, you can use this feature to create reservations for employees of a specific department who would all be assigned to the same shift.
- Child reservation records for employee space reservations
When you reserve a workplace for an employee, the reservation generates child reservation records for every applicable working day of the specified period. The applicable days are determined by the shift schedule that you select for this reservation. The reservation that you initially created acts as the parent reservation record.
If a child reservation conflicts with an existing reservation for any day in the specified period, the child reservation is not created for that day. You can manually create a reservation for a different workplace for that day.
For example, say you created a reservation for the workplace 2CN1612 for Mark Andrews in the afternoon shift from 06-01-2020 to 06-10-2020. Eight child reservation records for Mark Andrews for the workplace 2CN1612 would be created for each working day between 06-01-2020 and 06-10-2020. However, if a reservation for 2CN1612 on 06-08-2020 exists for another employee Jane Doe, the child reservation for Mark Andrews on 06-08-2020 is not created. You can manually create a reservation for Mark Andrews for a different workplace for 06-08-2020.
If you update the details of a parent reservation later, all its child reservations except the ones with dates in the past are updated accordingly.
Working with space reservation requests from employees
After an employee requests a workplace for a given date range and the manager approves the request, the application checks the availability of the requested space. If the workplace is unavailable for any or all days of the specified period, the request moves to the Pending state. As a workplace manager, you can review these pending reservation requests and allocate a different workplace to the employee to complete the request.