Returning

to the
Office
How to ensure physical distancing compliance
and “Zero Touch” polices whilst returning to
the office safely
 Supporting the Return
to the Office
Workspace management systems have typically been used to measure and manage occupancy,
with organisations employing these systems to help make the most of their valuable real estate.
These same tools can be employed to keep the use of space within acceptable levels
to ensure the safety of all.

As our economies start to emerge post lockdown, we have been engaging with our clients regarding
how they want to begin opening up their offices in a way that ensures the health and safety of all
people involved. As we adjust to a “New Normal”, we must consider how physical distancing and
“Zero Touch” policies can be enforced in our offices.

Matrix Booking already processes millions of bookings for users around the world every month
to help manage their room, desk, car parking, accommodation and equipment bookings. Matrix
Booking will now enable users to manage their return to the office by utilising the same familiar,
intuitive applications.

We wanted to share this document which highlights some of the areas that are assisting our clients
with health and safety compliance, and we hope that it is useful for wider workplace professionals
as you start to consider Returning to the Office.

We are here to assist you, so we are providing a free trial of Matrix Booking for new customers
to plan your return to the office. Please contact us below for more information:

Website: www.matrixbooking.com
Contact Email: Sales@Matrixbooking.com

Matrix Booking is already used and trusted by over 100 organisations:

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 Physical Distancing
in the Office
As we start to open up, we will need to consider implications of physical distancing and “zero
touch” compliance throughout the office.

A logical approach will be to use space management software to control who has access to the office
to ensure that use of workspace is kept to acceptable levels. Organisations are starting to consider
opening up with reduced building capacity, to see how the flow of people within the space can be
managed, one organisation we have spoken to is suggesting 20% initially. This will have implica-
tions around who gets to use what spaces, and under what rules and permission framework. Matrix
Booking can assist in the following areas:

Meeting Room Management

Visitor Management ▷ Adjust occupancy limits to ensure safe
▷ Pre-registration required levels of physical distancing
▷ Inform visitors of site policies ▷ Mandatory buffer times
▷ Auto alerts to host on arrival ▷ Automatic cleaning work order after
▷ Audit log of external visitors for every meeting
contact tracing ▷ “Zero Touch” check in and booking via
mobile app

Building Capacity Management

▷ Control access to the entire
building by issuing timed passes
with allocated timeslots to enter
and exit the building Desk Booking
▷ Ability to control multi-tenant ▷ Reallocate desks on
buildings and mixed use temporary basis for booking
Space Utilisation Sensors
campuses by staff
▷ Real time measurements of usage
▷ Blocking out desks in
of space by occupants
“lattice” formation to
▷ Ability to trigger real time alerts upon
ensure distancing
certain thresholds
▷ Desk usage reports to direct
▷ Live usage data keeps record of actual
cleaning
usage and compliance with policy

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 Physical Distancing at Desks
Matrix Booking can be used to control who has access
to book spaces, including which desks are allowed to 
be used.
Booking permissions can control what teams and departments can use which zones or desks.
Furthermore, request approval permissions can be configured for some user groups.

Desks can be marked as unavailable by the administrator, either by configuring their availability directly,
or by block booking alternative desks in a “lattice” style formation. This configuration will ensure that each
bookable desk has the minimum level of space between other bookable desks.

Therefore occupants can be kept at an appropriate distance from one another when using the space.

Desks can be planned to be unavailable in “lattice”

formations, ensuring physical distance between occupants

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Physical Distancing in
Meeting Rooms
Current UK Government guidance recommends physical
distancing of 2 metres.
When considering the use of meeting rooms, organisations will need to consider limiting the capacity
of meeting rooms accordingly.

A default position may be that each meeting room has seating reduced to ensure safe distancing.
For example smaller meeting rooms will be converted from 4 to 2 person occupancy.

Alerts can be displayed during room bookings to advise users about the changes that have taken place
due to physical distancing rules. This will assure users that they have sufficient space for their
proposed meeting.

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 Define Workplace Usage Rules
Matrix Flow provides a suite of over 100 rules and
permissions that control access to space reservations.
These rules and permissions are easily configurable, allowing you to control your return to your
office, and enable your organisation to define the workplace usage rules. These workplace rules can
be easily adapted over time by customer administrators, such as allowing more freedom to self-
book as the office opens up more and can handle greater capacity.

These rules include areas such as:

▷ Request Approvals: users can be provided access to book spaces as a request that must be
approved. This approach can be used for all or some meetings and other events that require
approval from the central Facilities team.

▷ Opening Hours: your organisation may restrict opening hours to ensure there is sufficient ability
to properly clean shared spaces outside of operational hours.

▷ Auto Cleaning times: each booking can be configured to have a default setup and set down time as
a buffer period. This can be useful to avoid a crossover of people waiting to use an occupied room,
and also enabling cleaning teams to disinfect a meeting room after each use.

▷ Booking Permissions: users can be provided access to specific areas of the building based upon
their department, active directory group or security group. This controls which areas of the building
they can access, and which areas are restricted.

Default buffer times

can be added for all
bookings to provide
sufficient time for
cleaning after usage
and to avoid crossover
between meetings

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Control Multi-Tenant
Building Capacity
Matrix Booking can manage access to the entire building
to ensure overall building occupancy is within defined boundaries.
This can also be used across multiple tenants in the single shared building or mixed use
campus, allowing all building tenants to respect capacities across the entire building in
one system used by all building tenants.

▷ Companies can create daily building passes that can be reserved by staff members to control
company and building numbers.

▷ The number of passes available at different time slots can be controlled to ensure flow
management for staff entering and exiting the building.

▷ Building managers can flex the volume of passes to comply with the current government
guidelines and suit building type and use.

The use of Matrix Booking’s unique cross-organisational architecture means that Matrix Booking
is ideal for use across multi-tenant buildings and campuses.

▷ Each organisation can be dynamically allocated building passes to reserve ensuring a fair
distribution as well as guaranteeing that safety levels will not be breached in the building
as whole.

▷ Tenant organisations securely manage their own users via single sign on, self-registration
or through a secure domain driven username and password flow.

▷ Building management can report across organisations to view the overall occupation levels.

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 Real Time Occupancy
Monitoring
Matrix Booking can consume utilisation data from occupancy
sensors and other sources of space utilisation data.
This can be used to publish real time statistics around actual space usage, and trigger alerts if usage
exceeds certain levels. These statistics can provide Facilities Management with real time insight into actual
usage levels, and can also be shared with end users to direct them away from highly utilised spaces.
Reports post occupation can be used to track ongoing occupancy levels, and to prove compliance with
agreed safe usage levels.

Workplace occupancy sensors can

provide a real time view of actual
space usage levels, and can trigger
alerts to FM teams if use exceeds
threshold levels

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External Visitor and
Contact Tracing
Matrix Booking provides full visitor management capabilities,
ensuring organisations can track external people who are
visiting the building.
Visitors can be added as part of a room booking in advance, and this should be encouraged or enforced
across the organisation. Having an accurate record of who entered the building will be vital for contact
tracing. Therefore, it is imperative that end users add visitor details in advance of the meeting. This will
also help with minimising traffic in the reception lobby areas.

For those organisations that still use a visitor signing in book, this must be removed as the shared book
and pen is an obvious potential transmission point. Organisations may consider disposable paper visitor
badges for identification purposes.

Receptions and building managers can see at a glance the expected visitors for the day, the times at which
they are expected and can manage the flow appropriately if there is a problem.

Administrators who have secure access to the booking information can utilise the reporting suite to quickly
analyse who the person may have come into close contact with either within proximity of their booked desk
or within meetings that they attended.

The volume of data involved in analysing 2nd and 3rd degree contacts can become very large as the data
volumes grow exponentially. The Matrix Analytics team can assist clients as an extra optional service to
retrieve, analyse and report the contact history required.

All data held and analysed must be done so in line with the country data protection laws e.g. GDPR.

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 “Zero Touch” Functions
Matrix Booking does provide a range of touch screen devices
for functions such as checking into meeting rooms or booking
desks on the floor plan.
All of these features are possible using other interfaces such as the web portal and the mobile app.
These interfaces will be available on users personal devices, therefore they should be encouraged in
all areas.

One area that can be replaced is the check in function. End Users can check-in to pre booked meetings and
desks using their mobile phone. Push alert notifications can be sent to the user stating their booking has
started. There is then a single tap to check into this reservation, therefore eliminating the need to interact
with the shared room screen.

The Matrix Booking mobile app

provides all of the features an end
user will require, delivered on their
personal device to eliminate the
need for shared kiosks and screens

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Cleaning Work Order Processing
Matrix Booking provides the ability to book services
for meetings.
This can be used to drive the delivery of cleaning services after meeting rooms have been used. Cleaning
work orders can be sent to the Facilities management team as emails, a report or as an interactive list.

Desk usage reports can provide details around what desks were booked and used by occupants.
This can be used at the end of the day as a workflow for concentrating cleaning to those desks that have
actually been used.

Cleaning resources can be deployed based upon actual space

usage, with work orders delivered via email or interactive list

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 Reporting and Space Usage
Matrix Booking provides a range of standard reports.
These reports will be valuable in monitoring usage of the office as usage increases over time.
Key performance indicators such as number of occupants, space usage, utilisation and number
of visitors will provide trending data that can ensure proof of physical distancing compliance, and
also a record of key contacts should tracing be required.

Building Flow Management Contact Tracing

Manage the volume and Trace who attended and
times that personnel when. Combine with desk
enter and leave the estate and room booking data to
with the ability to flex create second and third level
capacity as situation change. contact reports.

Attendance Analytics Visitor Building Passes

Historical and future Visitors can be allocated
bookings enable compliance building passes by a host to
checking and advanced ensure their attendance is
resource planning. monitored along with all other
personnel in the building.

Staff Safety and Wellbeing Resource Planning

Manage volumes and Plan security, cleaning and
timeslots with social facilities services based on
distancing measures for desk the volumes and locations
and room booking to ensure occupied enabling optimized
safe working environments. use of resources.

Reports highlighting space usage and numbers of occupants

provide evidence of distancing compliance, and can also be used
as key performance indicators as the office starts to open up more

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Publishing Covid-19
Documentation
Matrix Booking provides ability for administrators to publish
custom text, links and information to end users.
This can be used to publicise Covid-19 return to work policies, details around booking rules and processes,
or ways for people to get in touch to ask questions. This information can be added by an administrator and
is visible to all users in the web portal interface. Alerts or messages can be set on each meeting room.

Admins can publish custom text, links and documents within

Matrix Booking for users to access. This can be used to echo the
widely circulated Covid-19 policies of your organisation

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 About Matrix Booking
Matrix Booking is an award winning workplace management
system which is used by over 100 organisations across
the globe.
As a fully cloud hosted solution, it can be deployed quickly and at scale across the enterprise. Out the box
functionality includes a range of modules to enable reservations of meeting rooms, desks, visitors and
services through a number of different interfaces.

Room & desk Booking Workplace Sensors

Enable sharing of meeting rooms, desk and Integrate sensors and beacon technology
associated services across the organisation. to enable real-time views of your estate
Robust rules and permissions ensure enable users to find and book the most
controls over levels of access. suitable resources.

Digital Signage Outlook and Office 365 Integration

Smart digital display Enable users to book meeting rooms
applications to enable users using the Outlook Add in, enabling a
to easily view, book, check single One Stop Shop for booking the
in and out and cancel. meeting room, visitors and services.

IOS and Android Mobile App Visitor Management

Book rooms and desks on the go Integrated Visitor Management toolset
with the Matrix mobile App from to provide an excellent user experience
the Apple or Google App stores. for visitors and hosts.

Contact Us
We are here to answer any questions you have and to support your return to your office.
We can also provide a free trial and demo of Matrix Booking to see if it meets your requirements.
Please contact us below for more information.

We look forward to hearing from you.

www.MatrixBooking.com
Sales@MatrixBooking.com

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