How Office Hoteling Improves Emergency Preparedness

We have all participated in routine fire drills where everyone is made to leave the office building and go stand in a deemed ‘safe zone’. Then the head count begins. But what if some colleagues aren’t there because they are at a client, or if they were out sick? The safety officer is left scrambling.

Evacuating and making sure your employees are accounted for and safe should not be a process left to chance. Desk reservation systems are not just for making sure your employees can secure a workspace for the day. The expected outcome of people using hoteling technology is that every person is in the system and you can see who has checked in (so you know they are in the office) and what desk they reserved (where they are sitting, what part of the building they’re in). This means that in the case of an emergency, management can see exactly who they need to make sure is safe and who may still be in the building.

Hoteling also allows for users to find another place to work in the case their building is inaccessible. For example, Campus A in downtown Washington D.C. is on security lockdown, employees can check the system to find desks at Building B in Arlington so they can continue to work.

If everyone is registered in the system, even for offices where everyone has permanently assigned spaces, then their whereabouts can be more efficiently tracked in the case of an emergency. It’s an all around good strategy for continuity of operations so key services are not disrupted and revenue streams are not affected.