Ghost booking? Meeting room reservation quota
While the current trend is clearly towards downsizing workplaces for ecological and economic reasons, and the flex office is gaining ground for the well-being of employees as a logical extension of this trend, one shortcoming is becoming increasingly apparent: the lack of available meeting rooms when employees are in person.
Meeting rooms: a coveted and rarified resource
The meeting room is an indispensable resource. And in addition to this problem, some users could benefit from advice on how to optimize its use. Sometimes, without realizing the problems they can cause, like the ghost booking 👻, fun for the uninitiated, but frustrating for those who suffer the consequences and see their working day disrupted.
Your meeting rooms are then blocked by empty reservations, which nobody dares to use for fear of disturbing a potential latecomer.
Without realizing it, you're falling into the trap of a forward-thinking user who has often decided months in advance that this meeting room will be theirs every morning of the same day of the week for almost a year. A serious mistake, since as you know better than we do, no one's schedule is ever fixed, and many unforeseen circumstances often creep into everyone's bookings. This is the origin of the evil that is phantom bookings.
Efficient tools for booking meeting rooms
To combat this type of problem encountered by your employees, many tools exist on the meeting room management market, but you still need to find the right one. Some tools are simply not designed for this purpose and are really just substitutes, easy to set up, do not comply with RGPD standards. Your employees' confidentiality is not guaranteed, and some solutions don't even provide new features or regular maintenance.
Hamilton Meeting is an intelligent tool designed to manage meeting room reservations. Since it first appeared on the market, the tool has developed and responded to customer requests on more than one occasion:
- RGPD compliant
- Intelligent and flexible
- Customizable to suit companies' technical environments.
Meeting room management software should be just that, not an Excel spreadsheet or a clever detour of an application not necessarily designed for the purpose.
This kind of meeting room reservation tool should never be taken lightly, or as an add-on. They are essential to the organization of your staff's work, and are often specialized for the task you wish to entrust them with. A poor choice of tool would be detrimental not only to its use, but also to its evolution in line with your requirements. A management problem, a glitch, a functionality you find lacking, all will be received, processed and managed by a serious and appropriate tool. Let's take ghost rooms as an example. It's a feature our customers appreciate.
Get rid of the evil spirits that haunt your meeting rooms!
The impact of these empty meeting rooms on companies is manifold, but very often starts with a drop in productivity, because without a free room, there are no meetings, and projects drag on. Then comes employee dissatisfaction. They know that the room is rarely occupied, even though it's always reserved, and unfortunately all this has repercussions on your efficiency, without you really being able to put a serious, precise cause to it, because a room that's badly reserved doesn't look serious.
Understanding and working with quotas
The quota is a limit imposed on each member of staff to reserve the same room over a given period, to avoid overbooking.
To solve this problem, Hamilton Meeting has introduced a number of innovative features, the most recent of which is the introduction of a single meeting room reservation quota for your colleagues. This means no more "far-sighted" colleagues imposing their schedules for three months or more, for a meeting room needed by your employees. For example, an employee will only be able to book the New York room three times a week, to avoid abuse.
These quotas may seem like blessings for some, punishments for others. Their existence helps the former, but should not penalize the latter. The only reason they exist is to ensure that the work of some is not hindered by that of others. The tools put in place help with this, but the company itself must above all succeed in making its employees understand that booking meeting rooms via an application is a fully-fledged component of corporate life.
Forgetfulness and impediments are legion in professional life, and should also be notified to the rest of your colleagues out of respect for them. Reserving the same room on a weekly basis over a three-month period is practical, but the activity must be monitored to enable employees to make a reservation if they are prevented from doing so. As with everything else, you need to be socially intelligent if you want the machine to work properly.
Conclusion: Quotas are essential for managing meeting rooms
If your meeting room resources are running out, becoming scarce or if you're looking for greater efficiency, don't hesitate. Contact meeting room management professionals who can help you with this complex but essential task.
Implementing new processes will quickly become an asset for you. The functionalities that will be added over time, thanks to the experience acquired together, will meet your staff's expectations and improve their satisfaction as well as their productivity. Meeting rooms are a raw and increasingly scarce resource, so don't hesitate to protect them with advanced tools such as setting up reservation quotas for your staff.