The Finnish Tax Administration uses the Optimaze Worksense smart office solution as the workplace management system at its five largest locations. The aim is to improve the usage rates of these activity-based workspaces, as well as help employees visualize free workseats and indoor air quality in various parts of the building in real time. Another important objective is to enable decision making with real-time data to provide shared facilities for partner agencies.
The Optimaze Worksense smart office solution supports hybrid working and provides tools for employees as well as property management and work environment developers to plan, implement and monitor the coordinated use of office spaces.
Worksense streamlines an employee's working day by offering a mobile tool for prebooking workstations and meeting rooms, as well as making service requests. Other features, such as sensors, can be added to the Worksense solution. They produce data on not only the usage of the various workspaces, but also on the quality of the indoor air in the premises. The real-time utilization data that is collected is used to optimize and develop the organization's work spaces and space utilization.
According to Olli Aalto, Facility Services Director at the Finnish Tax Administration, the Worksense system enhances the use of space in the Tax Administration's activity based offices and helps visualize real-time occupancy and indoor data to employees as well as Facility Services.
The Tax Administration aims to continuously improve the functionality of its work environments, and the introduction of Worksense has been a significant step towards making the workday run smoother and more efficiently at the office.
"Remote working had was increasing rapidly in the Tax Administration even before the Covid-19 pandemic; nor have we ever had a problem with, for example, too little spaces or crowding. One reason we introduced the Worksense solution was that it enables us to make important changes, such as increasing over-booking rates for work seats and making more resource-wise decisions in general," says Olli Aalto, Facility Services Director at the Finnish Tax Administration. "At the moment, we have an over-booking rate of about 20 percent for our work seats, but thanks to data accumulated by the system we know we can increase it to as high as 40-50 percent.”
“In practice, this means that there may be fewer workstations than we have employees, but not everyone is at the office at the same time. Another significant factor in deciding to implement Worksense is the Finnish Government's new Premises Strategy, which promotes shared work environments for various central government agencies. Thanks to the data accumulated with Worksense we at the Tax Administration can offer smaller agencies space in our premises,” Aalto says.
Facility management with actual space usage data
The five largest Tax Administration premises implemented the Worksense smart office solutions during the pandemic, intent on making the staff's return to more normal office working as safe and smooth as possible.
During the pandemic, Worksense has brought tangible benefits to Tax Administration employees: “We have strongly recomended remote working in the Tax Administration, but we have also wanted to provide an opportunity to work at the office for those who need it. Worksense has made it possible for us to monitor that our guidelines on safety clearances, for example, are met and followed,” says Aalto. Employees, too, have been able to monitor work seat reservations and space utilization information on their Worksense mobile apps to make informed decisions about going to the office.
When making the decision to introduce Worksense, the Tax Administration weighed in the balance both the data-based decision-making opportunities it provides facilities management as well as the added benefits Worksense brings employees.
For space management, information on the functionality of the working environment is important. For employees, visualizing workspace conditions allows them to select their workspace based on, for example, the temperature in the room. Aalto gives a concrete example of this: “In some parts of our Vallila campus the room temperature can be more than 1-1,5 degrees Celsius higher than in other parts of the building. Knowing this allows the employee to choose the place where they feel the room temperature is most comfortable and conducive to working. The benefits are many - we are just waiting for the “new normal” to start so we can take full advantage of Worksense,” Aalto summarizes.
The Optimaze Worksense smart office solution is offered as a SaaS service. The system utilizes Optimaze floor images and status information. Read more about our work environment solutions (link)
Optimaze Worksense was introduced at the Tax Administration's largest offices in Helsinki, Kuopio, Oulu, Tampere and Turku during 2020-2021. These five offices have approximately 2,500 workstations and 250 meeting rooms. The Tax Administration employs 5,000 people in 60 different offices. The Worksense system can be extended quickly and easily to other locations.
