Officely Playbook: Get Creative with Neighborhoods

For many businesses, hybrid work opened up more than just the opportunity to work from home.

There's a new understanding that sitting at the same desk eight hours per day, five days per week, isn't conducive to productivity.

Unless you're a small startup, the chances are your office will have different areas to work from. Especially if you've also embraced hot desking.

So whether your office is divided by teams, type of workspace or even the type of work being produced, you can create Neighborhoods for your team to book into when they come into the office.

Neighborhood Inspiration for Your Industry

Unsure where to start with your Neighborhoods? If your office isn't already divided by team, it can be hard to come up with ideas.

We've created some examples for you to take inspiration from.

Tech Startup

Book into spaces dependent on the type of desk needed, or work being completed. Set the number of desks in each space and even differentiate what each one means by creating customizable groups.

Scale-Up/Medium-Sized Enterprise

For medium-sized businesses, your company may be separated into teams rather than zones. Use Neighbhorhoods to allocate desks to each team, and allow your employees to book into their specific area.

Professional Services

As a Professional Services firm, the chances are you're based over multiple levels. Neighborhoods can be grouped by floor so everyone knows which team is where in the building.

Creative Agency

Want to think outside of the box? Get creative with different names for your Neighborhoods. As a Creative Agency, you might want to consider different Neighborhood names based on exotic locations, types of animal or plant variety!

Neighborhood Examples from Officely Customers

One of our favorite examples of Neighborhoods is from BigLeaf Networks.

BigLeaf Networks took inspiration from the bigleaf maple tree when creating the technology behind its products.

So naturally, the company decided to stay on theme when creating its Officely Neighborhoods.

How Officely Uses Neighborhoods

It's (hopefully) no surprise that we use Officely ourselves to help run our hybrid office.

When we moved into our London office, we wanted to give employees a range of areas to work from.

Anyone can work anywhere, no questions asked, and we've separated areas based on the workspace and equipment.

Here's what our team book into when they're coming into the Officely office!

How to Setup Your Neighborhoods

To get started with Neighborhoods, follow the steps below or alternatively head to our Help Center article for a video guide.

Step 1: Head to the Officely app in your Slack.

Step 2: Click on the Settings button.

Step 3: Select Offices from the buttons at the top and click on the three dots next to your office name.

Step 4: Click on the Neighborhoods/Desks option in the dropdown.

Step 5: Press the Create button and start making your Neighborhoods!

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💡 If you want to group your Neighborhoods by category (a floor, a team name), simply head to the Category dropdown and create a new one or add your Neighborhood to one that's already been created.

Adapt Your Workspace to Your Team's Needs

Five days per week in the office is no longer necessary, and neither is sitting at the same desk day in, day out.

Use Neighborhoods to find out what type of workspaces are most popular in your office, and create an environment your team are most productive in.

Neighborhoods makes it even easier to understand who's coming into the office so you can adapt your office to incentivize attendance.

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