How to Use Slack to Visualise Employee Working Location

If you’re new here, you should know that we love hybrid work.

However, despite what it offers in flexibility and convenience, it also presents unique challenges when it comes to managing employee attendance. 

Employee attendance can take two forms. Not only being present in an allocated office space, but also present at work while being remote.

To be clear: we don’t believe in proximity bias. 

But we do know that ensuring that employees are consistently present and engaged is crucial for maintaining productivity, team dynamics, and achieving organizational goals.

Luckily, tools like Slack enable businesses to keep an eye on things. With instant messaging, Slack status updates and even video calling, all of your communication is in one place.

Did you know that with the right Slack apps you can also track employee attendance?

You can:

• See who’s in the office and when
• Check attendance trends over periods of time
• Identify when an employee's attendance drops
• Find out who’s where, without sending a single message

Here’s how to do that.

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The Challenges of Location Management in a Hybrid Office

Managing Different Schedules and Time Zones

Depending on your hybrid work model, employees may have different schedules, including flex-time, part-time, or varying shifts. 

Additionally, if you’re an international company with teams or employees spanning different time zones, it’s even more difficult to coordinate meetings and deadlines.

As a business, it’s up to you to ensure all team members are aligned, have access to necessary information, and can effectively collaborate no matter where they are.

But this requires careful coordination and communication. 

Finding ways to facilitate communication and collaboration across different time zones (such as through virtual meetings, collaborative tools, and regular check-ins) is essential to ensure that teams can work cohesively and achieve their goals.

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Addressing Technology and Connectivity Issues

With employees working remotely, reliable access to technology, internet connectivity, and necessary software tools is essential for their productivity and engagement. 

Technical issues such as poor internet connection, software glitches, and hardware problems can disrupt remote employees' work and impact their attendance. 

Before you decide on your hybrid work model, you need to consider what proactive measures you’ll take to help mitigate these challenges and minimize disruptions.

Consider the hardware you’ll provide, or the requirements you’ll have for employees to be connected during working hours.

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Team Dynamics and Productivity

When your business is hybrid, team members are likely to have varying levels of remote and in-person interactions, which can impact team dynamics. 

Building trust and camaraderie among team members is difficult when some team members are physically present in the office while others work remotely. 

You also need to make sure your remote employees have the same level of access to resources, information, and opportunities as in-person team members.

This requires intentional effort. Tools that show when coworkers are in the office will help to align schedules and meetings and encourage more remote workers to come in.

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How to Use Slack to Visualise Employee Locations

If you’ve recognized some of these challenges in your hybrid workplace, your best option is to find an app that not only increases business visibility; showing your team what’s happening and who’s where each day, but also allows you to track how often employees are coming into the office with data. 

Employees don’t want to learn a whole new piece of software for something as easy as seeing who’s where. 

Apps that display employee locations within the tools you already use are your best bet, and that’s where Slack comes in.

For most hybrid workplaces, Slack is a staple. It’s a seamless communication channel, whether instant messaging or video calls.

Within Slack, you can also download apps to complement it and help manage your team and hybrid workplace. 

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Officely is an in-Slack app that integrates with Google Calendar and Slack status’ to display who’s where each day.

Your team can book into offices, be reminded of who’s in, book Extras such as parking spots or a team lunch, all without leaving a tool they already know and love.

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As an admin, you can view attendance trends and office data, and see how many people are booked in on average over any given time period. 

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Being able to see who’s in and what’s happening has helped businesses around the world keep track of who’s where and encouraged employees to come into the office to see their team.

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How Officely Helped CloudTalk Successfully Increase Office Attendance

CloudTalk is an international company with offices across Europe. 

Esme Fegan, Cloudtalk’s Office Operations Lead uses Officely’s visibility features to successfully build office environments her team want to come into. 

““I could see on Officely that people weren’t coming into the office. Yet we have these beautiful spaces ready to be used. 

That’s why the most valuable feature of Officely for us is that it shows people what they’re missing out on."

“It shows the exciting events happening each week, it shows who’s going to be there, and it makes you stop and think ‘Wait, I don’t want to miss out on that’.”

We have a full Success Story on how CloudTalk increased office attendance with Officely.

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Make It Easy to See Who’s Where, With Slack Integrations

Keeping track of your employee locations doesn’t need to be difficult or convoluted. You don’t need complex software, you just need a quick way to see who’s where each day. 

Officely solves this problem within Slack, and uses its location features to help encourage others to come into the office.

If you’re a hybrid business looking to track your employees’ location, you can get started with a free trial today.

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