Beyond Housing - Returns to the office with flexible and efficient space scheduling solutions

Beyond Housing provides 15,000 homes and a wide range of services to over 30,000 customers. As one of the largest housing organisations, Beyond Housing are dedicated in their purpose to helping customers and communities to succeed and thrive.

Challenges in returning to the office

Like many, Beyond Housing have been exploring their return-to-work options and have successfully adopted MRI’s Space Scheduling solution to support the return to work for their 800 strong workforce across two locations. Led by Head of ICT, Maeve Collier at Beyond Housing, MRI worked with the team to scope out the requirements for their return-to-work strategy.

MRI Space Scheduling went live in June 2021, to coincide with the government’s original plans of lifting lockdown. Commenting on the project, Maeve shares:

“We reached out to our existing suppliers to assess if they had any products suitable for desk bookings as we wanted to automate our process and offer something more dynamic to our colleagues, some of whom are returning to working in the office for the first time since March 2020. We had a challenging timescale to implement a product that would meet our needs and MRI had both the product and provided the assurance that the deadline was achievable. MRI mobilised their team to ensure we had sufficient information to help inform our decision making.”

Easy space scheduling for the modern office

MRI’s Space Scheduling provided the team at Beyond Housing with the tools they need to optimise the return-to-office experience.

“On first demo our team loved Space Scheduling! It’s dynamic, easy to use and provides all the functionality that we want; such as location maps, ability to search for a colleague, desk configuration to suit neighbours of colleagues with specific needs, e.g. Customer Service Centre or specific DSE requirements and the ability to book a desk with specific ICT equipment.”

The solution works across both desktop and mobile applications, allowing employees to manage their desk requirements prior to arrival at the office.

“In addition to a desktop application Space Scheduling can also be used by our colleagues when they are working remotely through the use of a mobile app. The mobile app is slick and simple to book a desk, cancel a desk and check-in to a desk. Space Scheduling also offers meeting room booking functionality and visitor management, however at this time we have not yet enabled these elements. The project team were very accessible, responsive and knowledgeable and a pleasure to work with.”

Moving to the workplace of the future with MRI Software

Haydn Howard, Account Manager at MRI Software commented: “Beyond Housing are a longstanding and much valued MRI client, who are always keen to stay up to date on our expanding solutions portfolio. The team at Beyond picked up on the Space Scheduling solution very quickly and despite the challenging turnaround, it was a welcome challenge as we knew the solution would fit the client’s exacting needs”.

MRI Software has enabled Beyond Housing to remain flexible in managing changing workplace requirements. By adopting technology, Beyond Housing is well-equipped to move towards the workplace of the future.

Learn more about MRI’s Space Scheduling or wider Workspace Central suite or request a demonstration.