"Deskare is a single interface to use directly from Teams to have an overview of your week and that of your colleagues."

As with many companies, the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted working methods at Eramet, a flagship of the French mining industry, present in around fifteen countries around the world.

With the widespread adoption of remote work, the company quickly found itself facing organisational difficulties due to a lack of visibility on the presence of Employees in the offices. The Excel files put in place quickly proved insufficient, especially as they did not allow to book a place in a space, nor to easily analyse historical presence data.

Eramet therefore chose to deploy Deskare at the end of a call for tenders to facilitate the management of hybrid work and flex office, first within its Parisian headquarters, then in its international offices, in Indonesia and Norway.

Two years later, Claire Heinrich (Compensation and Benefits Director) and Yoann Bourges (Digital Experience Manager within the IT Department) share their feedback with us: from deployment to daily use, including the change management carried out to ensure employee adoption.

Deskare: a response to the new needs of a hybrid organisation

While the implementation of hybrid work was very well received by Employees, it also raised its share of challenges. Because as soon as remote work becomes the norm and no longer the exception, it becomes difficult to know who is present when in the office.

A headache for both HR and the teams, for whom collaboration with their colleagues was becoming increasingly complex.

Every evening, before Deskare, we would hear in the open space: « Who will be there tomorrow? » - ‍Claire Heinrich

After exploring an artisanal solution based on filling in Excel files to collect everyone's attendance, the HR teams quickly realised that a dedicated solution was needed.

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This need was all the more felt as this new hybrid organisation was followed by a move to flex office, following an increase in staff. For some teams, the lack of space became problematic: it was necessary to equip themselves with a sustainable tool, also allowing them to manage the booking of workspaces.

The choice of a simple solution appreciated by Employees

After testing an initial, less ergonomic solution that failed to gain traction with employees, the Eramet teams sought a new tool with a central criterion: user experience.

"If we can't get employees on board with solutions that are appealing and easy to use, it generally translates into failure." - Yoann Bourges

With its intuitive interface and integrations with everyday tools, Deskare perfectly met expectations. The tool was immediately adopted by the teams, who not only found it pleasant to use, but also quickly understood its value.

No more asking who will be there tomorrow, or worrying about the availability of workstations, Deskare provides visibility by allowing you to easily share your presence schedule and reserve workspaces. All directly from Microsoft Teams, the internal communication tool used at Eramet.

A smooth deployment, thanks to a committed support team

The solution was deployed smoothly, with genuine "end-to-end support" from the Deskare teams, in the words of Yoann Bourges. This was done in several stages:

• Kick-off phase: participation in meetings with the IT department to advise on the best settings to adopt, based on the needs expressed by Human Resources and General Services;
• Technical support: assistance with the integration of Deskare into the information system, in particular the HRIS and the company directory (Active Directory Azure);
• Change management: hosting training webinars, sharing educational resources, and providing communication materials with a humorous tone to engage employees.

The objective: to get the teams on board without increasing the workload of HR and internal communications!

"Deskare was a very simple tool to deploy. One indicator that illustrates this very well is the number of support requests we had during the generalisation phase. Honestly, we can count the number of requests for help with the solution on the fingers of one hand." - Yoann Bourges

Very strong adoption by the teams

Eramet's employees immediately adopted the solution, and continue to use it daily two years later: the usage rate is now over 90%!

"Very regularly, we come across employees who say to us: 'I love Deskare, I'm sure I'll have a place. It's much easier to know who I'm going to be able to work with during the week by knowing the presence of each other." - Claire Heinrich

The solution is particularly appreciated for its simplicity of use, a comment that comes up very often, according to Claire Heinrich. With its "joyful" interface, employees "enjoy using it", in her words!

Actionable data to reorganise spaces

While Deskare was chosen to streamline the organisation of hybrid work, the solution has also been very useful for understanding how employees use the spaces.

Indeed, by aggregating presence and reservation data in dashboards, it allows the workplace teams to have reliable data on office occupancy rates.

"We have finally managed to find out the occupancy rate of the Paris headquarters thanks to Deskare, as we did not have this information before. We can see that it is between 50 and 60%, with pressure on certain teams that are close to 100%." - Claire Heinrich

As part of a reorganisation of the spaces, Eramet was thus able to rely on this data to reallocate surfaces objectively, according to the actual uses of the teams.

"We now have objective data that has made it possible to carry out this reorganisation in an intelligent way." - Claire Heinrich

If you too would like to streamline the hybrid daily life of your teams and / or efficiently manage your flex office organisation with a solution designed for the user, make an appointment with a member of our team!