To Compete With The Comforts Of Home, Office Owners Need To Go Digital
How can an office compete with the comforts of home? That is the question on the minds of many building owners, property managers and CEOs as they grapple with the best ways to bring their employees back to the office — and make them excited to be there.
Apple, Meta, Google and Microsoft have all announced plans to bring workers back to the office, but only 3% of white-collar workers polled by Fortune want to return to the office five days a week.
“Right now, if I'm working at home, I've got a nice view of the outside and I’ve got my dog and my couch, and we're never going to compete with that,” said Ajay Kapoor, CEO of TouchSource. “But that's not the point in competing with it; what we want to do is create an uplifting experience that's fundamentally different from the home.”
TouchSource creates digital signage, touchless solutions, video walls and more for modern office spaces. However, Kapoor said that people are not coming back to the office for the “bells and whistles” a company can offer in terms of new technology. Instead, they are coming back for the other people. This, he said, is why TouchSource is working to help property managers and companies create environments that foster collaboration and connectivity.
TouchSource’s digital signage and displays can offer people real-time information and entertainment. It can show them the latest news, health tips and social media surveys, and it can also update them on what is going on inside their building and even help them get to know their co-workers better.
“Whether it's a floorwide lunch or a buildingwide happy hour, we keep people informed of what’s happening in their office so they can stay connected,” Kapoor said. “We even created a reverse directory where you kind of search through a directory of people's faces. So there's a lot of different things that we enable to foster a sense of community you can’t get anywhere else.”
TouchSource is also working to help companies improve the aesthetics of their offices. It offers video walls and custom displays that can change several times a day to create what Kapoor called an “Instagrammable experience” that people want to visit and take their pictures in front of with their colleagues and visitors.
In 2018, Millan Enterprises, a residential and commercial real estate company based in Tennessee, was renovating its North Second Street building when it realized it had a problem. The older property had a complex, unique layout that Millan was concerned would be difficult for visitors to navigate. The company’s solution was to install a 49-inch vertical recessed TouchSource Mirada digital wall directory with 3D wayfinding in the lobby to clearly show visitors how to get where they need to go.
“After the initial investment, we have not had to put any additional resources into maintaining it, which frees us up to do more activities that help our business grow,” said Christina Hayes, property manager for Millan Enterprises. “The directory is a point of pride and has become a central part of the building experience, and we also use it as a tool to help market available office space. It’s definitely worth it.”
In 2019, 505 14th St., a 12-story office building in Oakland, California, installed a video wall system with 12 TouchSource DynamicSpaces motion graphics videos as part of its lobby renovation. The videos featured images of outdoor scenery and content on local weather, transit schedules, headline news and a community calendar of events.
“In general, the goal of the project was to evoke emotion and showcase innovation to differentiate our property from surrounding buildings and competition,” said Helen Kaslin, general manager at JLL, which manages the property. “Our TouchSource Video Wall with DynamicSpaces provides great essential information, like traffic and weather, and it also transformed the aesthetic of the lobby with nice colors and lively images. It’s incredibly easy for us to manage, and any support needs have been handled quickly.”
She also told TouchSource that the video wall has proven to be very useful for tenants, and that building security staff enjoy the rotating murals.
Kapoor said that, in the end, it is really all about creating an experience for employees that they won’t find at home, and art and technology are two of the best ways to do that.
“My home looks the same every day,” Kapoor said. “When you think about these large, art-forward video walls, I'm never going to have a beautiful changing art display in my home. My office is dynamic and changing and TouchSource makes that experience possible.”
This article was produced in collaboration between TouchSource and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.
Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.
