The outbreak of COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of indoor air quality at workplaces and has changed the way most organizations and employees are now thinking about it. The concern of employees and employers for indoor air quality is accentuated given the fact that the World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed that the spread of COVID-19 can take place via airborne transmissions.

It is in this context, we at Caleedo organized a webinar with two industry veterans Mr. Jiji Thomas, Head – Operations at Nucleus Office Parks, and Mr. Vinod K Nair, Head – Business Transformation at ISS India, to get their perspectives and opinion on issues, trends, and developments related to IAQ that are emerging in the building maintenance and facilities management industry.

Here’s the key extract of our discussion with them:

Caleedo Talks: Is indoor air quality at workplaces a hype or reality? 

Mr. Nair: The air we breathe today is and has always been a worldwide concern, especially in a developing country like India. Due to the outbreak of CVOID -19, corporates had to being work from home, and add to this was WHO confirming COVID-19 is an airborne infection and hence, its transmission cannot be disregarded in crowded and inadequately ventilated indoor spaces.

Most of us started spending a majority of our time indoors and that’s one cultural shift that we have seen between pre-pandemic and post-pandemic era. This factor alone has contributed to raising questions on the existing indoor environment of accommodating a healthy environment.

As a reaction to this, various questions can be raised on how workplaces can possibly look at new ideas to upgrade their existing indoor environment. Some published and documented numbers we must consider:

• The concentration of indoor air pollutants can be 2-5 times higher than outdoor pollutants (Source: US EPA)
• The cognitive abilities of an individual can also be impacted due to poor IAQ standards being maintained in an indoor environment (Source: Harvard T.Chan)
• 7 million deaths were recorded in India due to Indoor Air Pollution between 2019 to 2020 (Source: ICMR Publication)
• 36% of these 1.7 million deaths were purely because of lung infections/diseases caused by poor IAQ standards (Source: ICMR Publication)

If we are to look at the impact of Indoor Air Pollution from a commercial perspective, about 1.4% of GDP is impacted due to premature death due to air pollution. This figure is for air pollution in general but given the facts that on a daily basis we spend 90% of our time indoors.

IAQ is not hype anymore, the numbers say it all. It is high time that we start taking Indoor Air Quality seriously. 

Mr. Thomas: When leaders talk about a specific topic, it is perceived to be a hype but when common public starts talking about the same topic it becomes a reality. That’s a fact of life.

In early 2000s, we used to talk about green buildings as a hype but today it’s a reality and has become a standard norm. Similarly, I think that good IAQ standards would become a reality in the next couple of years.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has really accelerated this shift from a hype to reality.

We conducted an online poll during the webinar in sync with the theme of the discussion and the audience gave their feedback which would perhaps lend future insights on the subject.

Poll 1:

A majority 67% of respondents in the poll believe that a good Indoor Air Quality at workplace can have multiple benefits that includes positive psychological impact, reinforce organizational commitment, health and wellness benefits, a future compliant workplace and most importantly happier and more productive workforce. and most importantly 

Caleedo Talks: What are the recommended best practices to manage and maintain IAQ at workplaces from a HVAC maintenance standpoint?

Mr. Thomas: IAQ has been a topic of discussion for few years now. In earlier days, efforts for IAQ management were specifically focused on VOCs, Carbon Dioxide (CO2), PM particles and the end users of buildings were not a part of discussions for IAQ management. But, due to the outbreak of COVID-19 IAQ has gained the attention of all stakeholders including the end users.

The causes of poor IAQ remained the same i.e inadequate ventilation, below-par filtration, contamination of chemicals from indoor and outdoor sources. Due to CVOID-19 the focus has largely shifted to controlling the spread of infectious viruses in indoor settings.

There is no sure short answer to the question on how facility managers can help in managing the indoor air quality. We are all still trying to make different experiments. The IAQ deterioration of any building is linked with the actions taken through-out the life cycle of the building, starting with site selection itself.

Different locations have different outdoor conditions and some places would have dangerous and harmful elements like Radon. The presence of such harmful elements is why the selection of site becomes extremely important and relevant.

Secondly the factor that influences the IAQ deterioration is the nature of interior fit out material that we choose. Namely carpets sanitization and varnishes emit formaldehyde all throughout their life. 

Similarly, the choice of paints and chemical substances being used in day to day cleaning and maintenance activities also add to the VOC levels.

From a building maintenance perspective, the causes of poor IAQ can be categorized in two types:

• Inadequate filtration and ventilation
• Presence of biological and chemical contaminants in the workplace

Indoor air quality can be managed with the classical model of hierarchy which starts with elimination, substitution and isolation of hazard. In a post-pandemic era the actions for IAQ management are almost the same.

COVID-19 is normally transmitted through exhaled respiratory droplets  of infected person. The larger droplets settle down due to gravitational force but the smaller sized aerosols can spread throughout the building. This is where the imperative for property or facility managers come in.

The need to reduce airborne transmission becomes critical and can be achieved through source control (masking and physical distancing) or engineering control (ventilation and filtration).

Existing buildings are faced with a major challenge as they are not designed to control airborne or infection transmissions. Unlike hospitals, commercial buildings are not designed to control infection and taking it to that level would be a big challenge.

Higher ventilations dilute the indoor air contaminants thereby, reducing the intensity of exposure and duration for which these aerosol stay in the building. In addition to this, respiratory aerosols can also be removed through filtration.

Studies have established that upgrading filtration to MeRV-13 in commercial buildings would probably solve a large part of the problem and it is extremely important as most of the commercial buildings recirculate the air within the building.

Is adequate ventilation and filtration the solution? The answer depends on many factors, increasing ventilation has got multiple trade-offs especially when it comes to the cost of cooling or heating the air. There is a trade-off between the cost and efficiency of the building.

Also, in commercial spaces like hotels or restaurants where the number of people inside the building fluctuate significantly, filtration would not be the answer. We could look at other strategies to control airborne transmission in these spaces.

From an HVAC perspective we could look at the following points:  

• Ensure continued operation of all systems during the occupant hours
• Ensuring a combination of filters and air cleaners to achieve a minimum of MeRV-13 filtration standards
• Explore options on hybrid working hours to encourage social distancing
• Periodically flushing the systems
• UVC lights can be considered as they can kill pathogens present in the air and also improves the life of the cooling coils
• Ensuring that all sensors like PM sensor, CO2 sensors or other sensors that are required to run your systems are properly calibrated

Lastly, when using MeRV filters, we should look at the pressure drop across the filters so that the air flows are not compromised.

For sanitization purpose, we should only sanitize the buildings when it is really required as uncontrolled use of chemicals is dangerous because of its impact on IAQ and human health.

To summarize, the best way to manage indoor air quality is source control and if that does not work building or property managers may look to apply engineering and administrative controls.

Poll 2:

52% of respondents highlighted that their organization is considering the ‘use of indoor air purification systems’ or ‘Improving fresh air ventilation’ to improve IAQ at their workplaces.

40% of respondents highlighted that their organization is considering ‘improving workplace cleaning processes’ and installing ‘high efficiency HVAC filters’. Only 8% of respondents said that their organization is ‘conducting frequent IAQ measurements and reporting’.

Caleedo Talks: In your view, what are the various constituents of good indoor air quality from an Indian context? What are the key parameters of indoor air that we must track and manage?

Mr. Nair: When planning our buildings, we must plan them in such a way that the building occupants feel safe and happy when they are inside the building.

Many a times buildings are constructed in such a way that they qualify for multiple certifications but the occupants are not really satisfied when indoors. As defined by cognizant authorities, the indoor air quality is considered acceptable when there are no contaminants at a certain concentration and 80% of occupants of the building do not express dissatisfaction.

When we talk about the quality of air we breathe we are talking about the composition of the air, the level of contaminants, the level of concentration and the acceptable limit or standard which we should follow.

Some parameters that we must be really careful about are Carbon Monoxide (CO), Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Sulphur, Radon, and Formaldehydes. A large part of indoor air pollution comes from VOCs.

There are prescribed limits of VOCs which is permitted within a cubic meter of air. While there are other parameters like PM particles and CO2 but VOCs need to be closely monitored. As a good practice, when we construct a building we need to plan our constructions in such a way that we by default procure low VOC products.

Apart from VOCs, another major contaminant that we need to look at is ETS (Environmental Tobacco Smoke) which is released as a by-product of smoking.

Almost every building has a designated zone for smoking and most of the times it is right next to the air intake system. Designating a smoking zone right next to the air intake system defeats the purpose of smart and healthy buildings.

Smart buildings must be consumer-centric and allow occupants to control the desired indoor settings like control of lighting and temperature. As we progress our journey to smart buildings, we need to be creative by creating awareness and making real-time IAQ monitoring a mandatory standard for buildings.

As a personal opinion, I think considering a poorly ventilated building as an occupational hazard could also be considered. Government authorities need to look at IAQ from a view point that it is a fundamental right to breathe clean and fresh air when inside a building.

Poll 3:

86% of respondents agreed that their organization would consider enhancing IAQ levels at workplaces if there were no statutory compliances forcing it while another 14% responded negatively.

Caleedo Talks: In your view, what are the new trends and future outlook in IAQ and HVAC industry from a consumer behaviour and legislative point of view?

Mr. Thomas: The IAQ industry has only one direction to look at and it is ‘growth’.

Two perspectives that are very evident today are from the evolution of buildings.

Firstly, in early 2000s, buildings were just brick and mortar, and from 2000 to 2015 we largely talked about green buildings, sustainability, and efficiency. From 2015 onwards people started talking about well-buildings.

When well-buildings came into being, the primary concept was that the buildings do not cause any wellness issues to the occupants. Now if we look at the future of buildings, we need to look at something that can be termed as ‘immune-building’.

A concept that would revolve around how we need to manage epidemic kind of situation and how indoor air quality and personal hygiene could be technology driven.

Secondly, the way we would work in the future. During first wave of COVID-19, it appeared that work-from-home is here to stay and when we look at wave two, employees had developed fatigue due to staying at home and had developed a lack of social interaction with friends and colleagues at work.

The new way of working is hybrid and it offers employees the flexibility of working some days from office and some days from home or remote. The key to hybrid working is to drive employees to come to work and IAQ at workplace would be one of the key metrics that employees would consider.

The technology that involves occupant levels, health indicators, and ensure that the workplace protocols are followed would significantly improve occupant experience. Building occupant experience by embracing technology that is focused on managing health and wellness standards would be an area to look at.

Watch out for our future webinars. Connect with us at info@caleedo.com

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Indoor air is crucial for good health, especially at workplaces.

On average, we spend over 30% of our lives at workplaces, and hence the quality of indoor air we breathe in the office has a significant impact on one’s life, health, and wellness.

The importance of maintaining healthy indoor air has grabbed significant attention with the outbreak of COVID-19 and has changed the way most organizations and their employees are now thinking about it.

Scale and magnitude of the concern are reflected by the fact that 82% of millennials are likely to feel safer in returning to offices if they have transparency on the real-time indoor air quality levels being maintained in their offices. (Source: Carbon Lighthouse)

Current challenges

The concern of employees and employers for IAQ levels is accentuated given the fact that World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed that the spread of COVID-19 can take place via airborne transmissions.

In a workplace, virus-transmission is caused when occupants sneeze, cough or talk loudly. This releases droplets with infected virus/es. The droplets disintegrate into aerosols that can remain suspended in the air for a significant amount of time. This can be the potential source of indoor air led infection transmission for the employees at workplace.

These aerosols can travel a distance of more than 6 feet and in certain cases in excess of 30 feet especially in ill-ventilated indoor spaces.

Various indoor air pollutants like PM 2.5, PM 10, high concentration of CO2, and VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) cause indoor air quality standards to deteriorate.
These pollutants are more harmful than their outdoor equivalents and prolonged exposure of these pollutants at workplaces can lead to periodic illness and progressively into life threating diseases. (Source: HealthWorld from Economic Times) 

”Indoor" air pollutants are more harmful than outdoor pollutants” 

The term PM stands for particulate matter (also known as particle pollution), is used for a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets found in the environment. High PM level in the indoor air at workplaces is caused majorly due to environmental pollution (synonymous if large cities) and poor air filtration provisions or maintenance in HVAC air distribution system.

These PM particles are so small that they cannot be seen with a naked eye and long-term exposure to these particles may lead to cardiovascular infection and diseases in the lungs. In the current context, as per latest WHO guidance and studies by leading universities like University of Colorado US and University of Technology Clausthal, Germany, PM is one of the most potent causes for aerosol and droplet transmission in indoor environment.

Other indoor air pollutants like CO2 and VOCs are produced during respiration and office renovation, use of paints and other chemical solvents respectively.

The concentration of CO2 within a building is used to indicate whether fresh air is being supplied to the building occupants or not. High concentrations can cause headaches, fatigue, nausea, and vomiting.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are emitted as gases from human-made chemicals like paints, lacquers, cleaning chemicals and supplies, refrigerants, etc. VOCs include a variety of chemicals, some of which are carcinogenic can have an adverse effect on employee health and wellbeing through long-term exposure.

Concentrations of VOCs indoor are 10 times higher than their concentration outdoors. This is mainly because these particles are produced by paints, varnishes, and wax that are used during interior upgrades.

Ways to manage and maintain IAQ – new imperatives
While organizations can’t really stop indoor air pollutants build up, periodic measurement and monitoring IAQ parameters can help create a healthy indoor environment for employees and occupants.

Organizations can periodically measure parameters like PM 2.5, PM 10, CO2, and VOCs at common areas like lifts, receptions, staircases, and washrooms. Subsequent to the measurement, if levels of these pollutants are found to be in harmful range, organizations can take remedial measures like:

• Improve ventilation levels
• Readjust and reset the air distribution level of the HVAC system
• Review and readjust the fresh air changes (for air-conditioned space)
• Upgrade and enhance the air filtration levels (like introducing MERV/HEPA filters)

Some of these measures like MERV/HEPA filters can filter up to 1-micron level particle size and even some pathogens. However, this may need careful design review by HVAC engineers especially if it needs to be introduced in existing comfort air-conditioning systems.

Another way could be to use nano-filter sheets/elements to existing air conditioners as a stop-gap measure; however, this is not backed up by leading associations like ASHRAE or other organizations who set IAQ standards.

While, these are some fundamental measures that could be taken up by facility administrators of buildings, a more advanced and smart way to tackle poor indoor air quality would be to use tech-driven IAQ solutions like indoor air quality meters or sensors that could detect abnormal concentrations of CO2, VOCs, presence of harmful particles like PM 2.5 and PM 10.

Such solutions also serve as a key function for smart green buildings that are safe, healthy, and efficient and adhere to various smart building standards like IGBC, well buildings, ASHRAE, ISHRAE, etc.

In conclusion

In a nutshell, while there are multiple fundamental and cost-effective ways to maintain safe & healthy levels of indoor air quality, organizations are gradually shifting towards more tech-driven, smart, and efficient IAQ solutions that can provide cognitive insights to create a safe indoor environment for occupants and employees.

The first webinar of our webinar series ‘Caleedo Talks’ was held on 1st Oct, 2021 on the topic ‘How technology and digitization can enhance service efficiency and workplace experience?’

We had with us Ms. Jagvinder Pinny Mann, Senior Portfolio Manager, Real estate and facilities at Microsoft as our first panelist and Mr. CT Sadanandan, Vice President & Head, Corporate services, BCM & CSR at Tata Communications as our second panelist. Mr. Sadanandan is our strategic advisor in our board since incorporation.

The session began with a short video to set the context of the webinar.

Video 1: “Technology is driving the evolution of workplace and the workplace is driving the revolution of employee experience”

Slide 1: “From headcounts to heartbeats”

A very interesting study by Gensler highlights that:

• 41% of employees now say that they have a choice in where they work, a 52% increase than 6 years back.
• 44% of employees say that they work in a balanced workplace, a 83% increase than previous survey

Caleedo Talks: “How can technology play a crucial role in defining the future of workplaces?”

Ms. Jagvinder Pinny Mann: The whole world and workplace have become a dynamic platform for all of us and really no one can pin point what the future will bring.

The three top areas that technology would drive will be collaboration, employee engagement, and company culture. The technology in future workplaces would definitely stay as the employees of the repurposed workplaces would require flexibility and work & personal life balance.

Today, the line between ‘work from home’ and ‘work from office’ is gone and there is no difference whether you are at home or in the office.

Mr. CT Sadanandan: The experience at workplace is not just limited to one element but there are multiple elements to make the experience impactful. The adoption of technology at workplaces was really slow because adoption related to people experience and people management was not on the top of the priority list for organizations.

Financial operations, product enhancements and R&Ds were getting the larger share of technology transformation. The focus shifted on ‘people’ and ‘workplace’ in the last decade, and COVID-19 acted as a catalyst for collaboration, flexibility and most importantly innovation.

Poll 1: “The shift towards a technology driven workplace will be centred on which key outcome?”

        

50% of our poll respondents believe that ‘Enabling new workplace norms’ with the help of technology would serve as a key outcome for workplace technology, 37.5% respondents believed that workplace technology would improve workplace efficiency and another 12.5% resonated with the fact that ‘improved service experience’ would be a key outcome when migrating to a technology driven workplace.

Video 2: “The future of workplace is about engaging your employees and improving their productivity”

Slide 2: “from bits to bytes”

A few prominent trends which we would like to share with all:
• IDC reports that the use of wearable devices will be up to 50 % by 2023 and 37% of the millenials use wearable devices.
• 55% of the Indian population uses smart phone and this will be more than 90 % in 2030.
• 5G roll out will accelerate adoption of mobile based digital applications & IOT use-cases.
• SaaS solutions are getting increasingly democratized and with Al & ML applications, predictive analytics, business insights and lower system frictions are expected.

Caleedo Talks: “What are the key elements of workplace experience and service offerings where digitization and technology can really impact business?”

Mr. CT Sadanandan: We are now used to managing our requirements with the help technology and for any requirements we have an app today.

Employees expect similar scale of productivity, efficiency, and experience at their workplaces as they have in their social life. The need is to give similar kind of ease of use, access and flexibility to employees. As workplace experience is pervading in multiple areas we would have multiple interfaces, requirements, and actions within the role we are assigned.

How the environment contributes to our overall experience at workplace would be another major element. The overall experience at workplace would be enabled in an efficient manner where employees are not required to spend efforts and energies to receive that experience.

Ms. Jagvinder Pinny Mann: For the workforce, pandemic has accelerated flexibility and productivity outside office. Earlier there was no concept of ‘work from anywhere’, but today almost everyone has the flexibility to work from anywhere.

However, the ease of using the technology should be in one-hub as we cannot have multiple tools or apps and also to increase technology adoption.

The workplace of the future would have to become hybrid, we would have to create a collaborative and meaningful employee connection for the workforce. The role of workplace would shift to bring teams together for a productive discussion.

Poll 2: “What are the key risks & challenges that your organization perceives in considering workplace technology?”

60% of our poll respondents answered that ‘data & user privacy’ are the top key risks and challenges their organizations perceives when considering to adopt workplace technologies, another 40% of the respondents believed that ‘On-boarding & adoption challenges’ is the top concern when considering any workplace technology.

Caleedo Talks: “How do you perceive that the investment in workplace, not necessarily in technology would find resonance with your organization and especially from a finance perspective and are there enough compelling factor to really consider the investment?”

Mr. CT Sadanandan: Organizations have priorities and these priorities are decided based on the value that any initiative brings. Investments by and large, are based on thoughts around enhancement of marketing, product, market share etc. However, when investing in technology initiatives, organizations have realised the need for ensuring that such initiatives impact the whole structure and not just a few portions of it.

If the value outcome of an initiative is clearly demonstrated, the investment would be made. Irrespective of organization size, the operating framework and parameters remain the same.

So within the framework, organizations need to look at the value outcomes like employee productivity, engagement, and experience by adopting technology and digital solutions. And if these are clearly presented, surely investment would be made.

Ms. Jagvinder Pinny Mann: Given the pandemic, organizations don’t really have a choice, technologies that would enhance wellness, health and ease of use for the employees would be adopted.

There will not be much choice given the talent crunch and talent hunt by every organization. Therefore, organizations would have to have a balance between how they are going to allocate funds and for what initiatives. A thoughtful prioritisation on what is really important and how does that translate into our use of revenue will drive the thinking and business case going forward.

Poll 3: “What type of cost models are you/your organization preferring while adopting a new workplace technology?”

Our last poll question was on the cost models that organizations prefer when adopting a new workplace technology platform. The poll results highlight that most organizations would prefer a ‘usage based pricing’ where the cost of the technology is based on number of users or employees or subscribers depending on the business and the users of the platform.

Q&A Section

Question from audience: ‘How can companies quantify the benefits of these workplace experience platforms before actually adopting these technologies?’

Mr. CT Sadanandan: We cannot always quantify the benefit before we actually adopt and experience the output from such technologies. We can only make assumptions and to make assumptions we have inputs from how these solutions have actually benefitted other organizations and what are the functionalities and capabilities of that solution in line with our business needs. There is no one size fits all solution in the market and every business has unique requirements. They need to evaluate any solution within those parameters.

Ms. Jagvinder Pinny Mann: The benefit of workplace technologies can be quantified and also the businesses are wearing different hats now. Today, organizations are forced to adopt such technologies as there are limited choices left.

The pandemic has repurposed work, workplaces, and work formats. Hybrid work has become the new normal for most organizations. While hybrid work provides flexibility to employees, it can pose challenges for organizations to engage employees, enhance their experience, and most importantly uphold the organizational culture in this new scenario.

It is in this context, we at Caleedo organized a webinar with two industry veterans Ms. Reshmi Shankar, General Manager and Head, Facilities Management Group India and Bangladesh for Wipro Limited, and Mr. Sadanandan C Thondieri, Vice President – Corporate Services, BCM & CSR for Tata Communications, to get their perspectives and opinion on how employee experience and engagement can be rebooted in this new world of hybrid workplaces.

Here’s the key extract of our discussion with them:

Caleedo Talks: In your opinion what are the key attributes that characterize a hybrid workplace specific to the Indian business context and a few workplace strategies that organizations need to adopt to usher in the whole hybrid working culture? 

Ms. Shankar: The real-life problems that we used to face have now been replaced by virtual problems. The most important key is flexibility, which now has been accelerated with the outbreak of COVID. In my view, hybrid is not really anything new.

 We have always had virtual meetings and technology has always enabled collaboration during virtual meetings. But the scale that we are now working virtually is making this a very unique and novel situation.

The key to a successful hybrid model would be flexibility and technology would support this flexibility so that we have a choice-based mechanism where we can decide when, how, and from where we want to work.

Another interesting aspect would be digital risk and security so that we are protected as an organization and not be exposed to any kind of cyber security risk.

Migrating to a hybrid workplace would involve understanding what your employees require and are looking for, and the kind of customization that suites your organization and community.

Because community and collaboration are probably the foundation of culture. Building a company culture by providing that sense of community in hybrid work model would be another key aspect for building a successful hybrid workplace.

Mr. Sadanandan: Over and above flexibility, health & safety, and collaboration, autonomy should also be considered. The ability of the employees to decide how and where they want to work. Also, I believe that the employee expectations from a hybrid work would be high.

Rather than mere transactions, they would expect that the various touch-points are in a continuum.

We conducted an online poll during the webinar in sync with the theme of the discussion and the audience gave their feedback which would perhaps lend future insights on the subject.

Poll 1:

88% of respondents in the poll believe that ‘returning to office’ would benefit them in reinforcing emotional connects with their colleagues and senior managers, and would help them in collaborating better during team meetings.

A minority, 12% of poll respondents believe that it would help them in breaking the monotony of work from home.

Caleedo Talks: What in your opinion would be top three or four employee metrics that the administrators need to track and manage in this new world of hybrid workplaces?

Mr. Sadanandan: There are multiple elements that contribute to overall workplace experience. Today, the hybrid work model brings in multiple components and challenges for creating the overall employee experience at workplace.

Employers would want to retain talent, create culture, provide learning opportunities, provide a sense of continuity and connectivity, manage burn-outs, ensure health and safety etc. There are multiple aspects which keeps the employers thinking about how to deal with this emerging scenario.

With all these elements, workplace certainly has a significant and prominent impact. It is important for workplace managers to have a clear strategy.

The employees would expect a sense of care, experience, and feeling of wanted at the workplace. The employers need to also ensure that this is consistently maintained.

One of the metrics that workplace managers may consider would be to see how they are actually enabling the workplace and from where the employees are working. Next step would be to see how we can enable employees to work from remote locations and the kind of technologies that we need to extend.

Workplace administrators need to see the kind of enablement that is required to ensure employee engagement and productivity irrespective of the model of working they have adopted. The second area of focus for workplaces administrators should be health & safety and demonstrate to the employees that the workplace is safe to operate from.

The last metric would be to see how the whole thing is panning out in terms of managing resources and cost for the organization. Track and manage the utilization levels or the efficiency that we are able to achieve.

Overall, a connected digital platform can make an overall experience. A platform where employees, customers, visitors and other stakeholders can seamlessly operate and have visibility on various metrics.

Poll 2:

82% of poll respondents believe that the biggest concern while returning to work is ‘adherence and management of COVID protocols at workplace’ and ‘indoor air quality and surface hygiene levels in workplace’.

A minority, 18% of the respondents believe that knowing the ‘health status of their colleagues and support staff at workplace’ will be the top concern while returning to work.

Caleedo Talks: How would the community engagement usher in the experience that would also help organizations live their purpose and the culture they are trying to establish?

Ms. Shankar: For me, culture is a very 50,000 feet high subject. The sense of belongingness and connectivity is more important.

Today, organizations are operating virtually. On-boarding and exits are managed virtually and human interaction is missing. The more we virtualise, the more we would lack human interaction. While both are equally important, but we need to balance them.

Building a relationship with an organization means building a relationship with your managers, colleagues, and other stakeholders.

Today we are talking with people online in meetings but most of the meetings lack video streaming and this brings in a sense of un-belongingness. We do not know how our workplace, colleagues, managers looks like.

For organization leaders it is very important as the responsibility of creating a culture is on their shoulders. In today’s times, we therefore, have to literally mirror everything we used to do in the erstwhile physical office space scenario in some manner, merging the virtual and physical model.

We can’t really get to know much about our colleagues and connect with them if we do not meet them in a non-virtual environment.

Every manager and every team member has to ensure that we connect and engage at a personal level for the culture at an organizational level to percolate. If organizations do not focus on building this culture then the employee-employer relationship becomes transactional.

Mr. Sadanandan: The need for now and the emerging future is to manage things differently where the paradigms of leadership management need to change. Organizations would continue to work as a network but we would still need to ensure that all elements of experiences that contributes to building a culture are actually taken care of.

The big questions that we need to answer here is, who is going to build that culture and how it is going to be built? That is all I want to add.

Poll 3:

In line with multiple surveys and reports by leading organizations, 85% of poll respondents would like to work in a hybrid manner in the future and rest 19% would like to work either 100% from office or 100% from home.

Caleedo Talks: How do you see the workplace enablers step up their game from how they used to run their legacy workplaces to the new world of hybrid workplaces?

Mr. Sadanandan: The fundamental change is about the mindset that you need to deal with a flexible and dynamic environment. When workplaces were restricted to our physical defined office, the realities for workplace administrators were different but now the requirements are different and workplace enablers need to deal with that dynamics and be flexible to adapt.

The first requirement is to have this flexible mindset. Second, would be the ability to involve and enable stakeholders. Workplace enablers alone cannot enable a hybrid workplace, they would need to bring in multiple stakeholders within the organization. Workplace enablers alone cannot enable a hybrid workplace, they would need to bring in multiple stakeholders within the organization.

How did we manage the hardest part of the COVID impact through the lockdown where many of our critical transactions, applications were supposed to be run from the office? Without the help of service providers we couldn’t have actually done it.

The third requirement is communication, there is a need to efficiently and clearly communicate on various important metrics. Being able to proactively communicate is the key requirement that I would assume is important.

The next requirement that would be important is doing something new. Just managing and administering conventional workplace designs would not get the job done. The ability to identify the need and evolve the design elements, the support elements as required for the workplaces. Continual improvement is another critical capability that I believe the workplace administrator should have and last but not the least, is being technologically savvy. that I believe the workplace administrator should have and last but not the least, is being technologically savvy.

They should be able to conceptualize about the tools that they require to manage this environment most efficiently and deliver the experience that organizations intend to provide.

Being able to decide on the technological tools that are required in this environment is a key characteristic as a part of the larger anatomy of a successful workplace enabler.

Ms. Shankar: It is important from an organization’s point of view to de-risk right. If each of these enablers would start working in random then it would give rise to processes and procedures that probably could lead to a bigger problem.

A change in SOPs, policies to truly support and enable empowered group of people is very important. Quickly rebooting your policies to also suit the virtual and the hybrid work culture would be another important aspect in this new scenario. would be another important aspect in this new scenario.

Caleedo Talks: How do you balance the high sense of human touch and high sense of technology in hybrid workplaces to have a great employee experience?

Ms. Reshmi Shankar: I am somebody who always goes for the human touch before the digital touch. The last few months have taught me both are equally important.

In an office context, we have digital tools that allow us to reserve or schedule services. Digital has its place but in some instances, we require a human touch.

It’s a balance that people have to strike and it comes with being flexible and being able to operate within the changing aspect of this whole evolving scenario because you could have so much ambiguity. So, each of us who have chosen to be in this industry, I am sure over the years would have also picked up the right balance to manage this. There is no one formula to get this right, so we will have use a lot of our judgement in particular scenarios.

Each of us operating in this scenario need to know when the digital need to take over and when the human touch can solve your problem.

Watch out for our future webinars. Connect with us at info@caleedo.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/caleedo/

The building industry has undergone significant transformation in the last three and half decades.

Globally, in the 90s, the Information Technology and Service Management and building automation industry fueled an unprecedented rush in buildings getting wired and networked. This used in the introduction and advent of Intelligent Buildings.

The First Wave: Emergence of CMMS

In the first wave of intelligent buildings, building operations, maintenance, and management functions were controlled through a Building Automation System (BAS) with or without a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS).

CMMS was mostly run as an overlap solution to the BAS system. While the BAS would command and control equipment and systems centrally, collect real-time data, raise alarms, generate performance reports, etc., CMMS gave insights on maintenance performance, uptime & mean time between failures, cost of spares and consumables, and various critical underlying information about Mechanical-Electrical-Plumbing equipment/assets and systems. Building managers, administrators, and building operations crew, therefore, found these automation and software system to be extremely beneficial as they could give data-driven insights about equipment/systems operating performance maintenance management performance, trends, forecasts from a central control room. This was a clear departure from the past where most of these activities were managed manually, and in most cases in an inefficient way.

But in the next ten years i.e., from 2000 to 2010, there was a tectonic shift in the building technology and building operations industry.

What was the tectonic shift and why did it really happen?

In 2008 the subprime mortgage default led to the global meltdown in the real estate industry.

The crisis also created the need for bringing transparency in the commercial real estate sector. One such domain was the Communal Area Maintenance (CAM) cost which was somewhat opaque from a legacy standpoint and had to be open for external audit.

This necessitated a step-change in which the Building Managers were hitherto strategizing the operation, maintenance, and management of the properties and therefore the computation and management of CAM. Tighter governance, analytics, reporting, and most importantly predictability and forecasting was the need of the hour. This led to a tectonic shift in the first decade of the 2000s.

The Building Automation Systems and the CMMS applications underwent a complete change; BAS was re-architected as Building Management Systems (BMS) and CMMS evolved further as Computer-Aided Facility Management (CAFM) system such that predictability/forecasting, data analytics, and comprehensive reports and reporting capabilities were available to building/property operations team/s. This led to the evolution of mature, integrated, and holistic enterprise solutions where the data-driven decision-making regime started.

The emergence of 3G and Mobile Computing

From 2010 to 2020 the world witnessed a complete transformation in the information technology industry. It all started in the early part of 2010 with the emergence of 3G.

From mid-2010 onwards many countries switched to 4G and in the last couple of years some select countries have rolled out 5G. This power of computing on mobile phones and enhanced bandwidth brought computing from desktops to mobile phones.

Many applications like ERPs, payment transactions, and banking transactions moved from desktops to mobile phones as technology-enabled consumers to access applications from their hand-held devices. The whole focus shifted from desktop computing to mobile computing and therefore gave the building industry an opportunity to look at how enterprise applications can move into a mobile-led operation.

From 2018 onwards most of the enterprise applications like BMS, CAFM has started to move to mobile applications.

From intelligent buildings to smart workplaces- the new paradigm

The pandemic transformed the life, lifestyle, and habits of people. And the impact and importance of digital technologies became more prominent during and post the pandemic.

In this context, work and workplaces witnessed the most prominent shift and repurposing, hybrid working emerged as the new genre of working. This necessitated revised space and workplace re-orientation, digitization, and digitalization of workplace activities, remapping and evaluation of employee experience metrics and workplace performance baselining and benchmarking. Referred to as Workplace tech, it is now the fasted growing sub-sector in the proptech eco-system.

In the worktech domain, the enterprise applications, unlike the CAFMs, are progressively getting ‘consumer’ focused. Generically referred to as IWMS (Integrated Workplace Management System), these applications by design are mobile-first SaaS, which delivers consumer-grade user experience, cognitive forecasts and business insights unlike never before. IWMS facilitating seamless migration to multiple new use cases as envisaged in hybrid working.

Similarly, the BMS architecture has evolved to an edge computing topology with versatile IoT applications which are fast, dependable, and cost-effective. IoT devices /systems are wireless and therefore extremely easy to install and scale. Prominent IoT applications in the repurposed workplaces are social distance monitoring, indoor navigation services, air and surface hygiene solutions, real-time location tracking (RTLS) to name a few.

In Conclusion

The BMS and IoT applications coupled with SaaS solutions like IWMS are now poised to provide a future-ready digital ecosystem for hybrid workplaces and other work forms that may emerge going forward. The adoption of these applications by consumers/occupants would lend deep insights on the workplace, workplace dynamics, space efficiency, employee experience, and other important impact that COVID has left us with namely health and hygiene.

The workplace of the future will be end to end digital, smart, immersive, and agile.

New Delhi, Oct 26 2021 – Caleedo (PAS Digital Private Limited) is pleased to announce a seed round of funding by Akagra LLP.

The investment would support Caleedo’s mission to disrupt the business support services market at workplaces and hospitals. With the investment, Akgra LLP has partnered with Caleedo to be a part of their growth journey.

V Swaminathan, LP from Akagra said “We are excited to have made a decision to invest in Caleedo. We are extremely bullish on the management team and their track record. They have a unique twin sector approach, Health-tech, and Proptech; the impressive product-market fit, customer traction, innovative and disruptive solutions combined with deep sector understanding and established relationships of the promoters gives them a head start to attain sector leadership status.”

About Caleedo

Caleedo is a digital solutions company providing SaaS solutions in the WorkTech and HealthcareTech sectors. Caleedo’s innovative and disruptive SaaS solutions empower business administrators to track and analyze service efficiency, end-user experience, and orchestrate a multi-stakeholder business environment. Founded by industry thought leaders, Caleedo has several first-of-its-kind solutions that have an impressive product-market fit and customer traction.

Patient treatment and recovery is sometimes a long journey, with many staging areas. While patient care is the topmost priority for patient families, visiting hospitals and getting timely patient updates can be a laborious task for most, given the busy schedule of the care team members.

COVID-19 and the fear of acquiring infections on hospital premises have added to the troubles and worries of patients’ families. To understand the concerns and apprehensions of patients’ families, Caleedo conducted an open poll to understand their concerns and priorities when seeking updates on their patient’s recovery. This article will discuss the findings of the poll to help the community at large understand the real-life problems faced by patients’ families when trying to get timely patient updates.

Hospital Acquired Infections: Top Most Concern

When going to hospitals for visiting their admitted patient, family members can acquire or spread ‘hospital-acquired infection’ (HAI). These infections are caused by viral, bacterial, fungal pathogens and some of them can even be fatal.

35% of the participants in our poll, which included senior executives and highly experienced professionals from the healthcare industry, felt that when visiting hospitals, they fear ‘Hospital-Acquired Infections’ the most.

After the fear of HAIs, hospital queuing & navigation inside the hospital, and traffic & parking issues remained the other concerns when seeking updates for the admitted patients.

Emotional connect and wellbeing: Top priority for families

During post-treatment admittance and recovery, 28% of patients have reported severe loneliness and another 27% have reported feeling moderately lonely. (Source: NHBI)

Loneliness can seriously impact patient satisfaction levels and is known to cause mental stress and physical fatigue in patients. Among survey respondents, 83% of patient experience professionals feel that ‘Emotional connect & wellbeing’ should be the top-most priority apart from core medical procedures.

Participation of family in patient care is of vast importance. The presence of spouse of the admitted patient or the presence of parents during a child’s treatment can help provide effective psychological support and has been proven by many studies/research papers to enhance patient satisfaction scores.

While the presence of family members in the recovery phase can significantly impact a patient’s road to recovery in a positive way, timely and clear updates about patient’s health is of extreme importance for members of the family. Almost all the participants in our poll considered ‘regular and clear patient updates from hospitals’ as ‘most-important’ for providing assurance on patient’s health & recovery.

Conclusion

The findings of the poll clearly indicate that the outbreak of COVID has led to significant change in the mind-set of the public and has highlighted the importance of various aspects around patient care and satisfaction. Healthcare consumers have become more aware of risks associated with visiting a hospital.

In future, we can expect adoption of digital tools and technologies that directly impact patient care, patient satisfaction and enhance patient experience. Such technology can, therefore, help build a more collaborative and transparent patient care delivery system.

Re-purposing workplaces with digital technology

As organizations continue to respond to the crisis and decide on a Return to work strategy for their employees, keep in mind the new workplace trends driving the new workplace.

How can organizations address the new workplace trends?

To facilitate the new workplace trends, technology would play an important role in a seamless migration. Some new workplace use cases that we foresee gaining momentum would be;

1. Employee experience and Health & Wellness

In the new normal, workplaces would be designed to trigger positive emotions and lasting experience for the employees when they come to work. Therefore, we foresee organizations would have higher employee engagements through virtual platforms with their teams at work and seek feedback. Using the power of business intelligence, data science, and digital platforms would enable organizations to have cognitive reports on employee experience and their perception of the organization at periodic intervals. In this context, we foresee employee health & wellness, playing n important role in shaping positive experiences & emotions towards the workplace.

In response to this, progressive organizations have started to focus on air & surface hygiene standards at the workplace. Consequently, workplace administrators would now be keen to review air & surface hygiene standards at periodic intervals to ensure the wellness and health agenda of their employees. Air & surface hygiene standards would be pushed further. We see digital technologies playing a role in facilitating this use case by creating hygiene dashboards for public views. With digitization, hygiene standards would evolve based on workplace patterns and a regional or global certification process would gain endorsement. In our opinion, this would gain further impetus as consumer groups are pressing hard for legislation on indoor air quality standards which in turn can accelerate adoption levels of air & hygiene measurements at workplaces.

2. Immersive and Agile workplace

Workplaces would converge and would provide an immersive platform both in the virtual & real environment. This would foster collaboration within the workplace and from the outside, which would start off with mobile devices playing the role of an anchor. This in our opinion, would give a two-way engagement of improved connection in a near virtual environment for people working at the workplace with their colleagues who are at a remote location or vice versa. Audio-Video interfaces, collaboration, and management tools are going to facilitate space management, service coordination, demand-based activities, traceability of data & assets, and several new digital use cases which would transform the work & workplaces and would have an infinite impact on people and the way they do business.

3. Collaboration
With hybrid & new work-formats gaining significant acceptance and workplaces being re-purposed; the issue of people collaboration is now becoming a critical agenda and key priority for most organizations. Collaboration is critical in the new-normal as people would interact on virtual platforms and in many cases not as often as earlier. While this offers significant flexibility for the employees, the organizations are keen that the workplace & the work processes are agile, real-time, and are digitally enabled to foster seamless collaboration, coordination amongst all stakeholders of the business.

A survey by Forbes Insights found out that the digital workspace employees reported a significantly greater impact on productivity (63%) than on accomplishing more in a typical workday (38%), with the help of business applications. Take a real-life example; Imagine, before you start your day at the workplace; you get a notification stating that your work desk is cleaned, sanitized, and ready for you, your morning coffee is booked with the cafeteria, and meeting rooms are already booked with the necessary IT requirements. You have your schedule on your mobile and when you reach the office, you can just begin your day without wasting your time on such tedious tasks! Automation will not only help in improving the efficiency of an employee but also figure out how your service team is performing, enhancing collaboration between various functions of a business, and build a more transparent culture.

Keeping people, processes, assets, and operations together to keep pace with the workplace of the future would drive investment and operation strategies of all organizations in the next 6 quarters.

The workplace of the future will be different across all organizations and technology and digital applications are going to play a significant role in transforming the workplaces of today to the workplaces of the future.

One couldn’t have seen a more exciting time in the workplace tech environment than this!