Working at home or in the office? Anyway, that’s what a start-up is for.

Timothy James Writes:
6 July 2021:
SAN FRANCISCO — Before the pandemic, Envoy, a San Francisco start-up, sold office visitor tracking software. The system registered guests and kept track of who entered the building.

When COVID-19 beat and forced people to work from home, Envoy adapted. It started tracking workers rather than just visitors, with a screening system asking workers about possible Covid symptoms and exposures.

As companies begin to reopen offices and promote greater flexibility for employees, Envoy is once again changing its strategy. The latest product, Envoy Desks, allows employees to reserve desks for when they enter their company’s workplace, in a bet that assigned cubicles and in the office five days a week belong to the past.

Envoy is part of a wave of start-ups seeking to capitalize on America’s shift to hybrid work. Companies are selling more flexible office layouts, new video calling software and tools for digital connectivity within teams – trying to prove that their offerings will bridge the gap between a personal and remote workforce.

The start-ups are battling for their foothold as more and more companies announce plans for hybrid work, requiring employees to come only part of the week and work from home the rest of the time. In May, a survey of 100 companies conducted by McKinsey found that nine out of ten organizations planned to combine remote and on-site work even after it was safe to return to the office.

Offering remote working tools is potentially lucrative. According to research firm Gartner, companies spent $317 billion on information technology for remote work last year. Gartner estimated that spending this year would increase to $333 billion.

Hybrid and remote working can bring benefits to employees for whom office environments were never suitable, says Kate Lister, president of the consulting firm Global Workplace Analytics. This includes women, racial minorities, people with caring responsibilities and people with disabilities, as well as introverts and people who simply prefer to work odd hours or in solitude.

But she and others also warned that the move to hybrid work could turn telecommuters into “second-class citizens.” Workers who lack the camaraderie of face-to-face meetings or the spontaneity of hallway chats may end up being passed over for pay raises and promotions, they said.

That’s where their products come in, say startup founders.

Rajiv Ayyangar, the chief executive and co-founder of Tandem, leads one of several software startups that have created desktop apps that help teams collaborate better and recreate the feeling of being in the office. He said Tandem’s product tried to help with “presence” — the ability to know in real time what your teammates are up to, even when the employee isn’t with his colleagues in the office.

Tandem’s desktop program, which costs $10 per month for each user, shows what teammates are working on, letting colleagues know if they’re available for an impromptu video call in the app. The user status list is automatically updated to let people know if their colleagues are on a call, writing in Google Docs, or doing some other task.

Pragli and Tribe, two software startups that have been around since 2019, also offer similar products. People can use Pragli’s product to make standing audio or video calls that others can join. It’s free, although the company plans to introduce a paid product. Tribe’s software uses busy and available states to facilitate video calls on the platform; it is currently only accessible by invitation.

Owl Labs, a start-up founded in 2017, is also trying to tackle “presence.” It creates a 360-degree video camera, microphone and speaker that sits in the center of a conference table and automatically zooms in on the person speaking.
The company, which said its customers have quadrupled to more than 75,000 organizations due to the pandemic, said the $999 camera was a way for remote workers to participate in office meetings by being able to see everyone speaking, in instead of the limited view made possible by a single laptop camera.

Other start-ups, such as Kumospace and Mmhmm, said yes working on improving video communication for hybrid work. Kumospace, a video calling start-up, structures conversations so that users enter a virtual room. They then navigate the room using the arrow keys and can talk to people if they are close by.

The design aims to mimic personal socialization where people can wander and have multiple conversations in the same room. That in contrast to a service like Zoom, where everyone is in the same conversation by default as soon as they start the video call.

Mmhmm, created by Evernote note-taking and productivity app founder Phil Libin, offers a variety of interactive video backgrounds, slideshow sharing tools, and other features for live conversations and asynchronous presentations. It has a free version and a premium version, which costs $8.33 per employee per month.

Some companies said their products can help companies understand their space usage as fewer employees need desks. Density, a start-up in San Francisco, makes a product that uses custom depth sensors to measure how many people are entering an area or using an open space. Companies can then analyze that data to understand how much of their office space they are actually using, and downsize if necessary.
Density also plans to offer other tools for hybrid work. Last month, it took on a software start-up that provides a desk and room reservation system.

Envoy said its new Desks product had attracted 400 companies, including clothing retailer Patagonia and film company Lionsgate.

“The companies that use us get much more accurate data that is standardized across all of their offices worldwide,” said Larry Gadea, CEO of Envoy. “And then it’s about using that data to inform space planning things. Do we need more floors? Do we need more meeting rooms? Do we need more desks? Do we need more desks for this one team?”

Lionsgate said it had been using Envoy’s products before the pandemic. When the coronavirus arrived, it turned to Envoy’s employee screening software to provide health checks to those entering the office.

With more employees returning to personal work, the company uses Envoy to manage where everyone sits and track who’s coming in. Lionsgate said the information could help determine how often teams should be in the office.

“We will really know how much space we need,” said Heather Somaini, Chief Administrative Officer of Lionsgate. “So I think it will be very helpful.”
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