The emergence of the hybrid era is undeniable. It has revolutionized workstyles all over the world, and led us to completely rethink our work models - which means more work to figure it all out.
This profound upheaval had two main consequences for the work environment:
Among the most-used solutions - and even before the pandemic - are desk booking softwares. We can find dozens of different desk-booking tools, used by millions of employees across the world on a daily basis.
According to the most recent studies and examples from Future of Work leading companies, booking an office or a room no longer seems to be the top priority for companies with a hybrid work model. What is? Reinforcing team cohesion, feelings of belonging, culture, or even offering a more flexible work environment are among the most cited by these studies.
The new challenges and problems brought by this transition to the hybrid way of working lead us to wonder whether desk booking solutions are still the best suited to help modern organizations thrive.
Thus, many companies have been gradually looking to offload their desk booking softwares to meet their new needs - and good news is, there are many solutions!
Here’s our 10 best desk booking alternatives for a hybrid work model:
Used for: Social & Culture, Office and Schedule Management, Space Booking, Analytics
Available on: Web App, IOS, Android, Slack, Microsoft Teams
Café offers new ways to schedule real-life interactions across teams to improve serendipity and connectivity in your organization.
Café connects people across the organization in three ways: by getting to know each other’s hobbies, encouraging in-person meetups, and organizing events.
Best features:
- Slack & Microsoft Teams integration: set locations, view teammates' statuses based on calendars (meetings, office hours, birthdays) and see where team and work besties are working from.
- Get detailed office & event analytics to build the best hybrid strategy
- Create and customize your profile with interests to let people know who you are
- Create and manage events, celebrating birthdays, work anniversaries and welcoming new hires
Hybrid companies using Café:
Veepee, Chick-Fil-A, Wise, Amadeus
Pricing and reviews:
Best for: Desk and Room booking, Guest Management, Shared Schedules
Available on: Web App, Slack, Microsoft Teams
Between traditional desk-booking and hybrid management tools, Pult is one of the few solutions offering desk and room booking, hybrid scheduling as well as guest management. As most of the modern hybrid platforms, Pult can be easily plugged in and used with Slack or Microsoft Teams.
- Office insights, analytics and predictions
- Integration with Personio
- Guest Management
- Desk and room booking
- Workplace planner and shared calendar
HeyCar, Chrono24, Penta, Pawlik
Best for: Shared Schedules, Random Coffee, Slack Users, Analytics
Available on: Web App, Slack
Scoop is the hybrid schedule built in Slack, allowing users to easily find out who's coming to the office. Scoop is a perfect alternative if you're looking for a basic tool to choose the best day to come to the office, meet your teammates and engage employees. Scoop also gives detailed analytics to track office attendance.
- Weekly or daily summary of who is coming to the office
- Set status in Slack to let people know where you work from
- Sync with your Google Calendar and see your upcoming meetings
- Plan in-person meetings and rituals when you come to the office
Best for: Desk booking, Slack Users, Analytics
Available on: Web App, Slack
If you're looking to replace your old desk-booking with a solution that fully (and only) integrates with Slack, Officely may be the best alternative!
Once you connect the Officely app with your Slack workspace, your team will be able to book a desk and see who's coming to the office in a dedicated Slack Channel.
Additionally, Officely also offers detailed analytics to track office attendance and occupancy rate.
- Book rooms and desk from Slack
- See who's coming in the Office and get visibility over
- Customize your booking options: parking, bike racks…
- Find events and announcements
- Get insights and analytics from office usage
Time spent working from home or remotely has increased very sharply in the past 3 years. And this sudden change increased the feeling of isolation and loneliness for many employees.
On the other hand, many companies have switched from a full-office to a virtual or remote-first model. Either way, desk-booking tools are no longer meeting all the needs of these companies, and virtual work software has turned into an interesting alternative.
Best for: Remote Work, Event Management & Social, Virtual Meetings
Available on: Web App
Gather allows remote-first and virtual companies to re-create their workspace in a fully virtual environment, including the social interactions and the serendipity of being at the office.
It also helps teams to better collaborate while working remotely with integrated tools and widgets.
To summarize, platforms like Gather are reducing the limits between social, productivity, and workplace management tools, removing lots of friction caused by full-remote working.
- Integrated tools to improve collaboration and cohesion (whiteboards, documents, games, etc.)
- Fully customizable space: choose a template, decorate your desks, or create a fully custom environment
- Host 1:1 or team meetings and link your space to your Google Calendar
- Create social events from a variety of social activities
Y Combinator, Notion, Yelp, Amplitude
Best for: Remote Work, Event Management & Social
Available on: Mac, Windows
If you're enticed by the idea of creating a virtual version of your office, but mainly to help your employees to socialize, SoWork may be the solution you need.
Working in a hybrid environment doesn't imply that all the employees can easily meet and connect IRL - they may need somewhere else, other than the office. SoWork is a very gamified platform, built for a social purpose: to strengthen your company culture by connecting people with events.
- Create and personalize your offices and room - including decoration!
- Create and host office events in SoWork, from 20min to 24h
- Browse and customize activities to find the perfect event for your team
Microsoft, Tinder, Pernod Ricard, Harvard Business School
Switching to a hybrid model and a hybrid tool doesn't mean you no longer have to manage your workspaces. Some things remain essential to keep your places and people safe and organized, such as employee check-in or guest management. If you're looking for a robust solution to better manage your workspaces, here are a couple of suggestions:
Best for: Guest Management, Office Management, Security & Compliance
Available on: WebApp, Mobile App
Swipedon is a platform that centralizes and organizes your workplace, making it friction-free for your employees to join. It offers plenty of possibilities for employees, guests, contractor management, as well as room and desk booking.
But what makes Swipedon different from most of the desk booking solutions is its ease of use, the visibility it gives to workplace managers and above all - the platform has been designed to prioritize the safety and health of its users.
- Self check-in and manage your guest from Apple and Android devices or no device with a QR-only option
- Create custom sign in flows to manage contractors
- Security and privacy options to ensure users health and safety
- Recreate your floor plan, configure desks and booking options
KrispyKreme, Asics, CAT, Mitsubishi Motors
Best for: Desk Boooking, Analytics, Guest Management.
Available on: WebApp, Mobile App
Getnspace is a simple and modern software, built to offer hybrid employee visibility over people, places and schedules when it comes to joining the office.
As with most desk-booking, Getnspace allows you to upload a very detailed floor plan to book desk and meeting rooms, but also displays a visit planner to let people know who's coming to the office.
On top of that, Getnspace offers workplace managers and administrators detailed workplace analytics, as well as guest management.
- Intuitive desk-booking
- Visit planer to see who's at the office
- Detailed workplace analytics
- Analytics API to Customize analytics dashboards
United Way, Baylis Medical, Second Harvest
The most valuable learning that every company or employee got from the post pandemic and return to office period: people tend to feel isolated if there isn't intentional room for connection. This social environment is vital for the well-being of the employee, the cohesion as well as the feeling of belonging to a company.
Going hybrid or remote-first is such an important challenge - and a risk, for companies that don't manage to keep a high level of social interaction. If you're in this situation, here are a couple of options:
Best for: Event management, Internal communication, Feedback & NPS
Available on: WebApp
Epoch is an all-in-one employee experience platform, built to help office managers and HR teams to engage, entertain and connect their employees while strengthening the company culture. The platform allows you to create, manage and promote events, learning programs and internal initiatives from one place. Epoch integrates with every-day tools to automate announcements via Slack, calendars or email. On top of that, Epoch gives you the possibility to track engagement, participation, and feedback with reporting and analytics from your events and communications.
- Streamline and schedule all your communications
- Integration with everyday tools (chats, calendars, meetings…)
- Detailed analytics to track engagement, participation, and feedbacks
Instacart, Reddit, Asana, Unity
Best for: Random Coffee, Celebrations, Slack Users
Available on: WebApp, Slack App
If you're looking to bring more fun and connectivity across your organization, Donut may be for you.This Slack app, designed for remote and remote-first teams, helps people to connect and build internal networks across the organization. Donut allows you to use Slack to celebrate birthdays and new hires, connect people from different teams or share news and fun. Last but not least, Donut also improves collaboration and internal communication by encouraging you to design mentorship and peer-to-peer review programs.
- Virtual water cooler Slack channel
- Integration with Zoom to ice break your meetings
- Random matching to build internal network
- Mentorship program to strengthen culture and cohesion
- Automated birthday and new hire alerts
Slack, Netflix, Okta, Buffer
Best for: Desk and Room booking, Shared Schedule, Slack Users
Available on: Slack
Hot Desk is building the most simplified hybrid tool, making it easy for people to book spaces and meet at the office directly from the Slack App and in a single click. Hot Desk also gives you access to a shared calendar to see who's coming to the office.
- See who's coming at the office today
- Book a room directly from Slack
- Browse spaces, get capacity and equipment information
- Display your meetings and booking in Slack
Best for: Desk and Room booking, Analytics, Slack Users
Available on: Webapp, Slack
Buka is also one of the simplest and most convenient tools to use if you're looking for a new desk-booking solution that integrates with Slack.
Use Buka dedicated channels to book a desk or a room, see who's coming to the office today and access your analytics dashboard.
- Book a room directly from Slack
- Office and rooms shared schedule
- Browse spaces, get capacity and equipment information
- Office analytics
