Workplace operations insights

Workplace Automation: The Basics

What is workplace automation

Workplace automation encompasses all software-driven office processes in which a defined rule or algorithm determines the next step.

This ranges from automatic booking confirmations to rescheduling meeting rooms when the number of participants does not match the room size. In this way, workplace automation goes beyond mere digitization measures. Digitization converts paper forms into machine-readable data. Automation handles the resulting tasks on its own.

Which office processes can be automated?

Processes that occur daily and always follow the same or a similar pattern are ready for automation.

How does automated room and desk booking work?

For example, an automated meeting room management system detects when two people book a conference room that is actually designed to accommodate 20 people. The system identifies the discrepancy and automatically rebooks the reservation into a smaller, suitable room.

This reduces the number of conflicts over available spaces and frees up time for office managers that was previously spent on manual adjustments. Workplace automation via Wi-Fi check-in takes this a step further: As soon as you log in to the office with your device, the system automatically reserves your desk without a single click.

What compliance considerations must a company keep in mind when implementing workplace automation?

Automating office processes always involves processing data. Therefore, three points must be clarified:

How do I get started with Workplace Automation?

To automate your workplace, start by identifying all the processes that, although they follow a very consistent pattern, are repeatedly carried out manually by employees. Review these processes and provide your team with software to automate them. The more processes a single software solution can handle, the fewer new tools you'll need to burden your team with.

Here's how PULT puts your office management on autopilot

Your workplace automations work best when they're bundled into a single software solution rather than spread across multiple tools. You can bundle workstation and room reservations, presence detection, occupancy analysis, visitor management, and parking management into PULT:

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Huddle Meeting: The Basics

What is a huddle meeting?

A huddle meeting is a short, structured team discussion of a fixed duration (10 to 15 minutes) that takes place daily. The goal is to coordinate efforts. Discussions should be held in separate follow-up meetings. Each team member answers the same three questions:

The concept originates from Scrum, where the daily huddle is known as the daily standup. It is now also used by HR, operations, and sales teams, as well as cross-functional teams that coordinate across locations.

What is the proper format for a huddle meeting?

The huddle meeting format requires three key conditions to be effective: strict adherence to the schedule, the assignment of a facilitator, and a fixed list of participants.

What changes in the team huddle meeting in a hybrid office?

In teams where some members are in the office and others are working remotely, three issues arise that could undermine the format: remote participants become passive listeners, discussions in the plenary session get out of hand, or technical problems delay or prolong the meeting.

Checklist for Hybrid Team Huddle Meetings:

Clear hybrid work policies are essential for this model to work for everyone involved.

What legal considerations must companies keep in mind during their daily huddle meetings?

Daily huddle meetings count as work time and must be documented as part of time tracking. This also applies to brief 10-minute check-ins.

If you record video huddles, you need a GDPR-compliant legal basis and must inform participants in advance. If the huddle format is used for regular performance monitoring, a company agreement may also be required.

How to Make Huddle Meetings a Permanent Part of Your Hybrid Team

A huddle meeting is only effective when time management, structure, and the facilitator's role work together seamlessly. In a hybrid work environment, a fourth factor comes into play: transparency about who is working, when, and from where. Daily check-ins help to improve the employee experience because coordination routines become reliable and transparent for everyone.

Use PULT to see where your colleagues are working

PULT shows you at any time who is in the office and who is working remotely. You can also see your colleagues' scheduled attendance and receive reports on your teams' attendance. Desk booking, room booking, visitor management, and office insights are all integrated into a single platform.

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Office Organization: The Basics

What does office organization involve?

Office organization encompasses the physical layout of the workspace, filing systems, and day-to-day office procedures. It addresses three things at once: where documents are stored, how workstations are assigned, and the rules by which the team operates. A well-organized office runs smoothly over the long term without the need for daily reminders.

Most attempts at office organization fail because they lack sustainability. Checklists and reminders work for a few days, but then the old habits return. The reason: A rule without a system always depends on the discipline of each individual. A system, on the other hand, maintains order on its own because it specifies where things belong and who is responsible for them.

How do I set up an effective filing system in the office?

An effective filing system organizes documents according to a single, clearly defined principle. Three systems have proven effective:

The clean desk policy also forms the basis for a sustainable filing system. If every desk is cleared at the end of the workday and every document has a designated place, those piles of paper that later become impossible to trace back to anyone never accumulate in the first place.

Label each folder and compartment clearly, and establish a rule for who puts documents back in their proper place. These three points will keep your filing system organized, even as your team grows.

What filing systems are suitable for everyday office work on the computer?

To organize your files on your computer, you need a flat folder structure with clear naming conventions. Deep nesting, on the other hand, tends to waste time and leads to duplicate files. Three rules will help keep your structure clean:

The division between paper and computer is as follows:

How is hybrid work changing the way offices are organized?

Hybrid work shifts the focus of office organization from filing to space and attendance planning. As soon as part of your team isn’t on-site every day, desks sit empty, meeting rooms are booked remotely for the coming days, and no one knows for sure who will be in the office on a given weekday. Office organization thus directly impacts the daily planning of the entire team.

How do I organize desk sharing and meeting rooms in a hybrid office?

Shared workspaces only work if there are established booking rules. Without them, you’ll run into exactly the kinds of friction you’d most likely want to avoid: disputes over desks and meeting rooms that are either overcrowded or booked but empty. The foundation is laid by binding rules for workspace sharing, which specify how long a desk remains reserved and what happens at the end of the day.

When it comes to meeting rooms, the problem usually lies in the booking process itself. A large room is reserved for just two people, while a small one is overbooked. Automated meeting room management solves this by checking bookings and rebooking them as needed.

How do I organize my office when employees are also working from home?

If you want to organize your office while part of the team is working from home, you need constant coordination between both locations.

Once current and planned availability is visible to the team regardless of location, desks, meetings, and handoffs can be scheduled without everyone having to check with each other individually.

Systematic Office Organization: How to Keep Your Daily Office Routine Running Smoothly

Office organization requires clear rules for shared workspaces and a planning system that provides visibility into attendance and space utilization. PULT automatically detects your colleagues’ presence, enables your team to plan and book in advance, and helps ensure that all resources are allocated fairly:

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The Paperless Office: The Basics

What distinguishes a truly paperless office from a digital filing system?

Going paperless starts with ensuring that a process—such as approving a vacation request or processing an incoming invoice—runs from start to finish without any physical documents. If, on the other hand, you simply scan a document and forward the PDF via email, you’ve eliminated the paper, but not the process.

Document vs. Process: What's the Difference?

Document digitization converts a paper document into a file. Process digitization redesigns the workflow behind it: Who submits the request, and where? Who approves it, and how? Where is the result stored in an audit-proof manner and immediately retrievable? Only when both are combined can a paperless office without parallel structures be achieved.

What aspects of office work can be made paperless?

As a general rule, almost all processes that have been handled on paper up to now can be digitized:

What legal considerations do I need to keep in mind when setting up a paperless office?

The key legal pillars of the paperless office in Germany are the GoBD, document retention periods, and the e-invoicing requirement.

GoBD and Audit-Compliant Archiving

A digitally archived document is considered GoBD-compliant if it meets three principles:

Retention periods apply regardless of format: 10 years for accounting documents, balance sheets, and tax-related business correspondence; 6 years for other business correspondence. A GoBD-certified document management system (DMS) then technically implements these requirements.

E-Invoicing and Other Digitalization Requirements

Starting in January 2025, all B2B companies in Germany must be able to receive e-invoices. The requirement to send e-invoices will take effect in 2027 for companies with annual revenue exceeding 800,000 euros, and in 2028 for all companies.

Beforehand, the general processing of invoices should already be fully digitized so that the transition to e-invoicing can then be made with comparable ease.

What software do I need for a paperless office?

Setting up the right software infrastructure for a paperless office means making a decision for each category and finding the best tools for hybrid work for the company. Four categories cover the majority of paper-related processes:

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How do I implement a paperless office step by step?

To move toward a paperless office, first map out the processes taking place in your office, review and streamline the most important ones, select the appropriate software, and then work with your team to implement the now-digital process.

How to Keep Your Office Paperless for the Long Term

Your employees will follow the digital processes as long as there is no reason to deviate from them. Therefore, the processes—and especially the software—in the paperless office must offer them everything that was previously possible on paper and even go beyond that.

With PULT, you can manage all aspects of your office operations: room reservations and automated meeting room management, presence detection, office usage analytics, visitor reception, and more:

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