Syneos Health Case Study

THE CHALLENGE

Keeping five critical locations open across multiple jurisdictions

As an end-to-end biopharmaceutical organization, Syneos Health facilities cater to the needs of a wide variety of cross-functional teams that require in-office access. So when the pandemic struck, going fully remote and closing down facilities wasn’t an option.

The Corporate Real Estate and Services team at Syneos Health needed to keep five critical sites open and provide a controlled, safe way for essential employees to access available offices to continue important clinical research.

But without a unified workplace management platform in place, deploying a return to office strategy was a near-impossible task.

THE Solution

Empowering each location to take a jurisdiction-specific approach

To comply with the huge variance in local COVID-19 guidelines impacting all Syneos Health facilities, it was clear that each location would have to oversee its own return to office strategy.

It was also clear that manual systems and spreadsheets were not robust enough to respond effectively to the challenges of COVID-19.

Best-in-class tools were needed to control capacity, manage desk bookings, monitor office usage, and keep employees safe while offices remained open for business-critical tasks.

To empower local Office Activation Teams with all of the workplace management tools, reports, and insights they needed to oversee a return to office strategy that worked for their respective jurisdictions, SVP of Corporate Real Estate and Services Patrick Hoffman and his team moved quickly to roll OfficeSpace out to many of the company’s key locations.

Here’s how teams at Syneos Health leveraged features like Safeguard, Desk Booking, and Visual Directory^® to maintain employee safety, ensure compliance, and respond quickly to COVID-19 guidelines.

With Safeguard, you can comply with local law in each jurisdiction much faster. Otherwise, we would have had to manually check with anyone entering the facility. Safeguard provided a system to confirm and track compliance, and keep everyone safe.

Patrick Hoffman
SVP of Corporate Real Estate and Services, Syneos Health

Using safeguard globally for contact tracing and compliance

Safeguard allows workplace teams to screen employees for COVID-19 risk factors, with customizable forms that are built into OfficeSpace.

Teams at each location were able to create customized wellness checks that complied with all local COVID-19 workplace screening regulations.

With every employee completing a Safeguard form before entering the workplace, the tool was a great way to record and report on office attendance and support contact tracing efforts when required.

To ensure ongoing compliance, Safeguard forms were quickly updated whenever jurisdictional guidelines changed—increasing or decreasing office capacity limits, requiring workplaces to screen every individual for COVID-19 risk factors, and so on.

 We were very concerned when a mandate came out from the Governor of New Jersey that said we needed to track everybody that came into the building. Without OfficeSpace, it would have taken us longer to comply with paper forms and manual tracking. Fortunately, we could deploy the tool to efficiently keep our facility operational and in compliance.

Patrick Hoffman
SVP of Corporate Real Estate and Services, Syneos Health

Complying with strict COVID-19 regulations in New Jersey

When the Governor of New Jersey introduced COVID-19 workplace guidelines, employers were required to limit capacity and conduct daily health checks of employees in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance.

But with the Syneos Health facility in Princeton, New Jersey location focuses primarily on laboratory work, employees couldn’t perform their work at home. Director of Corporate Services at the location, Kevin Dreher, used Safeguard and Desk Booking to ensure the facility remained compliant and operational.

“Before OfficeSpace, we didn’t have a formal mechanism to assess employees before they entered the workplace. So when New Jersey said we had to have one in place by November 5, 2020, we moved quickly to set up Desk Booking and Safeguard.”

“New Jersey indicated that they may check workplace compliance. To make sure we were compliant with all workplace screening requirements, we required employees to book a desk and complete a Safeguard form before they entered the office.”

Kevin has been tracking who is (and who isn’t) completing their Safeguard forms every day. And so far the adoption rate has been near perfect.

“Based on nearly three months of data, we’ve recorded over 4,000 office entries. 97% of employees are filling out a Safeguard form.”

I’ve had employees thank me for introducing Safeguard. It makes people really, really think about and challenge themselves a bit, by asking whether they should really be going to the office today.

Kevin Dreher
Director of Corporate Real Estate, Syneos Health

Safely returning employees to offices across six different countries

As the Corporate Real Estate Manager for Latin America (LATAM), Alberto Reyes oversees 11 Syneos Health office locations in 6 different countries.

With each country setting a different list of COVID-19 workplace guidelines, Alberto and his team turned to OfficeSpace to safely return employees to each location.

To comply with social distancing and capacity limits in Mexico, Alberto had to convert a 400-seat office from assigned seating to hot desking. The process only took two hours using Distancing Planner and Desk Booking.

Safeguard forms were also customized for each location, to ensure that employees were meeting COVID-19 workplace screening requirements before entering the office for the day.

In Mexico, we had to comply with six-feet social distancing between desks and a 20% capacity limit. It only took us two hours to convert a 400-seat office from assigned seating to hot desking using OfficeSpace.

Alberto Reyes
Corporate Real Estate Manager LATAM, Syneos Health

Monitoring daily attendance and coordinating cleaning schedules in Spain

Before the pandemic, Office Manager Susana Fraile Vesperinas was using OfficeSpace to provide bookable desks for travelling employees, maximize desk availability, and improve space utilization at Syneos Health locations in Madrid and Barcelona.

Thankfully, with OfficeSpace in place, Susana and her team were able to adapt quickly and keep the company’s Spanish offices safe, compliant, and operational.

To comply with Spain’s COVID-19 workplace restrictions, Susana established a maximum number of employees that could go to the office each day and made every desk bookable by request.

With intuitive desk booking software, touchless check-in, and real-time workplace floor plans available on any device, Susana and her team were able to limit surface sharing in the workplace by requiring Syneos Health employees to find and book desks using a personal device before entering the office.

“Employees are really happy with OfficeSpace. Everyone can quickly book a desk on the web or on their phone. Unlike our previous system, OfficeSpace is so easy to use that nobody is coming to the office without making a reservation first.”

Susana and her team use Safeguard and Daily Desk Booking Reports to ensure compliance, monitor attendance, and coordinate cleaning teams.

“Our cleaning teams use the Daily Desk Bookings Report in OfficeSpace to identify all of the desks that have been used. They can see when employees will be leaving for the day and coordinate their approach to cleaning desks throughout each office.”

THE results

Beyond supporting Syneos Health’s response to the pandemic, the team are using OfficeSpace to plan for the future.

Beyond supporting Syneos Health in their response to the pandemic, Patrick and his team are using OfficeSpace to plan for the future.

As restrictions begin to ease, Syneos Health teams will use tools like Scenarios to adapt floor plans, Visual Directory^® to familiarize returning employees with new office layouts, and Workplace Reports to make data-driven changes to keep improving the workplace over time.

“No matter what experts have suggested, no one knows how people are going to use the workspace on the other side of this. And there’s no better predictor than letting people vote with their feet.”

“Knowing who’s using our offices, having good data on occupancy, good data, and utilization, that’s going to be critical as we fine tune the portfolio on the other side of this. And I can’t imagine how you would do that without a tool like OfficeSpace.”

Employees are really happy with OfficeSpace. Everyone can quickly book a desk on the web or on their phone. Unlike our previous system, OfficeSpace is so easy to use that nobody is coming to the office without making a reservation first.

Susana Fraile Vesperinas
Office Manager Corporate Real Estate and Services Spain, Syneos Health