The intheOffice Story
Recently ITO founder Jon Kent and chief product officer Adam launched a new podcast/Vlog - intheOffice Cast - about leadership, business culture and the world of hybrid working. Their first vlog was all about going back to the beginning of how, and more importantly why intheOffice software came into fruition
Article length: 3,986 words
Time to read: 13 minutes
Adam
Hi, welcome to our very first vlog with Jon Kent, founder of intheOffice.
My name is Adam Scorey and I work for Jon as the chief storyteller, a bit of a jack of all trades.I'm not sure if I'm master of any, but thanks very much, Jon, for taking part in this, this little chat.
When we sat down, we decided that we wanted to tell a little bit of the background story. So we thought what better way to do it than to create a little video.
So Jon thankfully agreed, came out of his developing hole, if you like. And so, yeah, we thought we'd give you a little bit of insight into what goes on and how intheOffice started. So I guess with no further ado, Jon.
Yeah. So first of all, it's probably a good place to start. What is intheOffice?
Jon
So yeah, well, intheOffice is an online app that helps teams to manage and navigate this world of hybrid working. So crucially, it's a way that team members can indicate to each other when they're planning to work in the office, when they're planning to work from home. And with that sort of coordination, be able to be more productive and make sure that you avoid the stereotypical, I've commuted into the office, I turn up and no one's there.
“IntheOffice is an online app that helps teams to manage and navigate this world of hybrid working.”
And so I stop wanting to do it going forwards. So that's the main thing that intheOffice does. Yeah.
Adam
And it's kind of split up into multiple functionalities, isn't it? So that it's designed to solve not just one problem. And it's not just like a team's chat.
Tell us a little bit about some of the other elements that will be in it, space booking and all that kind of stuff.
Jon
Sure. Yeah. So I mean, it started off just being that sort of where are you planning to work during the day?
But obviously that as a sort of first step is great. But then if you do go into the office, you need to make sure you've got a desk, booked a desk/hot-desk. So it's got the facility to book a desk.
We call them spaces. And actually with the spaces, it can be anything that's a resource that's limited within the company. So it could be you're booking a desk, you're booking a meeting room, you're even booking your dog in.
If you've got a maximum number of dog baskets in the office, anything like that, any resource that you need to book, we've got that facility within the platform. You can also do things like set yourself to be offsite. So if you're seeing a client, you can then say that you're offsite.
So people know that you're not working from home and not in the office. So if they're trying to contact you and you're not responding, they know why. And also things like visitor management.
So making sure that you know exactly who's in the office at any one time. Because of course, one of the biggest issues with hybrid working at the moment is you don't have a consistent number of people in the office. So whereas before the COVID all happened, you know pretty much if people weren't in the office, then they're off sick.
So if there was a fire or something, it would be pretty easy to make sure that everyone had left the building. Now, of course, everyone's moving around a lot more. So making sure that that's something that's managed by office managers is really vitally important.
Adam
Now, you mentioned office managers there. That's quite an important thing too. Who is this tool for? Because is it for everybody? Is it specific types of person? Can you shed a bit of light on that?
Jon
Yeah, sure. So I mean, ultimately, the tool's for the ultimate sort of staff member. It's a tool that's meant to be for, you know, when we use it, it means that I know which days you're working from home, which days, you know, we're meeting up in the office.
That's who it's for, but it's usually needed by people like office managers who are trying to make sure that they've got enough desks available. They've got, you know, the catering staff. If you're lucky enough to have catering, know the number of people that are coming in so they don't overbuy or underbuy food.
So it's very much the people that this is interesting to are, you know, the office managers, facilities managers, HR as well, and team leaders. So obviously, if you're running a team, you need to know where your team are so that you can coordinate on the days where you need to work together and collaborate. And also, you can make sure that people, you know, you know what people are doing the rest of the week.
Adam
Thanks, Jon. Now, obviously, it's quite a big deal to set up a business, leave a well-paid job and then go, right, I'm going to do this myself. So what was the sort of the problem or the challenge that you said, I need to solve this?
Jon
So it's a good question. So it was during the during the first lockdown, I was going around to a friend's house actually and started to think about what the world would be like after the pandemic. And it was very clear to me quite early on that, you know, we've all been working from home for however many months it was, it seems like it was a very long time, you know, going out for your one hour's worth of exercise every day.
And I was just thinking, well, you know, everything hasn't, the world hasn't imploded. So the likelihood is that people are going to carry on working from home. And I know with my teams, we were allowed to work from home one day a week.
But with everything that was going on and changing requirements with the job and with the team and things like that, that one day working from home wouldn't always align. And the worst thing, the worst experience we had was, you know, you're trying to have a meeting with people where you can exchange ideas. And doing that virtually just for me isn't the same as being in person.
I prefer to do it in person. If you've got a designer who's on a Zoom call, then, you know, it's harder for them to interject and for you to come up with solutions together. I just thought this is a problem that's going to, you know, if people are working from home more, this is just going to get worse and worse.
And the only solutions out there were really the desk booking (hot-desking) systems, which, you know, for the company at the time, we had enough desks. So would anyone actually use a desk booking system? Probably not, because it's just another thing you've got to do.
So that's where I went. This is going to be a problem I thought is probably not a complicated problem to solve. You know, it's just a, how do you easily communicate it to everyone?
And that's where it sort of started from.
Adam
Yeah, I mean, the business I came from before was a very culturally quite forward-thinking one. But again, we suffered with the same challenge of we had to pick a day that we were all in and then sort of stick to that as a principle because we agreed. Yeah, of course, the whole point of coming to the office is to collaborate and be together and have that energy that comes, you know, when you're on the telephone, everyone's giving you that boost.
But it was kind of the tail wagging the dog a little bit sometimes because it didn't ever feel forced because the team were really great. But it was certainly being able to instead have the flexibility to go, well, we want to make sure they're all in, but how do we coordinate that in a way that feels kind of intuitive? So yeah, I think intheOffice where I work would have been really handy.
Jon
Well, I hope so. I mean, yeah, you're absolutely right. So my guide day was usually a Friday that I work from home.
And the reason that I needed to work from home was in my role as a product manager, you're constantly being dragged in every single direction. And there was no opportunity for me to actually sit down and do some deep work because I'd always be disturbed. So that's the reason that I wanted to work from home one day a week.
But then very quickly, you know, the Friday you'd end up having a meeting then or, you know, a client was coming in or whatever. So and then that week you wouldn't have a working from home day. So then it was really affecting my work.
So you try to manoeuvre it a bit. And it's as soon as you have that added flexibility that kind of opens a can of worms if it's not well managed. And that's really what I was after trying to solve.
Adam
So you've sat down, had a good think and thought, you know what, I can do a better job of this with that mission in mind. Where did you start? What was the starting point?
Jon
So, well, I've been, as I mentioned, I've been a product manager for quite a bit, lots of my career. And the key thing for that is to try to solve the ultimate problem that you're after. And so I had to look around at the other solutions that were available, which were, you know, typically hot-desking applications, desk booking applications, even Excel spreadsheets, things like that.
And, you know, a lot of people did actually revert to that as their solution. But that comes with all sorts of other issues, you know, like data fidelity and things like that. You know, it's very easy for someone to accidentally change a field on an Excel spreadsheet and then you can't necessarily report on it or do anything good with that information, which then enhances what you're trying to get out of it.
And things like the desk booking systems were all very much, they all seemed very inflexible to me. So in my career, all I've wanted to do is build something which is very useful for people, is very easy to use. And actually, with the typical software that you can get, it tends to be, you know, really long contracts that you have to sign up for.
It takes ages to onboard people, you know, typically some of the SaaS platforms that are out there take about six months to onboard, which to me doesn't seem right. I feel like that's sort of, if it takes that long, you can't really call yourself a software as a service. Yeah, exactly.
And, you know, it was just, it was a bit difficult to use. And I thought, well, things are going to be changing so quickly. So I need to, if I'm going to build something, it has to be something that from the ground up is really simple to use.
That users can basically get value from it by day one. So if they decide they're going to use it, they can sign up, start using it the same day, see value from it. And, you know, if the product's good enough, then you don't really need to lock people in for long contracts.
So I can then make a decision about where I'm going to work each day.
Adam
So that's what, 18 months ago, two years ago now that intheOffice has been running, growing with success over that period of time. Obviously, as now as an entrepreneur and as a business owner, it's quite different running your own business to being, you know, within the employ of somebody else. So what have been for you the greatest challenges so far that you found as a business owner, entrepreneur and now employer as well?
Jon
So I think the biggest challenge that I've had is probably more with the software and getting people to understand and trust what we're doing. There's what I typically saw during the pandemic. So obviously, I started building it during the first lockdown, released it, you know, maybe I think during the second or third one.
And of course, at that point, everyone was still in lockdown. So the need wasn't quite there. But the mindset of the people buying it does tend to be slightly more, I guess, antiquated is the possibly not nice way of putting it.
But people know the way that you usually procure software. And it tends to be that they're going, well, we're expecting a long onboarding process. We're expecting to be locked into a long contract.
If you give us too much flexibility, then are we going to mess it up? So, you know, the initial clients that we got on there did tend to be a lot of, well, how do I do this? How do I delete someone on the platform, for example?
And, you know, I can show them in three clicks and they're like, but it can't be that easy. There must be something else. Well, you know what's happening with their data and all of that sort of stuff.
Adam
So it's really hard?
Jon
It's sort of trying to show people that the way that I've built it was trying to make it as simple as possible. Really does mean that actually, you know, it's still a worthwhile system to have. And that was the core issue with the platform.
Obviously, you know, as the company's grown, we're lucky that because it's so simple, we don't have lots of support requests. So there's not a lot of my time that's taken from that. But it's then just trying to make sure that what we're building is actually going to solve the problems that people are having, you know, next week and the month after that and the month after that.
Rather than let's just build a system that is the same as all of the desk booking (hot-desking) systems that's out there.
Adam
Yeah, it's important not to be an also run, isn't it?
Jon
Well, yeah, exactly. And we've done that quite a lot with some of the features. So the, you know, interactive floor plan is one of the typical things that you see on desk booking apps.
And so many initial clients that I spoke to were like, well, you don't have an interactive floor plan. I said, well, actually, is that something that you really need? You know, you've got an office of 20 people.
You can see the desks. Do you really need to have an interactive floor plan or is it more? Which day is it?
You know, you're in on Tuesday. So I'll go in. We've got our desk.
We don't need to use a hot-desking app or anything like that. We just can sit down. But then as the bigger clients have come on, we came up with our own version of the interactive floor plan where rather than seeing, you know, individual desks, you saw, you'd see groups of desks and where people are sat.
So you can go. I know you're in the office today, Adam, and I need to sit next to you so I can see which one you've booked. There's a seat next to you.
I'll book that one. It doesn't matter where in the office it is. But I know that I'm going to be near you.
Adam
Yeah. It's that collaboration, being on a seat next to the person that can either add value or you enjoy working with or is actually good; I wouldn't need to do some deep work.
Someone's going to be quiet.
Jon
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And actually having, you know, being able to classify that within the system as well.
So you can just group. You can set up like neighbourhoods or a groups of desks. We call them ‘Areas’.
And you can have ‘Areas’ within areas. So we've got some clients where they've gone. This is the quiet area with, you know, 10 desks.
So if you book that, people know. I know that ‘Adam’ sat in the quiet area, so I'm not going to bother him. He obviously has a lot of work to do.
Adam
Or it's just introverted as a character and doesn't want to be put a sign on their back saying, don't bother me.
Jon
Yeah, exactly.
Adam
So obviously when you start a business, it's, you know, it's you look at individual problems and you tick those off along the way, which you seem to have done over the last 18 months or so. Certainly when I joined, there was a lot of smaller challenges that are built into one bigger platform.
And obviously it's still growing. But tell us a little bit about how you stick to that, because obviously when you start to get customers on, it's very easy to be pulled down a channel that you think, well, that's going to take us off from what our kind of core principles were. So how do you manage to kind of keep that vision of helping people and solving these problems, keeping it simple in your mind?
How do you keep that top of mind?
Jon
I think the main thing with everything that we're trying to do is to focus on the individual user rather than the office, for example. So a typical desk booking app will focus on office use. It's a tool to manage what's happening in the office.
Visitor management, for example, as well, is something to manage the visitors and the comings and goings of people in the office. What I'm trying to focus on is what's happening with the people. So rather than going, right, we'll do desk booking.
It's what's happening the stage before that. It's not just what happens in the offices. If you're working from home, can you signal to other people that actually you're busy?
So you don't get lots of Slack messages or Teams messages. And it's with that in mind that I've been prioritising the different features that we've built. And also, actually, we can get a request for a new feature.
So visitor management, for example, was a request for a feature. And I looked at it and thought, oh, is that that's possibly too office focused? And I was like, actually, no, it is useful as well, because I've got people signing up for a meeting.
I don't want to then be disturbed that someone's in reception and the receptionist doesn't know what to do with them or all of those sorts of things. I was thinking, actually, no, it does. It helps you get through your day better and helps you plan better.
And that's the way that we've been prioritising it, that if it's going to help people do more and be more efficient, then that's something worthwhile looking at. But then also second to that was mentioned the core foundations of it being really simple. There are so many systems out there.
There are individual products that are widely successful that just focus on one of these things. Just focus on the desk picking or just focus on visitor management or just focus on access control and whether or not if there's a fire, can you put a report of who's in the office at one point? And the problem is that they're all very complicated and very disparate.
So how can you bring that together in a way that everyone can use and actually provides the value that you need and almost provides just enough value to be worthwhile rather than all bells and whistles? So, you know, the main ethos is how can we do that and keep it as simple as humanly possible?
Adam
You spoke a little bit about there about the kind of hinted at the evolution over time. So what, in your mind, is the next steps for evolving intheOffice as a HR management tool, through to an office management tool, through to a health and safety? You know, it covers so many things, but what not kind of, I guess, would you be prepared to say what's next?
But, you know, where is intheOffice going?
Jon
Well, I think the, as I said, the main thing we want to be is a tool that helps people get more done during the day or at least coordinates things better. So, you know, there are in the world and, well, the sort of workplace environment and everything that happens with a workplace, there's so much that we could do. You know, you could start going down the route of sort of asset management and things like that to make sure that people have the right things at the right times.
I think for us, the main thing is to focus on making sure that people are being able to, are given the right tools to work in the best way possible. So whether that's making sure that they have access to offices or meeting rooms as they need, or even, you know, what happens at home. Are they, if they've got a home set up, which is suited for working from home, brilliant.
“I think for us, the main thing is to focus on making sure that people are being able to, are given the right tools to work in the best way possible.”
If it's not, what tools are needed in order to make that better? But also, you know, there is, you know, I was speaking to a client the other day where they've spent, they spent loads of money on an HR system. But the only thing they really use it for is holiday tracking and they don't actually use it for that.
So at the end of the year, they basically, the manager sends around the message saying, how many days holiday did you take this year? And, you know, and that, especially in European countries and stuff where you've got more, you've got stricter working time directive rules, you know, that's not, that's not good. And we know from the huge explosion in mental health awareness and how that's affecting us after the pandemic that actually working all hours of the day is not good.
So how can we make sure that people are actually working the right amount of time, taking the right breaks, all of that sort of stuff. And I think it's not about tracking what people are doing. It's just presenting the information so that people can make informed decisions is the main thing.
Adam
Making decisions with data. That's an important part of the software anyway. It's got a powerful analytics tool behind it.
You can, I think it's exportable data as well. You can see favourites and things like that as well. So that's what people need to know, isn't it?
If they're planning, changing an office, building it up, shrinking it down, turning it into a desk, or what is it, “hotel desking”, I think is a phrase that I've heard since joining. So you've given kind of a direction and said how you kind of, it's grown through conversations we've had and with clients and things. But what about taking that a bigger step further?
Do you have plans for that to kind of whether it's a pivot or whether it's expanding on just more features? What are your thoughts about the future in ITO?
Jon
So really what we're looking for in the future is to expand into different areas. So obviously, the more people using it, the better. And we've found that especially last year, a lot of our clients that were trialling it in one office have now expanded some of them globally because it is providing that sort of value.
So that's obviously really good for us for the sort of growth side. But we also do want to, there are loads of other opportunities in terms of features that we can provide, whether that is things like, you know, training, more information about individuals. So some ways that we can help teams to actually meld together better and then be better performers.
You know, the hardest thing about all of this is that it's with the pandemic and with now the huge arguments around whether or not hybrid working is going to stay. You know, what policy, what hybrid policies are you putting in place, mandates, all of those sorts of things, is that it's treating everyone as if they're the same. And as we know, everyone's different.
All companies are different. So the main thing is making sure that we can provide enough information so that each company and each team and actually even down to, you know, individual people can make the best decisions that work best for them and their company so that then the companies can be more successful. That's the worst thing you can possibly do is treat everyone as if they're completely identical because we're all different.
Adam
Yeah. And that's when the key to that is flexibility, isn't it? And trust, actually, is assuming that, you know, in the software that we're creating is enabling people to extend that flexibility and trust within and allowing people to make their own decisions as well.
And trusting people then to make those decisions rather than having a set sequence of days. I mean, pretty brave of a company to have a culture that allows that. But then I guess you could say, allow saying to businesses where there's no pre-set holiday, you take the holiday when you need it.
Initially, people took less holiday than they would have done if they had a pre-set amount of holiday. So I guess just these kind of things rolling out into businesses and understanding the individual, which makes it harder for the individual team manager there to kind of manage each person individually. They need a book, so a piece of software to pull all that together to a kind of app.
And then you get analysis, favourite days and all those kind of things. You can start to really understand your workforce and your team and how they work better and understand what productivity looks like in your own business too.
“You can start to really understand your workforce and your team and how they work better and understand what productivity looks like in your own business too.”
Jon
Yeah, and I think the thing that companies and people are sort of shying away from at the moment is that this is hard. This isn't a, you know, everyone's looking for that magic pill that you can just go, oh, that's the decision. Everything's going to be great now.
It is very much more like, you know, so the workplace is more like an economy where if you pull one lever, that's going to affect something else. So how do you try to get through the economy without a boom and bust? How can you make sure that we're just gradually moving forwards in a successful way?
And that takes work and takes experiments and takes trust, you know, takes psychological safety as well, that if you do fail as a team, you learn from it and move on. And, you know, it's trying to make sure that if you are going, if there's an opportunity to fail, that you're not going to necessarily fail so big that you can't recover. Move forwards.
Yes, exactly. So it's, and the only way that you get all of that stuff is if you are open and honest about what's actually happening, what opportunities you have, what choices you're making. You know, there was the law that was passed in the UK last year about, you know, the highlight of it was that you can request flexible working from day one.
Great idea. It shouldn't have to be a law. It should really just be something that was around already.
But is that actually going to make a difference? Because, you know, if you get to day one of your employment and you haven't said anything about flexible working, that's not going to set up a good relationship. And, you know, the whole world of work is about relationships and working together to build stuff and to do stuff.
So you have to focus on the people. You know, that's why you have to be people first in everything you do.
Adam
Jon, thank you so much. I know you're a busy chap. You know, running a company is a big ask, particularly when you're wearing seven different hats at once. So I appreciate the time. And thank you very much. Very insightful.
Jon
Thanks Adam. Cheers.
Watch Episode 1 below
Article Summary
Main ideas:
What is In The Office and who is it for?: intheOffice is an online app that helps teams to manage and navigate people-based desk booking and hybrid working by allowing them to indicate and coordinate their work location preferences, book office resources and handle visitor management. It is mainly designed for office managers, facilities managers, HR, and team/business leaders who need to ensure productivity and safety in the office.
What was the problem that inspired In The Office?: The founder of intheOffice, John Kent, was a product manager who experienced the challenges of hybrid working, such as misalignment of work from home days, lack of collaboration, and difficulty in finding a quiet space to do deep work. He realised that the existing solutions, such as desk booking systems and Excel spreadsheets, were either too complicated, inflexible or unreliable. He wanted to create a simple and easy-to-use tool that would help people plan their work location and avoid the frustration of commuting to an empty or crowded office.
How does intheOffice differ from other similar products?: intheOffice differs from other similar products in several ways. First, it focuses on the individual user rather than the office as a whole, and provides information that helps them make informed decisions about where and when to work. Second, it is built from the ground up to be simple, flexible and user-friendly, without requiring long contracts, onboarding or training. Third, it integrates various features that are usually separate, such as desk booking, visitor management, access control and holiday tracking, and allows users to customise them according to their needs.
What are the future plans for intheOffice?: Jon and Adam plan to expand in different ways, such as reaching more clients globally, adding more features that help people work better and more efficiently, and providing more data and insights that help companies and teams optimise their hybrid working policies and practices. The main goal is to be a tool that helps people be more productive, collaborative and happy in their work, regardless of their physical location.