The Unintended Consequences of the Open Office

Many companies are switching from a traditional office with assigned cubicles to a more modern office with an open seating layout. This design allows companies to house more employees in less space. In this new floor plan, employees simply find a desk and work there for the day then pack up their stuff and go home or leave it in a locker.
However, without employees having a permanent workspace the mailroom doesn’t know where to deliver packages. This causes lots of headaches and wastes a lot of valuable time for the mailroom staff. They attempt to deliver packages to office workers but can’t find the person so they take the packages back to the hub and then try to deliver again. Sometimes, they email the recipient to come pick up their package, but when the employee arrives, no one is at the mailroom.
The unintended consequences of switching to an open office design include but are not limited to:

1. One San Diego tech company switched to open seating and their package delivery time to employees went from three hours to three days.
2. Delayed delivery of packages to employees can mean delayed delivery of important mission-critical items resulting in delayed time to market resulting in a direct hit on profits.
3. Delayed delivery ties up expensive inventory. One company, upon realizing how critical their problem had become, reported 7 million dollars of inventory sitting undelivered in their mail hub.
4. Loss of inventory. Engineers in tech companies use very expensive equipment which can be lost in the delivery process. One business reported a loss of a $50,000 camera that was sitting on a shelf waiting for pickup.
5. Frustrated delivery people may leave packages on desks or ask others to deliver the package. This results in potential loss and misplaced responsibility and liability for packages.

With the rise in online shopping combined with a growing problem of package theft, more and more workers are having their purchases delivered to the workplace. One recent study projected parcel shipping in the United States to grow as much as 28 percent per year through 2021 from 13 billion packages in 2016. Of that total, 40 percent is made up of office shipping, including packages and other items shipped by businesses as part of daily operations.
Commercial office spaces lack the time and space needed to oversee the rise in personal and work-related deliveries, and this often results in disorganized and cluttered mail rooms, wasted time, lost packages and stressed out office staff and employees. Clearly, a secure and cost-effective way to address these issues and manage document and package handling is needed.
The good news is that there is a solution – parcel lockers.
Parcel lockers simplify the package delivery process and save time and administrative costs for companies. Parcel lockers also provide benefits like convenience, security and confidence for employees. Investing in parcel lockers to help manage employee packages is a small price to pay for better employee productivity, efficiency, transparency, communication and the happiness of recipients.
The way it works is simple. Mailroom staff delivers an employee package to the lockers. The employee then gets a text or email notification saying they have a package waiting for them in a locker and a unique code is given. The employee can then pick up their package at their convenience. Mailroom staff or front desk workers no longer need to sign for packages, sort them, or distribute them to recipients. The lockers handle it all, logging, retrieving and distributing packages quickly and effectively.
This way, companies can continue to implement an open office floor plan while seamlessly managing their employee packages.