That Workplace Newsletter: Recent Episodes
Brendan O'Neil
Hi, I'm Brendan,
I love talking about: 💼 the workplace 🤝 office culture 💡 and learning how people get their best work done.
This show is all about talking workplace, new styles of work and the challenges that
It's just about time we checked in with Alix Gregory, Workplace Experience Extrodinaire at Robin, to talk about how the return has gone!
AKA Back 2 Farnsworth. #B2F DJ AIRHORNNNNN
We cover:
02:05 - Company communication through the move back
05:07 - Changes made after opening day
07:40 - Adding Robinauts to the mix
10:25 - Tools used in the #B2F project
15:16 - What's next for #B2F?
Thank you again for subscribing - I'd love to hear what you think of the feed thus far 💌 brendan@robinpowered.com
Last week OpenPath announced a $36m Series C round of funding and wowza’s there is a lot to unpack with this one. Here is the press release.
❓What is OpenPath OpenPath is a rising star in the access control (office locks) space. We use it at Robin and it’s pretty freakin’ cool. You can Jedi hand wave to unlock doors 👋
🧾 Who invested $36m is a lotta dough. Led by Greycroft who was also early in ManagedByQ and Teem so they have been pretty active in the “workplace” and PropTech space.
Most interesting to me is that Okta, the enterprise identity platform, participated in the round. The quote below really caught my eye (emphasis is mine):
*“As the leading provider of identity for the enterprise, we understand that security teams now more than ever need to link their cyber security and physical security technologies together. Since integrating the Okta and Openpath platforms over a year ago, our many shared customers have benefited from a safer and more secure enterprise,” said Monty Gray, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, Okta.
“We’re thrilled to become a strategic partner of Openpath and support their vision, not only for our own dynamic workplace, but also for our joint enterprise customers, with end-to-end fully-encrypted contactless access control.”*
🤩 Why this is so exciting Okta is the gold standard for ‘Enterprise Identity’ today and acts as the digital version of access control but for the endless SaaS services rollout.
Think of it this way:
- OpenPath manages/grants physical access to the office
- Okta is the tools credential/pass
Put these two together and you have a phenomenal foundation to a “workplace tech stack” that feels frictionless for the employee experience.
Partnerships and integrations like this really set the tone when it comes to best-in-class experiences. Organizations will be looking to add to that “stack” across all elements of the workplace experience, especially as the office becomes more flexible.
Part 2 of my conversation with Alix Gregory, Workplace Experience Extrodinaire at Robin, to talk about our return to the office.
AKA Back 2 Farnsworth. #B2F DJ AIRHORNNNNN
We cover:
- How the Back2Office Playbook evolved
- What the extra time let us pull off for Day 1
- Tools of the trade, how she made it happen
Today I sit down with Alix Gregory, our Workplace Experience & Ops manager, to talk about the plans for getting back to the office.
AKA Back 2 Farnsworth. #B2F DJ AIRHORNNNNN
With the opening right around the corner, I found this conversation super interesting.
We cover
- Moving everyone to WFH
- Early research and employee surveys
- How the plan started to pull together
This is Part 1 of our conversation so stay tuned for Part 2... 😎
WorkTech organized a series called "Kitchen Table Conversations" to share with their community in May 2020. You can tell we (I) am just starting to get into a "we're being recorded" mindset so bear with me 😅. I also may have made up some words.
- We each give an intro, some brief Robin/best-friendship history
- What the worlds largest WFH experiment has shown us
- How workplace strategy will shift
- What does the future of the office look like?
Hope you all enjoy
https://ma.tt/2020/04/five-levels-of-autonomy/
WorkTech edited video:
https://vimeo.com/427459573