85 people, 37 desks: how Nextlane got its teams back on site in a smaller office

Nextlane builds the software that runs European car retail. Its platforms handle dealership management, digital showrooms and manufacturer operations for more than 70,000 end users across 11 European countries. Modernising how the industry works is the job description.

The company operates from offices across Europe, including Paris, Lyon, Nantes, Madrid, Vigo, Sintra, Lund and Zürich. That footprint is a strength commercially and a complication operationally, because a workplace policy has to work in ten buildings, five countries and several languages at once.

Nextlane works hybrid. Employees are on site 2 days a week and remote for 3.

Before the pandemic, the Nextlane site at Saint-Pierre-des-Corps occupied five floors and roughly 2,000 m². Desks were allocated the way desks used to be allocated: one person, one desk, permanently.

Then hybrid work arrived and Nextlane reduced the space. Five floors became a single floor, and the rhythm became 2 days on site, 3 days remote.

That leaves a smaller office, the same number of people, and a pattern that pushes everyone towards the same 2 days.

The booking process was not going to survive it. A spreadsheet cannot show a live view of who has taken what, it cannot be trusted by someone deciding on Sunday night whether to make the trip, and it cannot answer a question about occupancy three months later.

Nextlane needed two things at once. First, a reason for colleagues to come in. Second, the certainty that when they did, a desk would be waiting.

deskbird was the solution that really fit the problem we wanted to address, almost two and a half years ago. It was about bringing our colleagues back on site.
Jean Penhouët
Global VP of People, Nextlane

It was never only a facilities question. Getting the office to work again involved the people function, the workplace experience team and the facilities team together, because the goal was not filling seats. It was making the days people spend together worth the commute.

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Nextlane rolled out deskbird desk booking for its French sites, then across its European offices. Employees plan their week in the app, open the interactive floor plan, and pick a desk.

Nathalie books her own week every Monday, which is how most of her colleagues use it too: 2 days on site, planned in advance, with meetings arranged around who is in.

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The part that changed behaviour was not the booking itself. It was being able to see who is on site on which day.

That turns a desk booking into a decision about who to sit with. Profile photos on the floor plan mean you are not picking a desk number, you are picking a neighbour, which is a very different reason to come in.

It also removes the last bit of friction from the commute.

It means you can relax knowing you have booked your desk. When you make the trip in, you know you will have a desk and a seat.
Nathalie Dieumegard
Head of Facilities Management France, Nextlane

Attendance is up, and Nextlane can point to it

Getting people back into the office was the original goal, and it is the one Nextlane can now evidence rather than estimate. The feedback from employees consistently lands on the same thing: knowing in real time who is going to be there.

The single remaining floor at Saint-Pierre-des-Corps supports around 85 people with 37 workstations. On paper that is a squeeze. In practice it is not.

Nextlane is never overcrowded, because deskbird smooths attendance across the week for everyone on a given site instead of letting it pile up on the same 2 days. The desks are used harder, and nobody arrives to find there is nowhere to sit.

That is the trade most companies get wrong. Reducing space is easy. Reducing space without making the office worse is the part that needs a system.

Occupancy data instead of instinct

When Nextlane started with deskbird, the statistics were fairly basic. Today there is a real analytics tool showing how the offices are actually occupied and who is not coming in, which turns space decisions into a data question rather than an argument.