How Allianz Real Estate's THE ICON is paving a new way with Spaceflow amidst COVID-19
We interviewed Markus Jancik, property manager at THE ICON VIENNA, about the effects of COVID-19 on his community and Spaceflow’s role in meeting safety requirements associated with this new reality.
Situated within one of the most attractive locations in Vienna, THE ICON brings futuristic urban office-culture to life: close to the city centre, high-quality, future-oriented and with direct access to the Vienna Hauptbahnhof with all its transport and infrastructure benefits. THE ICON is Allianz’s flagship building and its most modern property globally, offering premium office spaces alongside fitness, retail, and multiple dining options.
The complex consists of three ultramodern office towers connected by a mall/atrium area, with tenants ranging financial services, tax consultancies and IT-solutions all the way to the pharmaceutical sector. In a near future, even members of the European Parliament will be working within its grounds. There are currently 25 tenants operating within THE ICON, resulting in approximately 2 500 – 2 800 employees in total.
What effect has COVID-19 had on your community and the ways in which they utilise Spaceflow?
Initially, we saw a decline in active user numbers within the Spaceflow app, and as such the overall engagement within the community was lower. We believe this was caused by the initial shock of the pandemic, and an inevitable disruption as people tried to pave a new way of life, including changing their day-to-day working habits.
We found socially distancing measures such as maintaining a respectable distance between companies, implementing one-way-systems within the canteen, elevators and across communal areas helped employees feel more secure within the premises and those measures are strongly respected.
Through using Spaceflow all COVID-19 related information was communicated with ease, ensuring THE ICON’s community was continuously kept well-informed of changes made to maintain building supply during low office use, water points, ventilation settings and more.
"Face masks became a part of our daily life. Therefore, Spaceflow community team organised a contest for the building community in THE ICON to show their most creative face masks. That is just one example of a fun community engagement activity during these uneasy times."
How does Spaceflow support you with building your community?
One of our favourite features within Spaceflow is the chat functionality as it offers great speed and flexibility to cater and take action to tenant queries. Since this type of interaction is very disarming it allows us to help our community in an increasingly personable way too. When asking our community about their favourite Spaceflow feature, they often mention being able to receive quick notifications about the building with updates published straight onto the newsfeed. With instant posts and polls, no information is lost and any important changes or updates are immediately transferred to the rest of the community.
During the initial outbreak of COVID-19, Spaceflow provided their support in integrating sensors within our canteen, enabling tenants to check room capacity in real-time prior to their visit. This way, social distancing measurements were kept intact, and effective throughout.
Markus Jancik, Property Management, THE ICON VIENNA, Strabag
