Hot Desking

 

The way the human resource (HR) department organizes the office can increase employee morale, enhance productivity and create a positive work culture.

Hot desking is an office arrangement system in which employees are free to choose a workspace on any day. Instead of having a specific workspace, employees occupy space based on a first-come, first-serve basis. Tables, chairs and desks do not have a permanent user. Instead, employees choose whatever is available based on their requirements. In traditional workplace models, every employee has a designated workstation or cubicle but the desk sharing model gives employees the freedom to choose their workspace. Hot desk workspaces offer many social benefits,

Traditional hot-desking is a method of office resource management where a single office desk is shared by multiple employees at different times, instead of each one being assigned an individual desk. Utilising the desks in this manner can reduce the size of the office by up to 30%.

 What Are the Benefits of Hot Desking? 

Want to know if hot desking is worth it? Here are some of the benefits that a hot-desking policy could bring to your organization: 

Increased Workplace Flexibility 

Most people’s jobs don’t look the exact same every day. Hot desking allows your employees to work flexibly, using the office as and when they need it and booking different spaces according to their workload.

Reduced Costs and Smaller Overheads

If you’re operating a hybrid work policy, you probably don’t need an office that’s big enough for 100% of your workforce. But you do need to make sure there’s space for employees to work comfortably and effectively when they need to. Hot desking can allow you to save money by opting for a smaller space while ensuring that employees will still have the space they need to work. 

More Opportunities for Collaboration

Hot desking means that employees sit next to different people every day. This creates more organic opportunities for people from different parts of the organization to come together, share ideas and collaborate.  

Improved Use of Office Space

When employees are working from home part of the time, it doesn’t make much sense to assign them desks and offices that sit empty when they’re not in the office.

A Cleaner, Tidier Workspace

When hot desking is done properly, employees leave their desks clean and free of personal items, ready for someone else to use the next day. This can help you to maintain a tidier, cleaner, and less cluttered office space for everyone. 

The single most important consideration when implementing hot desking is ensuring that employees are on board with the change. This means communicating the benefits of hot desking clearly and providing training and support to help employees adapt to the new way of working. Here is a short list of some of the benefits that hot desking brings to employees:

1.      Allowing employees to more easily form cross functional working groups. By giving employees flexibility over where they sit, it is easier to form Scrum/Agile working teams that involve multiple departments. Employees can work alongside one another and gain an appreciation for those with diverse skill sets.

2.      Allowing employees to coordinate which days they attend the office. Hot desking rarely occurs in isolation and is almost always incorporated as part of a larger push for an organization to be a “hybrid workplace”. In such environments it is commonplace for employees to work from home one or more days per week.
A good hot desk booking system allows employees to self-coordinate which days they will attend the office. This lets employees complete focused work from home and undertake more collaborative functions like brainstorming when they are in the office.

3.      Creating cleaner workplaces and reducing clutter. When an individual owns a desk they are often more lax about the condition in which they leave their desk at the end of the day. This can become a point of contention between coworkers. Because hot desking requires the booking of a desk, this information can be shared with custodial staff to let them know which desks/areas to focus on cleaning at the end of each day.

4.      Simplifying trips to other offices. At many organizations it is commonplace for staff to need to visit regional/international offices. The process of coordinating this with the local team can be onerous and time consuming. Hot Desking levels the playing field and allows organizations to have a single straight-forwards process for booking desks/meeting rooms/car spaces when travelling.

Hot-Desking: Is it the New Future of the Workplace?

References

Hirst, A., 2011. Settlers, vagrants and mutual indifference: unintended consequences of hot‐desking. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 24(6), pp.767-788.

Millward, L.J., Haslam, S.A. and Postmes, T., 2007. Putting employees in their place: The impact of hot desking on organizational and team identification. Organization Science, 18(4), pp.547-559.

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Hot-Desking: Is it the New Future of the Workplace? | Hot-Desking Explained. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xywrv9TjPzE [Accessed 12 Apr. 2024].