By offering a variety of workspaces under a hot desking model, companies can provide a greater number of potential places for their employees to connect, collaborative and perform. While hot desking has clear benefits for businesses and employees, it can also introduce challenges if improperly implemented.
Key among them: A poor employee experience, potential security issues and difficulty maintaining company culture.
This disconnect indicates that many companies are looking to cut costs with new workplace strategies that fail to fully meet the needs of their employees. Hot desking is one workplace strategy that can fall prey to this trap. Common issues here include poor acoustics , which is a chief complaint among office workers, and poorly apportioned workspaces. Organizations should also clearly communicate with their employees about how best to make use of their new workspaces.
Key communication points such as emails, company announcements and workplace signage can go a long way to help employees maximize their time in the workspace. Security, or lack there-of, is another challenge businesses encounter with hot desking.
Due to the transient design of hot desking, poor implementations can make it hard for individual employees to securely store their personal belongings. It also extends to health. Under a hot desking model, employees can choose where they sit — and swap desks as needed. This inherently causes health-related complications in the coronavirus pandemic. Likewise, we also have implemented a number of health-related measures to ensure workplace safety.
These include increased cleaning schedules, social distancing signage, limited capacity in meeting rooms and placemats that indicate what workspaces are clean and available to use. Companies interested in adopting hot desking can — and should — adopt measures like these. One of the biggest challenges with hot desking is it can hurt company culture by making it challenging for employees to be physically close to their teams and colleagues.
This takes on an added dimension for companies that are looking to adopt hybrid workplace strategies that will allow employees to choose when and how often they work in the office. Work zones and office neighborhoods are an attempt to design specific spaces for specific needs.
These serve as a recognition that every person has a different working style — some prefer quiet spaces while others prefer active spaces, for example — and different workday tasks call for different environments.
With work zones and office neighborhoods, companies can create unique workspaces and areas tailored to specific tasks and working styles. Hot desking is an office space practice that allows employees to find and work at any open seat, desk, or workstation at an office. Like any new concept tested within a business, there are pros and cons inherent to this workplace strategy. As a workspace practice, hot desking joins the growing list of alternative workplace strategies including hub-and-spoke strategies, third workplaces, and activity-based workspaces.
The type of workspace is and will be debated among business leaders. What's not under debate is that the way we work is changing — and companies must determine how they will address new employee demands and expectations.
Learn more about the importance people place on meaningful connection at the office in our latest report, COVID is accelerating the demand for flexibility and meaningful connection. If they have a long afternoon of meetings, they can reserve a conference room. If they need more privacy to concentrate on individual work, they can reserve a quiet space. An activity-based work environment encourages employees to move around the office throughout the day, which can improve collaboration.
It's also a healthier alternative to sitting in the same place for eight hours each day, which is often the case with hot desking. Employees may be reluctant to give up their desks or private offices, but they aren't always there to use them. If you want employees to keep their seats but you need to reduce office density, you can assign employees to come into the office in shifts. You can assign employees to alternating shifts by day, by week, or any other arrangement that makes sense for your company.
You can even categorize them based on their need to be in the office. This is essential for some employees, while others can easily work remotely and don't need a designated desk each day. Desk hoteling allows employees to reserve the workspaces they want to use for the day, upon arrival.
This gives your workforce the freedom of hot desking while capturing the space utilization data you need to plan ahead. You can see what percentage of desks are reserved and vacant on any given day and plan accordingly, adding workspaces as needed. You can also convert frequently unused spaces into huddle areas or small meeting spaces. Desk hoteling also simplifies contact tracing by giving you a record of which employees were in the office on any given day and who was sitting next to them.
Hot desking typically doesn't allow you to keep such records. Office hoteling is similar to desk hoteling but requires employees to reserve workspaces before they arrive. This can be helpful for planning purposes, especially if you need the limit the number of people in the office each day to maintain physical distancing. Before you implement any of these flexible seating arrangements, it's important to consider the long-term viability of these strategies. Do they make sense based on the type of work you do?
How do employees feel about hot desking versus desk hoteling? Asking these questions can help you decide. Some companies may have business practices that cannot be shared throughout the entire office. Since shared workstations are at the heart of hot desking and other flexible seating arrangements, confidentiality could be an issue. You'll need to consider how you'll keep documents secure and include those policies in your plan.
Certain office spaces lend themselves more to hot desking and flexible seating than others. Consider whether such a design would make sense for your office environment. Keep technology logistics in mind and expect these new workstations to create new needs.
For example, since employees will constantly be switching desks, you'll need additional storage space for their personal belongings. You'll also want workstations to be as standard as possible — with the same chairs, monitors, outlets, and cable connectors — so anyone can sit down and plug in their laptop. To make sure employees feel comfortable wherever they go, it's a good idea to provide adjustable chairs and desks.
Many people are creatures of habit. That's not to say they can't change or shouldn't change, but moving to a flexible seating arrangement will be an adjustment. Some people will embrace it immediately, while others will have valid concerns. Take the time to listen to your employees and address those concerns. If someone is worried about privacy, the uncertainty of hot desking, or finding a quiet place to take sales calls, make sure you're giving them options.
That way, when you need help filing your first expense report, your colleagues can help you, for example. That training cannot happen if you turn up in the office and find that the only desk available is on a different floor from your workgroup. In such a case, the new employee spends hours walking around looking for the work team and not actually getting on with the job.
When the company seats people who do similar jobs next to each other, it does everyone a favor. For example, if you know where the chief accountant sits and need some accounting advice, you can walk to their desk and ask.
That cannot happen with hot desks. You cannot even begin to know where you could find the required expertise, other than by email or via phone.
In short, when you have a hot desk, finding an in-house expert will now take hours of work time and years off your life as your nerves become increasingly ragged. Brief impromptu meetings are a vital part of efficient office work.
T he team leader might take two minutes to tell everyone sitting nearby some important things as the day kicks off. However, if you have hot desks, your team could be anywhere in the building. Having impromptu meetings will be next to impossible. Those meetings you do hold will almost entirely be time-wasting affairs. Imagine inviting six people from different parts of the building for a 2-minute session. The time to get everyone assembled could, in reality, total 20 minutes.
Have three such meetings in a day, and you are really starting to eat into productive work hours. When the company places the desks of people who do similar things next to each other, then it can also smooth out the process of getting the job done. If you need help, you can turn to your colleagues for assistance in the knowledge that they likely have similar expertise. That efficient employee placement goes out of the window with hot desks. An accountant might find him or herself next to a graphic designer, for instance.
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