A better hot desking experience

There is a huge business case for hot desking as it combats underused office space and it doesn't look like the trend is going away. And equally, criticism mounts against the practice, ranging from it affecting focus to wasting time while you search for a desk. Flexiworking, on the other hand, seems to go from strength to strength for those using it while the staff left behind in the office lose out. Most articles on implementing hot desking talk about how to convince staff to accept the new setup, which just shows how carefully it needs to be considered.

Every morning brings the stress of walking around nearby desks asking is this desk free today?

One of the main complaints about hot desking is the inability to control one's work environment. The uncertainty of not knowing where you'll sit, who will be near you and where that colleague you wanted to catch might be, or even if you'll be remotely close to anyone in your team. From personal experience, we know how frustrating hot desking can be. At one place I worked there were 4 desks allocated for my team of 7. However 2 of those people always pulled rank, leaving 2 desks for the remaining 5. Every morning faced the stress of walking around nearby desks asking "is this desk free today? ... Oh, well, then do you know where there might be a free desk?" Once a desk was found, more time would be wasted trying to settle into the new locale.

So how do we manage this problem? How do we make hot desking more comfortable? We can take a clue from how personal enrichment of your space impacts productivity: giving people something as simple as plants in the office increases productivity by 16% but that gets doubled if people are allowed to place those plants themselves. These little things logically shouldn't make a difference but they do. Giving a bit of control back can go a long way and can be simple to implement. This is also supported by comparing company and team loyalty between those who have permanent desks and those who hot desk. Kate Bonsall, who researched Knowledge Sharing Effectiveness in the workplace says increasing hot-deskers' sense of control … may help to mitigate this.

Which is why we created a flexible hot desking app for offices and coworking spaces. Consider the difference between:

Obviously, only the latter lets you get straight to work in a calm fashion. Now let's talk about how to achieve that. Reserving or booking a desk in advance gives you the security that you have a desk and you know where it is. Many places do this by making people book through a person: email the office manager or reception and tada, you have your desk. But is that enough? Let's take it a step further and imagine that you can see the office layout, see where your colleagues have booked and manage your booking by yourself without the bottleneck of the office manager. This accomplishes three very important things:

1. a greater sense of autonomy and the ability to make an informed decision
2. a freeing up of the time of whomever was managing the bookings and removing them from the line of fire when disputes come up
3. and last, metrics on desk usage that will allow the hot desking setup to be adapted and optimised to further affect productivity or reduce costs.

This is what FixMarQ does. And it even frees up a desk if the person who booked it doesn't turn up.

You can't save space. You can only use it, but you can use it wisely or foolishly.

image credit: peacay

Happy with how your hotdesking is going? If not, sign up for one of our free demo site accounts to check out how FixMarQ works:

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