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Hot Desking:
For many organisations, the cost of accommodation is a major proportion of
their total costs. When you add to the basic cost of providing the space (rent
and rates or building purchase costs), all the other costs associated with providing
space (heating, lighting, fittings, furniture, services, etc), making space
available for any service or anyone can be seen as not insignificant.
Once, offices were just things you had to have. Then, in the 50s and 60s we
saw the move to open plan offices because of the space saving involved. There
was strong debate about the merits of open plan and cellular offices and the
concept of office landscaping was introduced to make open plan offices more
aesthetically pleasing and therefore pleasant to work in. Some attention was
placed on basic workflow analysis and 'proximity' priorities according to processes
and procedures in use. This was about as far as space management went.
Someone then noticed that many 'office staff' actually spend considerable time
away from their offices - at customers premises, at meetings, on site, at conferences,
etc. Valuable space was devoted to people who simply weren't there for much
of the time. This is especially true of sales force personnel, who may be 'at
their desks' for only 10-20% of office time, but also applies to many consultants
and contract workers.
This realisation lead to the phenomenon known as 'hot desking'. The concept
comes from an old navy practice, in warships, whereby, to save valuable space,
bunks were shared by sailors who were on different shifts. In 'hot desking terms'
it applies to the sharing of a desk/seat/workstation arrangement by more than
one member of staff.
Of course, most personnel will resist the concept. They have 'earned' their
right to the status that accrues to the right desk in the right place and feel
that they will lose control over their base work without the security of their
own desk. This is not an argument against the use of the technique - just a
plea to consider the human side of the issue and to ensure that appropriate
support is given to the matter to make sure it works, both for the individuals
and for the organisation.
There are a number of different levels on which hot desking can be operated.
The extent to which different levels are employed depends on the nature of the
work undertaken, the degree of 'outworking' and, importantly, the regularity
of such outworking, enabling firm patterns of usage to be established for any
shared facilities.
One level is simply to indicate that specific desks/chairs are shared, on some
rota basis, by two or more people. This ensures that each individual always
uses the same desk/chair (this is important to some people in terms of maintaining
a sense of identity and security).
At another level, there can simply be a pool of desks/chairs and individuals
book one in advance according to their needs at any given time - after all this
practice is quite common with pool cars.
Some systems have desks with interchangeable drawers and/or filing systems
so that each user picks up his/her personal 'desk' as he/she arrives and inserts
it into the desk infrastructure.
Modern telephone systems enable each user to have his/her own telephone number
which can be forwarded to their mobile number when they are 'on the road'. Naturally,
an alternative is for them to continue to use their mobile phone when in the
office - but this may prevent them from using some of the established telephone
services. (Of course some time in the future, when we all have our own permanently
issued personal number which follows us around from system to system wherever
we are, this will all be resolved.)
'Stored PC profiles' with or without the additional security of 'smart' personal
identity cards can allow access to specific facilities. For example, a PC can
be attached to a card reader and can automatically deliver to a shared PC, the
interface and electronic desktop preferred by the user whose card has triggered
the user, and of course, access to the user's personal filestore. This means
that a user can work at any PC as if it were his/her own personal computer.
It is apparent that making hot desking work is more than a simple matter of
drawing up the rota. Users need to be sure that they will receive all their
former support services without any extra 'hassle' or inconvenience. They can
then concentrate on their work instead of their work environment.
The office needs to be designed with hot desking in mind, with appropriate
furniture to allow fast switching between users, applications, and perhaps even
equipment. The office must be flexible space - especially in terms of cabling,
telecommunications, furniture and filing.
Hot desking can work and can make office space flexible and highly productive.
Users can work in a hot desking environment as well as they did in their own
personal, dedicated office space - all it needs is forethought, planning and
a little imagination.
The phenomenon moves on - and new terminology has entered the lexicon to distinguish
between 'flavours' of flexible working that support hot desking. For example
:
- cubicles and caves are both terms used to refer to 'private' places within
an open plan office, formed by screening and/or partitioning, to offer (a degree
of) privacy or quiet. They have the advantage of being 'demountable', increasing
flexibility and lowering 'relocation' costs. where cubicles/caves are adopted
on the hot desking principle, storage should be discouraged or provided in a
mobile form.
- hotelling refers to hot desking whereby workers ring in advance to pre-book
the area and support facilities they need for a work session; these facilities
are then arranged by a 'concierge' to minimise 'downtime'.
- motelling is similar to hotelling but does not involve pre-booking; workers
simply turn up and arrange their facilities 'on the spot'.
- guesting is rare (as yet) but refers to mutual arrangements between two (or
more) organisations who will provide hot desks for each other's employees (because,
for example, it makes sense on a geographic basis).
Thus, though the principle of hot desking remains the same - there is a wider
range of ways in which it can be facilitated.
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