Hot Desking:

Hot or shared desk is the concept of reserving time on a desk that is not personal or dedicated to one’s personal space. When workers used to have an office space, prior to the pandemic, it came with a dedicated desk that provided a significant sense of safety, comfort and security which raised employee productivity. Companies, big and small, could not do without it to retain talent and improve their balance sheets.

The biggest detriment to its adoption was the soaring prices of real-estate and the costs associated with assigning it to every new worker. Shared office space and even shared desks became common practice. Hot desks were introduced nearly twenty years ago and they have not lost their characteristic dislike and far-flung frustration among the work force throughout these times. It has caused worker agitation, lawsuits and even made it to the union’s agenda. From eastern to western hemisphere, the pain point was well known and high on the hate lists.

Employees could not do with the additional step of reserving time or space for a shared commodity. It made them feel worthless, not to mention the failure to find one at the hour of need. Not much has changed on this front and this unavoidable plight with hot desks manifests in many polls and surveys. So much so that that the notion that hot-desking over time becomes acceptable has been refuted.

The pandemic has had a two-fold impact about hot desks. It has made workers rely less on their assigned desks and prefer flexible workspaces while the companies have found a growing cost from unused furniture and real-estate.  Some have already begun to improve their post-pandemic plans to increase the use of co-working. Scheduling applications and software are recognizing the notion of reserving desk as much as reserving conference room or virtual meeting space. Desk reservations will likely find a better home in terms of office productivity and team collaboration tools rather than dedicated software that gives yet another tool for workers. That said, niche software will continue to expand these capabilities. For example, Envoy, a software maker, provides an application to book a hot desk.

Employers are recognizing the hot desk not merely as a proven agent of worker stress but also as an opportunity to cut costs, if there were an acceptable remediation to bridge the gap. Office properties in big cities are so expensive that they cost upwards of a billion dollars a year in a single city alone. Many businesses do not see an end to the work from home that precipitates the need to do without the costs from unused space and furniture.  If the workforce is only going to appear two or three days a week, it will expose a lot of room for improvement. The hot desk will tend to become a necessity despite the criticism.

Workers find change in processes to be least palatable. Hot desk will surely ratchet up a lot of gripe but the companies will be eager to address the criticism rather than run with the overhead. Even though protests might not be the last, organizations from corporate to government will run into the same debate, and timeless cost-cutting fanatics will tout the idea, the unused office space is fast becoming a bigger problem. People’s return to their office space as and when the pandemic has let up has not matched the pre-pandemic utility, value, and purpose of the desks. The cost and discomfort with using hot desks is still manageable albeit not cost-free. Personal desks are not only ergonomically sound and customized, but it is also a sense of belonging and value. It brings recognition as well as loyalty and appreciation from the workers.