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| Lauren Clark |
Hotdesking has had a rocky ride over the last 15 years. Some big failures have been widely used as evidence that as a way of doing business it just doesn't work. But for every failure there are hundreds of companies where it works wonders Hotdesking has had a rocky ride over the last 15 years. Some big failures have been widely used as evidence that as a way of doing business it just doesn’t work. But for every failure there are hundreds of companies where it works wonders Let’s first deal with the failures. The spectacular failure of hotdesking at advertising agency Chiat/Day should have been the final nail in hotdesking’s coffin if the world and his wife are to be believed.
In 1994 Chiat announced that it would be doing away with everything personal, all employees would now hotdesk – they would no longer have a desk or an office, they would only have a locker and that was that. Back in 1994 it was about as radical and likely to work as suggestions we
would all be using jetpacks to get around by the year 2000.
By 1999 Chiat had abandoned its plans. However, it had started a revolution – albeit a quiet one. Walk into the offices of any large FTSE company and you will see people hotdesking – IBM and Microsoft both use hotdesking. And it’s not just technology firms, companies such as Guinness and much, much smaller businesses also hotdesk. The two traditional answers are space and space. Most companies have unused desk space, created by people out on the road, on holiday or in meetings. So the number of desks and therefore the amount of office space needed is actually much less.
But according to hotdesking experts this is really ‘the big lie’. What hotdesking actually does, according to Lauren Clark of Georgeson Office Interiors, is to improve the intangibles. “Things like staff attraction and retention, the amount of sick leave. It also offers people more autonomy, they make quicker decisions, it empowers people – as they can work where they want – and it can protect the intellectual capital of organisations,” she argues.
In addition it’s also about mobility. “This is the real reason,” reckons Tony Norman, product manager for hotdesking at VIP. “I might be working at home or could be out on my mobile, it doesn’t matter – the caller will always get through to me.” Two reasons. Firstly, thinking that simply saving money on space would be the answer and secondly a lack of enabling technology back in the 1990s. It’s now possible to have a phone system that will connect your customers to you via one number, regardless of where you are in the world.The most important part of hotdesking is to get the space issue sorted out. An office full of desks that people can plug into and use is not a hotdesking solution. Having a mixture of desks with plugs and desks with computers, areas where people can sit and meet informally, and areas where people can meet formally is the real solution. Collaboration is often nipped in the bud because there's never a meeting room free. A hotdesk solution means people interact more.
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