The following was ghost-written for a salesperson.
January 22, 2020
It was supposed to be the great office leveller. Especially in environments where staff frequently work at home, or are out and about taking meetings across various locations, rows and rows of empty desk space can seem some like an efficiency waiting to be made. Coupled with a clear desk policy, many decision makers are bound to see making desk space first-come-first-served an obvious choice.
But – is it? If people actually preferred working this way, grabbing the nearest available space when we needed it, wouldn’t we have evolved our practices naturally to fit that preference? There’s clearly a reason why we all prefer to sit with the people we frequently collaborate with – spontaneous conversations are much easier, for one thing – and have our own, clearly delineated space. Hot desking is, ultimately, about saving expensive office space, and allowing businesses to stay agile about what employees they need; even if that ultimately benefits HR departments more than it does employees.
I’m certainly not the only person who has doubts, either. Described variously as a ‘hidden hell’ and ‘the absolute worst’, it’s been linked to significant workplace stress, impacting on wellbeing for 8 in 10 workers who have to work with it. Employees even say it makes them less productive, and that their employers don’t really care what they think. This matches up with a survey finding that 60% of workers would prefer their own desks. If agile working is the future, hot desking is probably the point where it falls apart for employees: I have yet to meet anyone who actively praises it.
The inability to personalise your environment is a popular quibble. Open plan offices spelled the end of individual rooms or even cubicles, but people generally like having one place where they can keep a pot plant, photo or even just a few pens and a notebook. The minimalist, impersonal and sleek space of most modern offices is designed to be utterly inoffensive – and, most often, utterly bland, too. Being able to decorate a small portion of your personal space can often be key to making work a more pleasant and relaxing place to be. But having to clear your stuff every day, so that whoever gets there first in the morning can have what was your seat, made this a thing of the past.
Getting hold of the people we need to talk to becomes more difficult, as we can’t rely on seeing them at their desks. Communication becomes less personal, as you’re probably going to email the person you need rather than spend time hunting them down. The idea that hot desking breaks down hierarchies, leading to more collaboration and idea-sharing, also tends to fall down. There are often a couple of desks in prime locations that are understood to ‘belong’ to someone important; nobody wants to be turfed out by their boss’s boss’s boss. For that matter, the embarrassment would probably be easier to avoid if they could only leave a photo of their kids, spouse or dog on the desk.
In fact, where possible, hot desking seems to be simply ignored. People do tend to gravitate toward the same seats every day, because quite frequently the same ten people do need to speak to each other more than anyone else. This then causes issues when a newcomer, who may only be in the building for a day, sits in someone’s self-allocated desk without knowing better. They probably won’t be asked to move, as technically it’s open to all; however, they’re probably then sat surrounded by a group of people who sort of wish they’d go somewhere else.
However: in some environments, notably my own, there is a real divide between colleagues who use our London office as a base while meeting with clients, and those who are in every day. I definitely fall into the former category, and while I like to sit near my teammates, especially those who are in every day, it’s by no means imperative to my job. Fortunately, at Capita those people do have their own spaces. But when the entire sales team comes in, our colleagues on the bid side tend to find themselves sharing.
The problem comes, I think, when there is a genuine mismatch between decision-makers’ idea of how people work and how they actually do. Hot desking makes sense when a large number of staff are not always office-based; when the majority are in every day, and work in focussed, close-knit teams, it simply doesn’t. So if you’re reading this, and are thinking about implementing a hot-desking/clear desk policy – maybe ask the people it’s going to affect first?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hot-desking-idea-gemma-moore/
Grace Thiele 