Hey there!

Have you heard of “hot desking”? No, there’s no fire involved.

It’s a dynamic seating system that many companies are implementing in the office, and they’re reaping massive benefits. 

Hot desking is helping companies adapt to new business practices like hybrid work models, and we’re here to explain to you how to implement it.

Future trends show that it’s here to stay, so strike while the iron is hot and get into hot desking with us.

Let’s do this!

What exactly is meant by “hot desking”?

In the workplace, hot desking is a modern practice which is basically when your staff choose their own seats, instead of having one allocated desk per person. It can easily be done with a first come first served system.

It might sound a little strange at first, and if it isn’t done properly it might lead to some confusion about whose seat belongs to whom.

However, when it’s carried out well, hot desking really can add a positive charge to the office atmosphere. 

Have you ever heard of the phrase: “A change is as good as a rest”? This is a basic principle that highlights how variety is often the spice of life. When staff change something as simple as their chair, their desk, or their environment, it can yield new and refreshing results.

In a few ways, hot desking can provide a little pick-me-up and improve the mental health of people who do it. When seating arrangements are shuffled, you’re encouraging people to interact with their new desk-mates, and for a lot of people, this is really enjoyable.

Rotating desks and seating arrangements also helps to remove vacant or unused office space. Unused office space is a real cost for companies, yet a recent survey found that 40% of office space is vacant at any one time.

Wait! What's the difference between hot desking and office hoteling?

Both hot desking and office hoteling involve saving space and maximizing workplace efficiency through new working environments, but there are a few differences:

Hot desking is like walking into a cafeteria and choosing any table you like (to work, of course, not to order a 3-course meal!). You use your traditional work office and let staff select their seats as they wish.

Office hoteling is more like booking a specific table in a restaurant, because you like where the table is located or you like the light coming through the adjacent window. Relating back to work, in office hoteling, you usually use a booking system to choose one space to work for the day, like a hotel (hence the name).

So can you tell me some hot desking arrangements?

Certainly can! This completely depends on your office size, your team members, the kind of work you do… There’s a multitude of factors you need to factor in, but some of the most common systems of hot desking arrangements are:

First-come, first-served

This arrangement just lets the first arrival pick a seat to work at for the day. This works well when, say, every person in the office uses a laptop as their main tool for working. This system is fast and flexible which means that no space gets reserved and goes unused.

Reserved desks

While you don’t need an official booking system for hot desking, sometimes arrangements are made through reservations. This can be helpful if, for example, one part of your office is tech-heavy, and the coding guys need a work arena for one afternoon. 

Office neighborhoods

This one’s a little more creative and can yield fantastic results. You set up designated “office neighborhoods” in the office, and each neighborhood is generally optimized for one area of the work tasks. It works best for large companies; imagine setting up a well-lit coding space or a light and airy ideation area, for starters.

Agile workspaces

If you’ve got a big office ready for a whole host of tasks, agile workspacing is an arrangement where you give total free reign to wherever your teams decide to work. They might pick an almost empty room as they need to clear their heads, or they might choose the reception area where they can practice new customer interaction techniques. Totally agile work practice.

What are the benefits of hot desking for my company?

We briefly touched earlier upon some of the ways hot desking can boost your company. Now we’ll go a little more in-depth on the positivities hot desking can bring to your workplace:

Utilizes office space

First and foremost is the benefit of saving physical space in the office. Even if you don’t factor in the money you save by utilizing office space, consider how much easier a tidy office makes your work life. If you overall have roughly 30 desk areas in your office and 30 workers, it’s easier to create an ultra-efficient work arena where ideas can be bounced across the room and everyone is in relatively close proximity to one another. 

We understand that 30 desks to 30 people might imply that things can feel a little tight (like tinned sardines), but the principle is there. An overarching principle of hot desking is to consider unused resources and make sure that empty rooms in the office don’t go to waste. Mindfulness and utilization of office resources can be a huge benefit to your company.

Cuts down on cost

Leading on from space utilization comes the money that you save by hot desking. As a loose example, let’s say you have 50 staff, but 10 of them work from home on Thursday and Friday. That’s 20 empty office desks per week if your usual office layout designates one desk per person!

Look at how Citibank got rid of assigned desks, as a real example. Their New York office is optimized and has 150 spaces for 200 people. Fascinating.

Office desking lives by the principle of cutting your jacket according to your cloth. If your office bills are reducing as you’re maximizing the potential of hot desking, there could be new avenues of finance available for the company, especially good for SMEs.

Encourages networking

Here’s one of the softer benefits of hot desking. It’s a softer benefit because it actually empowers staff with opportunities in which they can use their soft, people skills. A good hot desking system keeps team members in rotation and provides new opportunities for workplace mingling. Mingling leads to new conversations and promotes new networking opportunities. We like to call this serendipity (finding value through random chance).

This can be especially helpful for new employees, or even the workers in your teams who have a more introverted nature.

Consider how when everyone’s office desk is shuffled, you’re physically putting new people together and forming new teams. This is a great dynamic tool that encourages people to network with others in the office. Of course, your teams have already been introduced to one another, they’re not strangers! But, by using hot desking you could be helping to form new and stronger bonds in teams, as well as help remove some kinds of cliques that can form in the office. 

Not that there’s anything wrong with social groups at work, but changes (in moderation) to everyday routines can give some excitement through something new.

Hybrid workers feel at home!

Here’s one of the best benefits of a powerful hot desking setup. You probably already have a few workers who currently work in a hybrid model. As a matter of fact, Zippia’s 2023 report states that 74% of U.S. companies are using or plan to implement a hybrid work model into their operations. If you are one of these companies, hot desking is going to make your hybrid workers’ lives much easier.

They’re already used to working in new environments. There’s a lot of big benefits to hybrid work systems that companies are making the most of. People are feeling more engaged and energized than ever when they get to spend more time with their families at home. Not everyone works with a family in the house, but those people are enjoying taking their laptops to coffee shops and dedicated hybrid workspaces.

Forbes calls hot desking the “future of hybrid work”. Get on board and make the most of a hot desk setup now!

Empowerment and dynamism

So as your teams start to open doors to new physical areas where they can work, there is a big sense of empowerment that goes along with it. Hot desking empowers people to choose their own workspace for the day and to try something new and exciting. Let’s say you’ve got one particular area in the office where natural lighting is at its most beautiful. Some people thrive in this.

You might have a room that your late-working staff prefers for their eyes, for the peace and quiet. Hot desking allows them the freedom of choosing where they set up their temporary office and get things done. They might set up new arenas of work and tackle work in new ways, creating a sense of fast-paced dynamism that might not be available when people have to stay in allocated desks.

Capture the power that hot desking can bring and offer it out to your workers who are on board!

Enhanced teamwork and collaboration

As you incorporate a dynamic and empowering hot desk system in the office, you’re going to be opening up new portals into teamwork and collaboration. It’s pretty simple, as your teams are encouraged to work in new physical spaces, they naturally collaborate in new ways.

Flexible workspaces let every individual in the office think about the best space where they can do their work, whether in teams or in groups. Collaboration is the essence of high-functioning teams, and hot desking is a great way to set the stage for them. They can collectively decide the optimal location to get work done, and factor in things like office equipment and tools that are conducive to their work.

If you’re striving to take team collaboration up a level, hot desking might just be the key you need to open the doors of potential. Don’t let the opportunity go to waste!

Cross-company cohesion

Leading on from improved collaboration comes the benefit of improved cross-company cohesion. Think about it, offices in the past would often have one section of the office, or even a whole floor, dedicated to one department in the company. Digital tools are streamlining traditional office setups and staff are now able to do their tasks without needing a large, designated zone for their function.

That means now that different departments can work in closer proximity to each other. Previous department-zones often led to departmental teams and it was harder in the past to cross-collaborate. If you’ve got a software whizz working with a marketing master on the same desk you could be kickstarting a fruitful collaboration.

This benefit is certainly not to be overlooked. Cross-collaboration often yields new and unexpected results, so make the most of hot desking if you want to create sparks of creativity in new teams!

Customization and personalization

This benefit can be really fun for your teams if utilized. We mentioned earlier about “office neighborhoods” that can be created using a hot desking system. We mentioned how the equipment in each “neighborhood” can be suited to certain office operations. Why not let the creativity in your teams roam free, and encourage them to customize areas of the office in new and exciting ways?

They might set up a marketing temple where they can brainstorm the formulas of the future or an admin section with some peaceful ambiance running and lighting that helps them relax. This is a benefit that is really up to you and your teams. Just keep it professional and you really can get funky with this one (hint: loud Black Sabbath music won’t bring your teams much peace, but it could kickstart crazy new ideas!)

Disrupts traditional office structures 

As time passes by, younger staff enter the workforce with new ideas and styles of working. Understanding and utilizing hot desking actually works in conjunction with the fresh perspectives young employees bring. A lot of them are already adept in hybrid working and have streamlined their work practice into one laptop.

Office structures are undergoing transformation. Data shows that in 2023, 28% of companies use some form of hybrid work model. Further into this data highlights where we might be heading, with 32.6 million American workers expected to be remote by the year 2025. As age-old traditions change, making the most of hot desking can provide new opportunities for your workforce.

Workplace hygiene

Our final benefit is more straightforward, but certainly is a positive aspect of hot desking. On a basic level, hot desking does help with ensuring desks are clutter-free and not swamped with out-of-date reports and sticky notes. You’re going to have to consider the time taken to clean up workspaces, but this can factored in

On a deeper level, your office cleaners actually have a tidier space to work with. This might enable them to clean areas that are often overlooked. Simple idea, but effective in practice. Cleanliness levels can be raised through a well-thought-out hot desk setup, so consider this benefit on top of all the others. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, they say!

Hot desking to boost your teams? Try a team-building retreat!

If you’re keen on the idea of using hot desking to bring new levels of productivity to your teams, there’s another activity you can try that solidifies team bonds like nothing else. We’ve found out first-hand that bringing everyone on a team-building retreat works wonders!

Here at Surf Office, organizing team retreats is what we do best. A twice-annual retreat for your teams provides an unforgettable and productive environment that helps stress melt away like a cube of sugar in a swimming pool. We’re set up for remote team retreats too!

‍

Here’s what we offer:

• Stress-free transfers? We got you! ✅
• Quality-assured accommodations? Check! ✅
• Engaging team-building activities? Our speciality ✅
• Restaurant reservations? That's on us! ✅
• Expert retreat planning assistance? Of course, we have this covered! ✅
• Onsite support, tailored to your needs? Absolutely ✅

‍

Not only this but we also have access to 160+ locations around Europe, APAC, the US, Latin America, and now Africa, meaning the sky is your limit when it comes to choosing the right location for you and your team.

If you’re testing out hot desking, you might find that while it saves cost and employee engagement, it sometimes can lead to less face-to-face interaction. Organizing a twice-annual retreat with us keeps team bonds as strong as titanium.

Let us sort out the tricky logistics for you. Spaces are very limited, so get in touch now!