Flexible workers take the hot seat

By ADAM GIFFORD

Hot desking - the idea that people don't need their own dedicated workspace filled with clutter and knick-knacks - is on the surface attractive.

Come in, sit down anywhere, be instantly productive. It's a manager's dream.

Hot desking was one of those big human resources ideas which was hailed as the next big thing ... and then silence.

Like many such ideas, it turns out there is a place for it, but not in every job or in every organisation. It is more likely to suit those with lots of consultants, auditors, or sales staff who do the bulk of their work in other people's offices.

David Stewart from consulting firm CGEY New Zealand says his organisation has hot desked since 1998 and wouldn't go back.

"The amount of space we need is smaller than if everyone had their own desk. Everyone has a locker, and our mobile phone system means everyone has a direct dial which follows them," says Stewart. "It reduces our fixed costs."

The reason it works is that at any time, up to three-quarters of the staff may be working on client sites, where their laptop computer is their office.

Telecom New Zealand has a large number of staff who travel between offices in Auckland, Wellington and Hamilton. Rather than having them lug laptops around, the company sets aside hot desks.

"We call it the common office environment," says Telecom technology architecture general manager Greg Patchell. "It is cheaper than issuing everyone with laptops.Someone can come in from another office, sit down at a desk, log in and they get their own desktop image."

If they are licensed to use software which is not part of the standard configuration, Microsoft system management software sucks it down automatically on to the client machine.

Patchell said hot desking requires getting it right at the back end, so it is something organisations should consider when they do their technology refresh. "It is not an insignificant technical challenge."

It also requires cultural change, including enforcement of clean desk policies and occupational safety and health regimes.

"Throughout Telecom, you can adjust the height of desks, chairs, keyboards and screens," says Patchell.

"In most other places, you can adjust chairs and screens but desks don't move.

"We don't permit people to sit at a desk in the office and use their laptop - they must use a docking station and the proper configuration."

The desire of people to carve out their own workspace and customise it is a reason the "first in, best seated" model hasn't taken off.

Auckland University associate professor of management Marie Wilson says hot desking hasn't taken off in New Zealand for cultural and economic reasons.

"It is possibly because of people's sense of space, and all that status stuff that goes with where your desk is," Wilson says.

"Also, people are not tidy."

She says in other countries the high cost of office space means there is pressure to see it used as much as possible.

British Telecom last year reported hot desking encouraged employees to work from home and had saved it £42 million in London rent and rates bills, allowing it to keep on more than 1000 staff.

"This whole hot desking thing first emerged at a time when we were looking at people working from home, the flexibility of that, so trends like flexible working, open plan offices and hot desking all overlap," Wilson says.

A report on flexible work co-written by Tweedy for the Work and Age Trust, which runs the Nework Centre, says some workers report feeling depersonalised by not having their own space and resent having to "battle for space".

It said before introducing hot desking, organisations should consider whether many of their staff spend substantial amounts of time out of the office, what the workers' needs are while in the office, how the phone systems will work, what software is needed to share computers, whether a booking system is needed to share desks and other resources, where workers will keep personal belongings, how hot desks will be monitored, and how will other workers be affected by hot desking.