Hi,

A huge thing that needs to be considered is accessibility. So if all the desks are static that will mean that some employees with disabilities will not be able to hot desk, collaborate and create a disadvantage.

I’d suggest all the hot desks are not set up the same and maybe choose a percentage that have bigger / smaller / 2 screens, some with electric sit / stand desks, some with laptop risers, but mostly involve and be influenced by your people.

Also, you’ll need a booking process, and details of what is available to book, e.g. sit / desk in the well-being area / well lit area / quiet area etc.

Also, my current organisation uses Freespace as a desk booking app. Other apps are available.

Some apps have a facility where you can use it like a SatNav (pun intended) to navigate to the desk.

Hello Nigel,

We also have a hot desking system at my office, I mostly implemented it, and here's what we thought was important:

- put a deadline for people to book their desk. It can be the Friday for the following week, the day before, up to you to decide.
- whatever booking system you use, make it very accessible, for example pin it on Slack.
- we made sure that whoever booked a desk would have priority on that desk. It happened a few times that Person A hadn't book desk n°xx, Person B booked it but both people were at the office on the next day. Because person B booked it, Person A had to find another desk that wasn't booked and work from there, even if Person A is very often at the office and Person B almost never. This way they also learn for the next time.

As of the quiet zones, I think it would be indeed a very good thing. We have soundproof cabins that people can use and book in advance as well.

We use a simple Google Spreadsheet, one part is for the plan so that people can see which desk is where, the other part is with the dates, the desk numbers and people just have to put in their name. When we have days with higher presence expected, we reminded people (especially those who don't come in that often) to book their seat, now I just mark these days with a different colour, it also helps them have a better overview.

Like any new process, it was a bit hard at the beginning to have people getting used to book their desk, communication was really important, we had to make weekly reminders especially since our deadline was on Friday for the following week. Now they're used to it and it works pretty well.

Hope it will go well for you as well.

Hi Nigel, what a great question. I'm fascinated about how workplace and how we set up work spaces can facilitate and support work and would highliy recommend people like Kursty Groves - Spaces for Innovation and the Miller Knoll Insights series of webinars that dive into this in more detail too; if you are interested.

*Engaging staff is key if you want folks to use them. I've seen lots of spaces designed with little to no staff involvement and I don't think they get the best results so I'd highly recommend including them from early on/start to manage expectations and gain their insights. I learned a lot and it helps avoid retrofitting expenses.
* Spaces for play, collaboration, quiet or private meetings are key. Spaces to store personal things are key. Love all the recommendations for making spaces inclusive and flexible to a range of employee needs. One of my clients drew up some employee led recommendations on how to use the space, how to be considerate to others and expectations and had them on desks which helped set the tone for the space.
* Booking systems. A few clients use their existing room booking system but for desks. Condecco is popular with traditional companies. There will be others on the market.
*Lessons learned.
- You can't force folks to mingle. Some people need to be close to each other - service desks, customer support, those that require a lot of interaction to deliver to the client efficiently.
-Some folks hate the disruption of having to find a new space daily, make it as painfree as possible. I had that with one client.
-Regular cleaning keeps desks sanitised and ready. It sounds basic but it matters to a lot more people than I realised.
- It makes a difference is design is based around purpose and need rather than cost and space reduction. Communicating the purpose is key.
- Don't forget the social space. Snacks, good coffee/ drinks help draw folks in and create an opportunity to build connections.

Good luck. Sounds very exciting to be involved in something like this.

My organisation has permanent hot desking in place, alongside hybrid working. In fact, due to the numbers of staff coming into the main office, we've been able to condense all our hotdesks onto one floor and rent out our other three floors to other organisations. We use a booking system called Matrix which works really well - it prompts you to start your booking and if you don't click the button within an hour it releases the desk for someone else. The one challenge we do have, is having space for private conversations - we have break out areas (sofas and tables and chairs) but if you need confidentiality, we only have 5 'pods' available for the whole floor and only two are prebookable. For me as a HR person, I really struggle with this as all my calls are confidential. If I'm in the office, I sometimes can't find a private pod to speak to a manager and I've already had one complaint made about me 'discussing private matters where others could hear' even though I mentioned no names or even department names. So my advice is make sure you have enough private space for meetings/conversations.