How Do I Convince My Users That Switching To Hotdesking Is A Good Thing For Them?

Hotdesking can save space and money, but your staff are the key to success, finds Nik Rawlinson.

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“I don't really like the term hotdesking,” said Andy Lake, don’t editor of Flexibility, a flexible working and telework journal established with support from the European Commission. “If you’re looking to change the way an organisation works, encourage collaboration and mobility, the focus has to come away from the desk.”

Lake would rather we talk about finding the best place and time to do a piece of work than how the office itself should be organised. “Most large corporates and pretty much the whole public sector is on this road, one way or another,” he said. “So long as you’re not customer-facing, you can do your work from pretty much anywhere now, if you have the right tools.”

Identifying and deploying those tools is key to establishing a successful hotdesking workforce. Get it right, and you’ll not only have lower ongoing office costs, but productive, fulfilled staff, too.

The changing workplace

Offices should be designed to suit their users’ needs – which often evolve in sync with the tech to which they have access.

“The way people work now is fundamentally changed,” said Nathan Wheeler, Head of Fujitsu UK and Ireland’s Cloud Computing Product Business. “For millennials, their office is Starbucks, home, or working from the train. This shift in people’s work styles has caused a bigger challenge for the IT department, which will have to facilitate a choose your own device [CYOD] environment.”