Firms offer personal desks to lure staff back to office

Some realising they may have gone too far with hot-desking in new era of hybrid work

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To get workers back to the office, bosses have dangled fancy coffee, yoga classes and DJ parties. But that still has not been enough, so some firms are giving employees a more traditional perk – a desk of their own.

Hot-desking or hotelling, where workers get a desk when they show up instead of having a permanent one, is not new but really took off during the pandemic as a way for companies to save money amid a new era of hybrid work.

Now some firms are realising that they may have gone too far. There are lots of gripes about hotelling – from hygiene concerns to the soullessness of offices without personalised spaces – that provide employees with more reasons to stay at home.

That has prompted Salesforce and others to see if dedicated desks could entice more in-office time. The share of US desks that were assigned has ticked up after several years of declines, according to office architect Gensler.

“Clients don’t want to give employees any excuse not to come in,” said Ms Caitlin Turner, director of interiors at architecture firm HOK, which has designed offices for Boston Consulting Group and Honeywell International. “If you want them to share desks, they say, ‘Why should we?’”

Employees are not just being difficult. There is a degree of comfort – psychological and physical – derived from the ritual of going to the same desk each day. At a time when 77 per cent of employees are disgruntled for one reason or another, according to new research from Gallup, that matters.

“It’s one less thing to worry about,” Ms Turner said.