Hoteling / Workspace Management

A workspace management case that allows employees, visitors, and guests to search for and book a workspace (desk, cubicle, room, space, etc.) for a specified period.

The days of sitting next-to-each other at desks are over—for now, it seems to us. Instead, social distancing standards, advanced cleaning needs, health questionnaires before booking, and contact tracing are the keywords today—fast-tracked hoteling for many employers who need ways to bring employees back as safely as possible.

Welcome employees back to work as safely and efficiently as possible.

Hotel vs. Hot Desk

On a first-come-first-served basis.

Hotel desks are governed by a reservation system that allows a person to choose a seat and keep it for a set period. No one else can occupy the space, and, unlike hot desks, employees can be more critical in choosing their workspace. Hoteling ensures they have a reservable space that fits their needs for a particular day.

Hotel desking can be a quick fix to creating space for project staffers, part-time employees, and contractors. Whether the project lasts a day or a month, versatile desking options ensure everyone has a place to sit. In addition, Hoteling provides part-time employees with “dedicated” spaces where they can collaborate and connect with their teammates.

Make it simple for employees to see available space and book through many channels

CENTRALIZE WORKSTATION MANAGEMENT

• How many desks are available right now?
• How are requests processed and reservations
  made?
• What are confirmation standards in place?
• How can employees change or cancel their reservations?

TRACK OCCUPANCY AND UTILIZATION METRICS

Hotel desks overbooked indicate a need for more workspaces, while a 50% usage rate offers opportunities to use space for other options. Other factors like the booking length, types of employees who book rooms, and the physical location of popular/unpopular bookings highlight hoteling best practices.

Tracking hotel desk utilization also supports contact tracing for COVID-19 and other health crises. In a confirmed case, facilities managers can pull the hotel desk log for recently used workspaces to begin the contact tracing process and notify employees who booked and used specific desks.

Choices within a Flexible Working Environment

A flexible working environment is a workplace that does not have fixed seating arrangements and gives employees flexibility when and where they work. This is often facilitated via concepts such as hot-desking or hoteling. This article will further illuminate these strategies and review how they are implemented, their drawbacks, and how specific existing tools like Room Manager can be implemented to ensure employees’ success and satisfaction.

Hot Desking

Hot desking can be generally described as an office setup whereby any employee can utilize any free seat, desk, or workstation whenever they arrive at the office each day. However, this strategy significantly contributes to discontent among workers in an open-office layout. Employees often do not know where they will be stationed the next day, with whom they will be working, or if they will find a free desk next to a colleague. Additionally, most employees prefer familiarity in their workspaces, and the uncertainty of securing a workstation daily may be draining.

Use Desk Keywords for filtering

For instance, take a scenario where an individual in the IT department is required to write code. This employee may sit next to a Sales Representative who spends a lot of time on conference calls with clients and partners. This would reasonably discourage the employee in IT, who would much prefer a quiet environment for their work.

Interactive office and floorplans

Popular mitigation for this matter is setting up conditions and rules for employees to work in certain places and establishing zones and neighborhoods. This ensures, for instance, that employees in the same department, or projects, are situated within the same zones. This effectively creates a flexible working principle and establishes a form of governance in the hot desking system. In addition, interactive Floorplans can help to find the right free seat and desk by using Keyword Filtering, which is available in the Room Manager Desk Management solution. Users can use keywords and amenities to narrow the search results when searching for a free desk. For a sample, an IT developer can search for a complimentary desk or space by using keywords that match his preferences for a quiet or isolated desk or room.

Check-in, Check-out System: Hoteling.

Hoteling is another way used to implement flexibility within a working environment. This process allows employees to book a particular workstation, desk, or any other workspace, conference room, or bookable resource available in the office. Even though workstations are not allocated to specific employees, the hoteling approach gives significantly more autonomy and control over where each employee is working.

Rules and Policies

In the modern office experience that applies to hoteling, an employee can use software or a mobile app to find a workstation before coming to the office. This provides reassurance to an employee that they are guaranteed a workstation. Further functionality can be availed by specific software or solution, including the ability to search for colleagues and ensure that they book the free desk nearby. Task and project-based collaboration can be achieved this way.

Firms and facility managers may decide how to manage bookings and check-ins optimally. For instance, how early an individual can book a desk or a meeting room in advance, the timeframe for such a reservation, and the default period in which a reservation can be revoked and re-allocated. Such decisions can only be made through a basic understanding of how people utilize the space and comprehension of the firm’s flexible work policy. The booking experience of your employees is fair and gives the flexibility your employees need. Checkin Rules can be defined using PowerAutomate in the Room Manager solution to prevent no-shows. Optimization of the space booking and occupancy will show you a trend, and you need to reconsider your strategy, which is not an easy task but a challenge for the next level of space optimization and desk management. The dashboard can show you which desks and floors are used during which period to see a trend and optimize the office space with the available resources.

Conclusion/summary

Hot desking and hoteling approaches are increasingly viable in implementing flexible working environments. When properly implemented about the specific needs of the company and your employees, they tend to be effective and, consequently, positively affect the engagement and productivity of employees.