Does your company operate a "hot desk" policy and if so does it work for you?

[carriemumsnet]

We know some companies operate a "hot desk" policy and that this can help make flexible or home working easier - so can actually support family friendly policies - but we also know that it can also be a challenge not to know where you're sitting each day/ not to be able to sit in a team/ not to have a picture of your kids on your desk! etc.

Do you or the companies you work for have any experience of this sort of working and what tips would you give to a company starting out on this path for the first time? Some of our Family friendly members either operate this system or are thinking about it so it would be great to be able to share your feedback with them.

Many thanks

Family Friendly team

I had this when I started a new job. I was the only part timer and everyone had bagged their desks, even though it was supposed to be hot desking. So I ended up moving around and sitting wherever there was a gap. And people would get really stroppy to find me sitting at their desk, and walk in to the office muttering and swearing. There was a spare desk but it was somewhere completely different from the main office, so quite isolating. I really got hacked off with it, never knowing where I was going to be from one day to the next. The final straw came when some woman pushed the chair I was sitting in right into the desk, so she could get behind me to get things from her desk. I was 8 months pg at the time and my bump was squashed into the desk. Steam was coming out of my ears. How I managed to stop myself from screaming in her face I do not know. She realized her error as soon as she had done it, but I just gathered up my stuff, went on maternity leave and never came back. Hot desking just penalizes the part time women with children and brings out the absolute worst in people. Utterly shite idea.

I've been in offices that have used it for everyone and recognise all of the negative experiences stated here. I think it's one of those policies that has benefits only for the employer - and staff recognise that so it pisses them off even more. If it was dressed up as "We will save x per year by doing this which means you get a pay rise of y" that might sweeten it a little. Not sure what it's got to do with family friendly policies though

Yes I/ we operate a hot desk policy. This also means a clear desk policy.
We have 40 staff all working a variety of hours and casual staff as well. You sit anywhere in an given day. The office is small enough( prob a max of 12 at any one time) for it still to be sociable .no other way to do it because of shifts. I insist on a clean desk at the end of a shift as it is only fair to the exit person . Each staff member has their own telephone log in and earphones which they keep in a cubby. There is a cubby and locker for each person and a recycle bin every two desks. Stationary and files are kept in a communal cupboard.The main difficulty is that some people are tidier than others I suppose. And you have to readjust your seat every morning.
For the computer whizzes it is a night mare. It means every computer has to be configured for every person. They struggle with this concept frankly and as a result you tend to migrate to the computer terminal that lets you print or access communal websites better. We are open 18 hours a day so the techs don't get much chance to update us v often( scream)

We have hot desking; working from home, flex working. It was a pain to get used to but it works most of the time.

We have to sign up to a 'work style' so either mostly in the office, 50% in the office 50% home or mainly at home.

The Mostly in the office crowd have lockers that are next to the desks, the rest of us have lockers on wheels, we all also have laptops.

We do have clusters, so we have 6 desks to 10 people, 2 are mainly in the office the rest of us are 50/50, to be 50/50 you commit to working from home at least 2 days a week. We have a website where you can book your desk up to 2 weeks in advance so no first come etc.

When we're all in the office there are unallocated desks aka exile
though if you're really busy and don't want to be disturbed people choose to sit there.

Not even the most senior have an office, it's, all open plan but we do have small 1-2 people rooms that if you need to do long calls etc you can book one or there are always walk-in rooms too.

we find it works but then everyone has to give and take.

Laptops not only make working from home easier but mean if you need a special mouse etc it plugs in to the laptop rather than rooting around on the floor with PCs and you don't have a slow start up.

Oh and the left-handers HATE it- understandably

carriemumsnet You're not thinking of inflicting this on MNHQ are you?
Best hide this thread if you are .

Haven't hot desked as such but in a previous organisation, visiting staff would often use your desk/PC if you were out of the office.

I can't tell you how much I hated that. Everything used to get moved, chair had been re-adjusted, someone sneezing all over your keyboard. Yuck yuck yuck!

I'm new to mumsnet, so a bit late to the topic. As you can probably guess from my username, I've gone one step beyond. My organisation relocated the main office earlier this year, and set out to make a shift to more flexible working. There are now 25% fewer desks, a hotdesk booking system, and more space given over to formal and informal meeting spaces.

We are encouraged to work from home at least part of the week, and there isn't a distinction between full and part time workers. The nature of my work means that I haven't had a permanent desk for over 10 years, so I find the combination of flexible working and hotdesking works really well. But some people who had previously had a fixed desk are still finding it hard to adapt.

The only advice I would give is consult with the people affected, not just before making the change, but as long as people need to adjust.

We have recently started hot desking at our company and it is going really well. I understand the concerns people have about it with the whole idea of feeling undervalued and not having their own area in which they can work. However, I've found that here it has made me feel more comfortable as I now know everyone that little bit more from working side by side from there. Our office is actually two rooms separated by a wall but a huge glassless window so even though you could talk between them it still felt very segregated.

It has actually gone so well we wrote a post on how to make it as painless as possible; www.lucidica.com/blog/random-technology/the-worlds-best-hot-desking-environment/. I hope with time hot desking adapts to make staff feel more valued and maybe with some tips from that article your company can make people a bit more relaxed about hot desking!