Colleague refusing to hotdesk at work – anyone else face this issue??

[Singleparent78]

Post-pandemic our offices have moved to a hotdesking set up as part of new hybrid working. Most FT staff now WFH 2-3 days/week and now, when they do come in, they no longer have ‘their own’ desk but instead sit at a series of desks which they book in advance – each desk has IT equipment, but staff have all been given laptops that they can bring in.

It’s not ideal but it encourages a good mixing of staff and ultimately saves money - with staff WFH it was possible to reduce the overall office footprint rather than have the same office with half populated desks. A lot of effort went into setting up the new hot desk system to ensure it was well kitted out and comfortable.

One Staff member has been refusing to come in and hot desk. Says it’s a policy that can’t be enforced, that this way of working is not in his contract.

He claims the desks aren’t access compliant – he doesn’t have a disability he just is complaining about the process of setting them up and doesn’t feel the set-up is compliant. He has been WFH for months now, refusing to come in and use the hot desks until he gets his own desk with a number of other requirements on his list.

HR have been useless, just saying I will need to make adjustments ‘to support him’ but my view is as he doesn’t have special requirements, just a general grievance, so needs to follow policy - otherwise what is the point of the policy?

Anyone else have this problem? How did you address it?

This. Many, many times this.

He's making some pretty valid points then...

OP, are you management for the individual? If not, I would suggest leave it to management to sort.

I did but I suspect he was a recovering alcoholic and didn't want to go to a pub at all. He had a fair point.

We have also had 'family days' where some employees with fertility issues complained.
Then we had 'bring your dog to work days' and the allergic employees were given the day off lol.
People think that Facilities Management is easy? Fuck me, but you learn about people. People have concerns that might not always be obvious. If they're valuable people and you value your employees, you appease them.

Another example was we had an employee who was in a wheelchair. She objected in the strongest terms possible to being carried to a lift in the event of a fire.

People are not drones.

sorry not RTFT but when I saw this...I agree...call his bluff!

A lot of people hate hot-desking, and with good reason. Changing the position you sit in each time you come into the office can cause aches and pains in the neck, back etc. Is it possible to let people who want a desk have one, and those who are happy to hot-desk can hot-desk?

I think the mental and physical well-being of staff should be one of your first considerations.

I also came on to say call his bluff. He will probably look for a remote job to be with his dogs.

That's more understandable. My DM is a recovering alcoholic and even 10 years down the line she can't go in a pub.

It is amazing the concerns people have that aren't obvious when you start looking into it and some of them are really valid. My DM is also in a wheelchair and the amount of people who just take control of the chair is ridiculous, she'd have hated being carried to a lift as well and even then there are massive safety concerns with that.

Sounds like a prick. Sounds like someone who doesn’t mind that his sucky attitude will affect pay rises and promotions and opportunities.

Yes, it's not hard to understand that what is important to one person isn't a concern to someone else but when you're dealing with hundreds of people, you will have to make adjustments sometimes.

If you work for a shitty company, they will treat you like shit. If you work for a good company (or I'm the facilities manager 😎), then you treat people as individuals.

Ah!

I was just coming along to respond to posters encouraging sensitivity towards people who don’t like hot desking, to point out that it’s a business, not an adult crèche.

But I see that it is.

I'm with him - sorry OP.

I hate hot desking, I would not accept a job anywhere that expected me to do it. For example, my current employer has hot-desking for most staff, but the management team (which includes me) get their own office. I feel guilty about this (because my team hate hot desking as much as the next sane person), so I let them use my office when I'm wfh. So today I have come in to find my desk absolutely covered in dandruff flakes. It is utterly repulsive.

If I was in your colleague's position I would get myself diagnosed with OCD or anxiety, argue that it's sufficiently serious to be treated as a disability, and then ask you to make reasonable adjustments. I'm a great employee, but I happen to hate hot desking and I see little to be gained by treating employees like little drones rather than humans who prefer the familiar.

OTOH if you just want him in the office rather than wfh can't you just give him a specific desk?

There was another case where one employee (nobody knew who it was so he was the phantom pooper) kept blocking the toilet with toilet paper and some idiot decided to send out an angry email to the entire company. THAT caused uproar as the man who was blocking the toilet was of a religion that required him to clean his butt perfectly or something similar.

It all sounds a bit exhausting!

I also loathe hot desking. But agree with others who say it's a business decision and that if I don't like how my company operates, it's on me to find somewhere else to work. That said, if your HR won't support you, I'd ask him for a list of his accommodations and pass it up the chain. If he gets them, others will come forward with similar requests and HR will be forced to recognise that their hands off approach comes with consequences

@Singleparent78 what a pain in the backside he sounds. Sympathies, particularly with your lack of support from HR and the suspicion they'll roll over anyway rather than actually do their jobs.

‘....but nothing to reward the resilient or hard workers who go the distance. It's why we lose good staff but amazingly are able to retain all the moaners or people who can't! Who would've thought!’

aye, but when an opportunity comes up, when a favour is asked for, when a manager has to decide who gets what % pay rise in the team etc does the moaney for the sake of it fucker get the chance, the help, the money or would most managers go out of their way to make sure it goes to someone else??

Mmm, while I do think more companies are going to try and introduce this setup going forward, it does come with problems. It's essentially expecting employees to engage in the labour of organising their own workspaces every time they're in, possibly multiple times a day depending on meetings and the extent to which people are coming in and out, purely for the benefit of the employer. The employees are simply being expected to suck it up.

I've some sympathy with OP getting lumbered, but this does actually sound like a badly thought through and implemented policy. It's not a bad thing that someone's kicking up a fuss over it.

People are people. Not drones. If people can't understand that, then they need to cop on.

There are people who will take the piss, but if they have a legal argument, you accommodate those too.

Fwiw I don't think this is an HR matter. HR can advise managers on correct procedure (and should have overseen any policies) but it's down to managers to manage.

Is he ASD?

Hot dealing would freak my ASD daughter out.

We have moved to full hybrid working and hotdesking on office days. We have bookable desks, and in reality, most people still sit where their old fixed desks were.

There are a handful of desks which have been taken off the booking system because of specialist chairs or other adjustments or specialist technical equipment. We have enough desks for this to be feasible. It does mean you can't check in to a desk when you use one of those desks, but they also do a physical head-check a couple of times a day.

It's definitely possible to handle if the will is there...

"it's not hard to understand that what is important to one person isn't a concern to someone else but when you're dealing with hundreds of people, you will have to make adjustments sometimes."

Definitely, and situations where large numbers are involved, will also show up where your policies will fall down.

I used to work somewhere that had about 3 possible evacuation points on different floors, where people with mobility problems would need to wait for the use of an evacuation chair in the case of a fire alarm (to be taken down flights of stairs). This seems a good plan - until there is an event for war veterans that is taking place on a Sunday, when both evac-chair trained staff an't all be rotaed, and the number of people potentially needing to use the evacuation points in an emergency was much higher than would be expected.

Hot desking is very stressful. Changing height of desks, chairs, different keyboards, windows, blinds.

If you find this stressful how on earth do you do your job?!

He sounds like he is just being an arse for the sake if it, here in the NHS we all hotdesk, we just work at any desk we can find.
Anyone who refused would be disciplined for refusing to do their job.