The business landscape has been changing in recent years, with remote and hybrid work models becoming increasingly popular. At first, many found themselves struggling with these new working practices, but now, thanks to the rise in coworking and hot desking, modern businesses are able to adapt with ease.
Wondering if hot desking could benefit your business? Keep reading as Circle Hub explores the various benefits that modern businesses can expect to see after embracing hot desking.
What is Hot Desking?
If you aren’t familiar with the term, hot desking is when available desks are used by different professionals each day, rather than each person having a desk of their own. In a traditional office, this usually means that employees have a rotating schedule – as one employee finishes working, another starts, enabling one desk to be used by both.
At a coworking space, hot desking enables you to turn up whenever you like and pick an available desk to work at. Known as Hot Spots at Circle Hub, this gives you the autonomy to choose where you work, as well as for how long.
How Do Modern Businesses Benefit From Hot Desking?
If you’ve grown accustomed to a traditional office over the years, where each person has their own assigned desk, the concept of hot desking may initially seem a little chaotic! However, it offers a number of distinct benefits, especially to modern businesses:
Reduces Costs
One of the biggest advantages experienced by modern businesses that give hot desking a try is cost-efficiency. Whether you implement it in a traditional office space or you sign your team up for a hot desking coworking space, the overall amount that you spend on overheads will rapidly drop.
If you implement this in a traditional office space, you won’t need quite as many desks or quite as much space. Meanwhile, hot desking at a coworking space means that you won’t have to shell out for a monthly lease for an office space of your own. While you’ll still need to pay a monthly membership fee for your team, this is significantly lower. Plus, hot desking at a coworking space also gives you access to a number of amenities that would have otherwise cost you extra. At Circle Hub, for example, you’ll be able to enjoy free coffee, an on-site gym, printing facilities, and more, without any additional charges.
Provides Flexibility and Autonomy
The flexibility that hot desking provides to individuals is another reason why this working model is loved by modern businesses. For starters, a hot desking coworking space will have flexible lease terms. You won’t need to tie your business into a two- or four-year lease that then limits your potential expansion. This also means that you can grow your team with ease. As more employees join your business, simply sign them up to your coworking space too.
The autonomy that hot desking gives to individuals is important too. Rather than being stuck at the same desk each day, people can pick and choose where they work depending on their tasks for the day. Got a deadline coming up and need some seclusion? Pick a desk in a quiet corner. Need inspiration for some brainstorming? Choose a desk in the center of the workspace to immerse yourself in the vibrant buzz that surrounds you.
Improves Productivity
Every business wants to be as productive as possible. Interestingly, this is something that hot desking can really help with. How? It’s partly due to the flexibility that professionals experience when hot desking. Being able to choose where you work and when you work can result in a surge of motivation that makes you much more focused and productive.
Hot desking at a coworking space is also linked to an improved work-life balance. This, again, increases productivity. When your mental health is doing well, being productive becomes much easier!
Boosts Collaboration and Networking
As you can imagine, working in a cubicle at a traditional office can be quite isolating. Not only are you ‘blocked in’, but you’ll be sitting next to the same people each day.
Meanwhile, give hot desking a try and you’ll immediately feel a part of the larger working environment around you. You’ll be able to meet new people each day, which not only helps with collaboration, but gives you a networking edge too. Make an effort to speak to the new people that you notice each day and you’ll grow your professional network in no time. This can significantly help with business progression and growth.
Flattens the Traditional Hierarchy
Another benefit of hot desking is how it flattens the traditional office hierarchy. It breaks down the barriers that separate the ‘higher-ups’ from other employees. Instead, everyone will have access to the same desks and the same resources.
This really evens out the playing field while also encouraging interaction between different levels of professionals. For modern businesses, it helps to establish a more integrated work culture, benefiting the entire organization.
Keeps the Office Space Tidier
Ever heard the phrase ‘tidy space, tidy mind’? It essentially means that being in a space that isn’t messy or cluttered will help your mind to focus better. Research backs this up, confirming that the human brain prefers order. A disorganized environment not only affects your ability to focus but also drains other cognitive resources.
How does this relate to hot desking? Well, since hot desking means that other people will also be using your desk, you’ll have no choice but to keep things tidy. After you’re done working, you’ll have to clear away any clutter to leave the space neat and mess-free for the next person that will be using it. All of the desks around you will be adhering to this too, resulting in a tidy workspace that helps to channel concentration.
Helps a Business to Be More Adaptable
In today’s world, you never know when external influences are going to affect your business in a way that forces a change in structure. Take the Covid-19 pandemic, for example. For many businesses, it required a complete office overhaul, not to mention the amount of time that offices sat empty while people were on lockdown.
Hot desking helps modern businesses to be more adaptable to emergency situations such as this. The agile nature of hot desking, especially at a coworking space, makes organizational shifts much easier. This will give your business resilience, which is a key to success in this day and age.
The Challenges of Hot Desking
While there’s no denying the many advantages that can come from hot desking, there are a few challenges that are worth being aware of too:
A Lack of Privacy
The biggest issue that people have with hot desking is a lack of privacy. Even if you choose a desk in a quiet corner, you’ll still have people around you. This can sometimes make it difficult to focus on complex tasks. It also means that you might struggle when working with information that needs to be kept strictly confidential.
However, many coworking spaces offer a solution to this. At Circle Hub, in addition to our hot desking spaces, we also have private offices that our members can hire. They’re perfect for when you need a few hours of seclusion, after which you can then immerse yourself back into our hot desking workspace.
Our conference rooms are great for this too. Since you can’t, and shouldn’t, host a team meeting in the middle of a hot desking space, having access to fully equipped meeting rooms that can be booked by the hour can be a huge help!
Difficulties in Finding a Desk on Busy Days
While hot desking in a traditional office, where you have a rotating schedule to follow, means that there’ll always be an available desk for you, this isn’t always the case at a coworking space. Turn up at a busy time and you may struggle to find an available desk.
Again, at Circle Hub, we get around this with our designated desk system. This allows you to reserve a desk in advance for the hours you need. The desk will still be in our hot desking space but no one else will be able to use it during the time you’ve booked it for.
Hygiene Concerns
Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic, people have been more concerned about hygiene. Using a desk that someone else has just used means that you could be unwittingly subjecting yourself to unwanted germs.
While the cleaning schedule of some coworking spaces is pretty lax, this isn’t the case at Circle Hub. Our workspaces, along with the desks that reside in them, are regularly and frequently cleaned. You won’t have to deal with any hygiene concerns. Instead, you’ll be able to safely sit back and focus on your work!
Can Sometimes Feel Impersonal
Earlier, we discussed how beneficial it can be to have a tidy and clutter-free environment to work in. The downside to this is that it can sometimes leave a workspace feeling impersonal.
The key is to find a good middle ground. There’s no reason why you can’t adorn your hot desk with a few personal items, be it a small potted plant, a photo frame, or anything else. So long as it’s easy for you to pack those items up at the end of the day, you’ll be able to give your workspace a personal touch that will leave you feeling more at home.
Summary
Although hot desking can pose a few challenges to modern businesses, it is, on the whole, very beneficial. This is particularly the case if you sign your business up for a hot desking coworking space. You’ll have a professional environment to work in, along with a full range of amenities and facilities, for a fraction of the cost of a traditional office. The improvements in productivity, collaboration, networking, and more that come with this are just the icing on the cake!
Click here to book a tour of Circle Hub’s hot desking spaces today!