Flexible Working
With most organisations assigning a desk to each employee, it is not difficult to realise that organisations are tying up huge amounts of money in redundant space. It is not unusual to find companies carrying between 25 and 50 per cent excess property.
This rapid rise in flexible working - where workers can work from home, on the move or from telecentres - has resulted in a staggering decrease in office utilisation. Senior executives may believe that desk occupancy is 100 per cent for their administrative staff and around 60-70 per cent for their managers and professionals. However, in reality, it is more like 40 per cent.
Shared Workspace
The way we work is constantly changing with an increasing number of employees choosing to work more flexibly. This means that the provision of a permanent desk for each member of the workforce is now unnecessary, and it is costing businesses millions of pounds from under-utilisation of desks.
In the past, companies have tried to deal with the problem of half-empty offices by simply reducing the number of desks available and asking employees to use whichever desk was free. This concept often proved unpopular with the workforce and was difficult to manage successfully.
In order for desk sharing or hoteling to be effective, it is important that staff do not feel alienated from their work environment. Even if they are in the office only one or two days per week, each staff member has unique working requirements.
Providing a
booking solution that enables staff profiling and matching desk attributes to their needs (desk size, privacy and certain software packages) will largely assist this transition.