What are the cons of hot desking?

Besides the advantages of hot desking, there are also some challenges to overcome. If you are considering implementing hot desking, we have created an overview of pros and cons in this article. Below you find a short list with the most prominent problems of hot desking.

Uncertainty of having a workspace

The core of hot desking is the absence of static workplaces. Employees are supposed to come into work and decide ad hoc at which desk they want to work that day. While this likely won’t cause any trouble at smaller businesses, it may have an impact on employees of bigger companies, especially when the office has multiple floors. Your employee might take the stairs to a specific floor, only to find that all the workspaces on this floor are already occupied.

This problem can be solved by implementing a desk management tool. With software such as GoBright’s, employees can book a desk from home through the app and be sure of their seat in the office for the day. This way, they won’t waste time looking for an appropriate seat at the office. Additionally, GoBright offers interactive Mapping screens, on which employees can see which desks are available and optionally book a desk.

Adaption takes time

Converting to hot desking is quite a change on the workfloor. While some people can adapt easily to such changes, others might have some more trouble. Especially the older generations of employees are usually hesitant to try hot desking. But there are also younger employees that just aren’t too keen on change. It therefore depends highly on the type of employees you have at the office.

Some people also value some kind of hierarchy in the workplace. With hot desking, people from all levels of the organisational structure are distributed over the entire floor. This disrupts the existing hierarchy in a team.