How to future proof desk management: 10 things you need to know

Many prefer working remotely because desks have not been set up for a pandemic. People feel they can be in control over their workspace at home, while at work, they depend on the employer. Changing workplace design and process to meet these new requirements and demands is one of today’s biggest challenges for workplace leaders to overcome.

You may well face a workspace where most of the desks are empty because most of your workforce is at home. But your real estate costs haven’t gone down, quite the opposite. With more remote staff, additional cleaning, and social distancing requiring more square footage per workspace, your real estate costs are increasing. You’re probably thinking about reducing the office space but, to do so, you need to know how much real estate to keep, how to monitor usage patterns and what the optimal response will be in scenario A, B and C.

In short, desk management and desk management software have never been more important. It has to work for employees, for employers, and comply with government guidance. It needs to future-proof a safe, productive workplace that supports business growth in the long term. You need a plan for maximizing the use of smaller spaces that work in real life, not only on paper.

To support you on this mission, we’ve answered some of the essential questions on desk management that will help you create a productive work environment:

1. How will the new work patterns affect desk management policy?
2. What do employees expect from a post-Covid workplace?
3. How many desks do we need?
4. Hot desking or desk hoteling?
5. How to design a workplace employees want to spend time in?
6. How do we ensure safety without compromising the workplace experience?
7. How do we identify and isolate potential infections?
8. How to implement and communicate the new policy?
9. Do we need a workplace app?
10. The bottom line: What’s the ROI?

The desire to continue working entirely or partly remotely will dominate across the globe, particularly in light of awareness of the environmental impact of this choice. Reports show that:

• only 12% of employees want to work from home full-time;
• 59% would like to keep working remotely as much as possible;
• and 72% of knowledge workers prefer a hybrid working model.

Gensler’s survey of workers in the US revealed that 70% would prefer to work mostly in the office – albeit with significant changes, the most important being an overall change in the workplace policy. Employees want stricter requirements to stay at home when sick, social distancing, assigned workspaces, and long-standing issues like noise and distractions to be addressed. People also expect more flexibility from their employers regarding work locations and hours, and technology that makes it possible.

Productivity is another important element, particularly among Gen Z and Millennials, who will comprise the majority of the global workforce within a decade. Though both are technologically savvy and more open to flexible working than previous generations, they have also struggled more than others with resisting distractions and remaining productive when working from home.

So, how does this affect your company’s real estate and desk management policy?

• You’ll either not need one (if the company becomes fully remote) or you’ll need to maximize the use of the office considerably to accommodate hybrid working and social distancing requirements.
• You’ll also have to understand whether a big-city HQ (potentially more attractive to younger generations), a “hub and spoke” working model of more accessible decentralized offices or another flex solution, is a better fit for the company and its employees.
• Redefine the primary function of the office for your business and how it integrates with more dynamic working patterns (more on these points below)

Whichever direction you choose to go, two things will remain true:

1. Flexibility will be key to future-proofing your business and workplace experience (and keeping employee turnover low).
2. Technology – Desk Management Software will play a major role in ensuring seamless interaction between home and office, managing capacity and employee safety, and implementing an effective desk management policy.

Office real estate is a high-cost overhead for most organizations, one which, in light of the global pandemic, no longer makes business sense.

The role of the office is changing, too. If before the pandemic it tried to be a home away from home, today the office has a much more practical functionality – to facilitate team meetings, or carry out focused work that isn’t possible at home. CBRE even predicts that by 2030, the office will have morphed into an amenity-laden workplace that offers a “boutique experience”, much like a hotel.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of employees are moving away to suburban areas, motivated by the need to cut living expenses and the desire to spend more time with their friends and families and less time commuting. In urban planning, this has translated into the renaissance of neighborhoods and the rise of mixed-use developments. For businesses, this means a choice between a centralized office and decentralized workplaces or the use of co-working spaces due to their inherent flexibility.

Microsoft and Facebook have extended their hybrid work policy. Google, the king of the workplace experience, has also announced a new hybrid working policy where 60% of workers are expected to come into the office a few days a week.

In a quite different mood, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings made headlines by revealing that, to him, “Not being able to get together in person, particularly internationally, is a pure negative.” Despite that, Netflix will not require their employees to return to the office until most have been vaccinated.

Others, including Fujitsu, Slack, and Hubspot, have opted for a permanent hybrid working solution. Dropbox in turn has avoided the desk management conundrum altogether by transforming its offices into Dropbox Studios – spaces for team building, events, and strategy meetings. Individual work will be left to home and co-working spaces.

Hot desking or desk hoteling?

Whether you’re considering how to reduce real estate or have already done so, you need robust desk management software so you can do more with desks in less space.

Grabbing the best desk you see available when you walk into the office has been around for a while – it’s known as hot desking. It was not universally popular. “Each morning you get a workstation based on that old standby, first-come-first-served. If you show up at 5:30 a.m. then you’ll likely have your pick. Later than 9 a.m., then probably you’ll get what’s left even if that means working apart from your colleagues,” according to this Forbes article.

Half the employees with unassigned seats want to eliminate hot desking. They don’t want a return to the constant anxiety over “if and where” they will be able to find a suitable workspace, and now the new worry – whether the desk will be clean and safe to use. Meanwhile, 61% agree that the ability to pre-book their workspace would alleviate these concerns.

Enter desk hoteling – a solution that allows staff to pre-book the desk that matches their needs before leaving the house.

A desk booking system is an excellent solution for companies willing to give their facilities team control over which desks are sanitized and available. And, if getting employees to remember to book a space is a challenge, you can integrate the desk booking software with other workplace technology, so there is a value exchange – for example, smart wireless charging spots to trigger instant desk check-in. This way, you not only implement the chosen desk policy more effectively, but also create value for both the company and the employee. The bonus? Faster desk turnaround and more cost-efficient real estate.

How do we use desk management tools to design a workplace employees want to spend time in?

According to Prof. Bill Kerr of Harvard Business School, “We have celebrated density and packing people together, but that’s putting a lot of eggs in one basket. A lot of companies are going to be thinking about how they could make their workforce if not pandemic-proof, at least pandemic-resistant.”

Desk management is not just about cutting the square footage. It’s also about creating more agile and resilient workplaces that motivate people to spend time there. Achieving these goals will take a user-centric approach.

• Is the workplace designed to foster collaboration and productivity
• How quickly can you adapt to new ways of working and safety regulations?

As comparatively small a change as rearranged seating can boost productivity and improve organizational performance by 15%. A study into a Korean e-commerce company revealed that when employees from sales teams sat next to coworkers they hadn’t previously interacted with, the number of closed deals grew by 25%.

In today’s world, you need an integrated workplace management system (IWMS) that provides a desk booking solution, space usage and real-time occupancy data, as well as communicating with other facilities management systems. The system you choose should:

• give you agility if you suddenly need to move desks around or increase the distance between coworkers due to new regulatory requirements. Set patterns can be applied to floors, zones or neighborhoods with a single click.
• create a truly digital workplacethat enables people to switch between home and office easily, providing staff with the much-desired flexibility.
• enable a better workplace experience. You gain valuable insights that you can compare against other workspaces by integrating space usage data from different workplace tools. This gives you clarity around what improvements are needed, from design to heating and ventilation. Ultimately, you make smarter space planning decisions.

The desk management policy you employ must be flexible and adaptable. It should make people feel safe and be productive. And it has to be strategic and intuitive, well beyond solving the immediate challenges. You need a future proof desk management policy that supports business growth in the long term.

So how can you get return on investment from adopting the right desk management policy? This affects the ROI on multiple levels:

• Profitability: Companies that embrace digital workplaces tend to be 21% more profitable. Better use of resources such as rooms or desks is just one example. Choosing the right technology can be a powerful contributor to introduce cost-efficiency through more automation and better data on space utilization.
• Reduced real estate costs: pre-covid 62% of office space was utilized ineffectively. 45% of hot desking space and 36% of meeting room bookings were unused. Things have changed, but to avoid falling into the same trap, using the right technology can mean this is no longer a concern. Instead you can manage demand and get greater efficiency by flexing based on demand. for example for every 10% of staff working in hybrid mode, office real estate can be reduced by at least 5%.

• Employee engagement: Optimizing and reducing the cost of real estate doesn’t need to come at the expense of employee wellbeing. Enabling a more flexible way of working and collaborating with colleagues can create a better workplace experience. Highly engaged workplaces claim 41% lower absenteeism, 40% fewer quality defects. What’s more, an engaged workforce recover from recession faster and can reach as much as 147% higher earnings per share than their competitors, and maintain higher levels of staff retention.
• Agility and scalability: A Cloud-based and integrated IWMS system leads to faster adaptation to change due to a more seamless experience. If systems are talking to each other this means a richer set of data for easier management of office density and capacity. Also changes in policy can be deployed fast across locations with a click of a button.

Kadence’s Hybrid Working ROI Calculator

Try out Kadence’s ROI calculator to see what savings you stand to gain by moving to a hybrid working model.

Kadence empowers workplace leaders to unlock the value of hybrid working through frictionless experiences across workplaces. It powers a safe and touchless desk experience, using data that optimizes space utilization and informs systems from work patterns to cleaning schedules.

Kadence’s all-in-one solution for desk management software enables touchless desk check-in, giving employees confidence by clearly indicating when desks are safe to use.