Feb. 3, 2022 "Our newfound hybrid work freedoms will come with a heavy price — more hot-desking": Today I found this article Pilita Clark on the Financial Post:
In Spain it has triggered legal action. In Canada it has riled office workers. In Australia it has rattled civil servants and in Britain it is irking union leaders.
The cause of this far-flung frustration? The steady spread of hot-desking in a pandemic that threatens to turn the personal, assigned desk into an ever rarer commodity.
Hot or shared desks have been high on worker hate lists ever since they began their insidious slide into corporate life more than 20 years ago.
Unsurprisingly, people disliked the tedium of racing their colleagues to find a desk that needed adjusting and made you feel like a worthless cog.
Not much has changed. Last week, when a LinkedIn poll asked if people enjoyed hot-desking at work, 75 per cent of respondents clicked on “no.”
An even larger share of British office workers expressed the same view last year in a university study that also suggested the idea that people grow to like hot-desking over time is rubbish.
Yet demand for “flexible working spaces” is on a roll. A report this month from the JLL property group says 37 per cent of organizations globally have post-pandemic plans to increase their use of co-working or flexible space.
Some have already started. Envoy, a software group that makes an app you can use to book a hot desk, says desk reservations jumped by as much as 60 per cent a month last year.
You might ask why employers would introduce such a proven agent of misery at a time of chronic worker shortages from San Francisco to Sydney. Yet even a life-long loather of the hot desk like me can see why it is happening.
Before COVID, office property in big cities was so expensive that underused space cost companies an estimated £4 billion a year in London alone.
Now, those same businesses are introducing hybrid working so people can work some days at home and some in the office, which is precisely what most employees say they want.
But if much of a workforce is only coming into the office two or three days a week, it makes for a lot of underused space. Enter the hot desk, with predictable results.
A Spanish company that tried desk-sharing ended up in court last year after unions objected to what they argued was a serious change in working conditions.
That claim was rejected but it may not be the last.
Employees in Canada are reportedly miffed about returning to work to find they have to use an app to book a hot desk in hybrid work set-ups. The same prospect has upset government workers in Canberra. In London, union bosses say hot-desking has undermined ministers’ edicts for civil servants to go back to the office because there are now fewer desks than staff.
I sympathize. Pre-pandemic, too much hot-desking was done by mindless cost-cutters who ignored the price of alienating and wasting the time of staff.
But COVID has made me think again. First, because the rise of remote working makes the cost of unused office space a bigger problem.
Also, when I have returned to my old, assigned Financial Times desk between lockdowns, the experience has not always been ideal.
My area has sometimes been so devoid of bodies I may as well have stayed home. At times I voluntarily hot-desked, just to be closer to colleagues who were the main reason I was there. Admittedly, my desk is in an especially distant wing of the building. But in a hybrid set-up, I can see this could be a common dilemma.
There is an answer, of sorts. If shared desks, and chairs,
are easily adjustable,
simple to reserve,
close to generous storage space
and generally better organized,
hot-desking might become more popular.
But it won’t be cost-free. A desk of one’s own is not merely more convenient and ergonomically sound. It is a sign that you are valued by, and belong to, an organization. Once it goes, so does a measure of loyalty to the business.
At a time when the pandemic has stretched organizational ties to once unthinkable lengths, I suspect it will still be best to keep the idea of the hot desk on ice for as long as possible.
Our newfound hybrid work freedoms will come with a heavy price — more hot-desking | Financial Post
Feb. 28, 2022 "Hybrid work enters a third dimension as co-working spaces take off": Today I found this article by Janina Conboye in the Financial Post:
After two years in my spare bedroom, I decided to switch things up and went to work in a café in my east London neighbourhood. As I settled in, I realized the WiFi was so slow that I could not even send emails. Long black coffee barely finished, I was forced back home.
I love my flat, but in this hybrid world the homeworking days of my partner and I don’t coincide, and the quiet does not suit me (frankly, I hate it).
Plenty of others also find themselves in a situation where working from home is boring, not productive, or simply impossible. But there is a solution. The “third space” is not the office and not home, but somewhere in between: a flexible, affordable, professional space on your doorstep.
Everyone knows the cautionary tale of WeWork and its rapid overexpansion into shared workspaces that also seemed to promise a cool lifestyle (as well as free beer).
But post-pandemic, the company now offers a more flexible “on demand” service at more than 250 locations, offering individual workers the chance to use its offices with no monthly commitment. And an increase in sign ups to its “all access” membership, which gives entry to more than 700 offices, is being driven by both individuals, and companies that want to give their employees more flexibility.
Dan Cable, professor of organizational behaviour at London Business School, sees how the third space concept “solves a bunch of problems.”
In the context of what he calls “new worker expectations” — where people want more flexibility around not just how, but where they work — the fact that third spaces are near our homes is key. “Ten minutes from your house, that’s a really important piece of this. We’re getting rid of an hour [commute] each way each day, 10 hours of wasted time.”
He adds that third spaces could be part of the long-term revolution in our ways of working. “It’s a specific, practical, affordable solution.”
Arc Club is one of a number of startups offering co-working spaces close to where office workers live. Hannah Philp and Caro Lundin opened the first site in Homerton, north-east London, in 2020 and have just opened a second in Camberwell Green in the south, with 10 more in the pipeline.
Facilities include individual desks, private call booths and meeting rooms. There is coffee, networking with local professionals and WiFi that works. It costs £25 ($42.60) a day or £150 ($255.50) a month.
Who uses these spaces? Beyond obvious candidates such as freelancers and solo business founders, some people want to have a couple of days off from their commute or they may want access to a professional space to escape their children or housemates.
Third spaces seem to fit neatly into how hybrid work is evolving and shaping the new office landscape in major cities. When I talk to those in the commercial property sector, centralization seems to be their key aim.
To lure workers back, businesses are opting for high-end, centrally located office spaces with, or near, gyms, cafés and restaurants. But as the return to the office gains pace, it looks like many workers will only be there for part of the working week.
Many employees are currently paying for their own third space visits, but this is a cost that could become part of employee benefits packages as organizations focus on retaining staff in 2022 and beyond.
That such a service could be offered as a perk, “that to me resonates,” Cable adds. “To me that feels like a value add, like a benefit, it feels like ‘you’re trusting me and liberating me to do my best work’.”
Philp believes offering flexible workspace as a perk “is a pretty low investment [for employers] in terms of what you’re getting.”
Working somewhere new can boost motivation and productivity as it breaks the routine.
Research suggests that the part of our brain that regulates motivation responds better to novelty than to the familiar, so even a glitzy head office could potentially sap productivity if you spend too much time there (not to mention the commute).
A third space offers fresh perspectives and if it specifically caters to workers then you will be able to focus in a quiet area or talk to the people you meet there, you may end up collaborating.
I only have a 30-minute walk to the office, but if there was a cool flexible workspace on my doorstep I would be tempted — especially if the coffee was good and my employer was paying.
Hybrid work enters a third dimension as co-working spaces take off | Financial Post
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