Hot-desking needs to work for the worker: Opinion

More companies are encouraging employees to leave their working-from-home arrangements and return to the office. In line with this, they have begun a shift towards redesigning the office workspace by removing dedicated seating, so workers are hot-desking instead. This is an arrangement where employees have no assigned workspace. Instead, workstations are occupied daily on a first come, first served basis.

The latest CBRE Asia-Pacific Office Occupier Survey, which involved 80 multinational and local companies from various industries, noted: “Large corporations are almost universally seeking to improve workplace efficiency by shifting away from fixed seating to create a broader range of work settings.” In the next three years, only 20 per cent have plans to keep their fixed-seating arrangements.

In an op-ed, NTU NBS Assoc Prof Trevor Yu discusses how more companies are encouraging employees to leave their working-from-home arrangements and return to the office. This is an arrangement where employees have no assigned workspace. Instead, workstations are occupied daily on a first come, first served basis.

"It is easy to mistake hot-desking as a convenient accompaniment for companies’ inevitable shift to more hybrid forms of working," he wrote, adding that: "But they shouldn’t rush to implement it without much consideration of its deeper human and social impact on how people interact at work and derivemeaning from work relationships. It is time for a reality check."