Does Hot Desking Work? 3 Metrics to Measure Your Success

Having a productive and comfortable work environment can be incredibly beneficial to a business's workflow and results—whether your company works with a hybrid work model or another flexible working strategy.

You may even have considered hot desking to maximize your space management, reduce costs, and allocate desks as necessary. But does hot desking work? While it may seem chaotic, in reality, hot desking can help a business increase efficiency, communication, and collaboration.

Below, we discuss 3 metrics you can use to measure the success of your hot desking implementation.

■ Explore the main benefits of hot desking

1. Space Utilization

This metric helps you check that you're using your available space effectively, because it can bring the cost per person down. This means that just moving to cheaper real estate isn't necessarily the answer, especially if you're not going to use that space optimally either. Space utilization is based on how frequently a space is used by employees. Therefore, you can use peak rates, actual ratios, and target ratios to measure it. In terms of hot desking, it's successful if it helps you to:

• Reduce overhead costs
• Increase productivity and collaboration
• Ensure every employee has access to a comfortable workspace when needed

■ Here's how optimizing your office spaces ensures employee satisfaction

2. Workplace Analytics

Workspace analytics is a data-driven approach to understanding how well your workplace is used and what improvements you can make, including which workspaces are used most often and whether they're properly equipped with everything needed for optimal productivity. This data can help you implement effective hot desking by:

• Identifying which areas are too noisy or show a lack of collaboration
• Improving the flow of communication between coworkers
• Understanding of how often people interact in different spaces

3. Occupancy Rate

Finally, occupancy rate is the number of people present in the office at a given time. Hot desking helps reduce the overall occupancy rate compared to traditional seating models, saving you money on energy and other operating costs. Occupancy rate and hot desking work together by:

• Reducing stress levels through variety
• Ensuring equality by providing employees access to the same resources

■ Still unsure? Compare the advantages and disadvantages of hot desking

Don't Let Hot Desking Go Cold

Positive performances in these metrics mean hot desking is working, including higher occupancy rates and space utilization (over 70%), increased productivity and collaboration among coworkers, and better trends in workplace analytics.

Using modern solutions like POC's office space management software makes space planning, utilization, and allocation easy, leading to a positive change in multiple metrics simultaneously.

■ Explore POC System's features: Book a demo