What Does an Employer Need to Know About Hot-Desking?

As businesses open up and employees return to work, you might consider a hot-desking policy for your office space. Hot-desking has benefits, such as increasing communication between staff, but it also has downsides. In addition, there are legal considerations that you should note. This article will explain what hot-desking is and why you might implement this policy in your workplace.

What is Hot-Desking?

Hot-desking is where your staff work at any desk in your workplace, rather than having a set desk which they use each time they come to work. This means that all your workstations are non-allocated.

Sometimes when a workplace has a hot-desking policy, staff need to book their desk space in advance. Otherwise, staff will work at whatever desk they choose, based on what is available when they arrive at the office. 

Why Choose Hot-Desking?

Hot-desking is often a preferred way of working as it helps your business save costs. Instead of renting out a large office space for every single worker, you can downsize and have different teams come into the office on different allocated dates. Ultimately, you save office space, desk costs, and IT costs. 

In addition, choosing to hot-desk your staff can:

• allow your staff to learn how different parts of the business operate;
• help staff coordinate their work with other people’s work more effectively;
• prevent unnecessarily cluttered desks; 
• increase staff communication; and
• create space in the additional office areas such as fitness space and areas for taking breaks.

Possible Disadvantages to Hot-Desking

Whilst hot-desking may have advantages, it may also have disadvantages. 

These might include:

• wasted time from staff looking for a desk as they arrive at work;
• costs associated with changing equipment and furniture to ensure that it can be adjusted and adapted for a variety of people;
• not having enough desk space when all staff are in the office;
• where you have staff with a disability and require reasonable adjustments, you need to have these available at each desk space which could be costly; and
• it may lower staff morale due to the daily change in desk environment and sitting with different people daily.

The Law and Hot-Desking

If you consider moving to hot-desking in your workplace, you must know the associated legal requirements. There is no law stating that you cannot require your staff to hot-desk. However, if you do need them to, you must be aware of any health and safety issues and ensure that you do not break your employees’ employment contracts.

Additionally, you cannot change your employee’s employment terms unless they agree to it. Therefore, you need to ensure that having an assigned desk, which is permanently theirs in a specific location, is not a term of the employment contract. If it is, you may have a clause that allows flexibility in your employees’ place of work, requiring them to hot-desk.

Work, Health and Safety

Before moving to hot-desking, you will need to carry out a health and safety risk assessment to identify potential risks and hazards. 

Hot-desking could cause:

• stress for your staff which could lead to mental health problems;
• risk of injuries as staff have to carry equipment with them and workstations may be set up incorrectly; and
• risk of the spread of germs where desks are not kept clean. With the presence of coronavirus, this can be a significant risk.

Further, you must ensure that desks can adapt for colleagues who may have a condition that requires changes. As an employer, you have a duty of care toward the health, safety and wellbeing of your staff. So, you must be mindful of this where hot-desking could cause risk to health. 

To reduce the risks associated with hot-desking, you could:

• put a booking system in place, so staff do not have to look for a desk when they reach the office – some systems can show whether the desk is clean too;
• ensure desks are two metres apart; 
• have a policy in place which requires your staff to clean the desk at the end of their working day and provide adequate cleaning products;
• where you have more than one department in your business, ensure that ample desks are available in each so staff can work with similar colleagues each day in their department; and
• allow other forms of flexible working to reduce the need for staff to always hot-desk.

Key Takeaways

As an employer, you may consider how your staff might want to work or how you wish them to work. Hot-desking could be one possible option. Hot-desking can be beneficial by increasing awareness of what different areas of the business do. However, it can have disadvantages, such as the time wasted by staff searching for a vacant workstation. More significantly, there are legal issues to consider when changing to hot-desking, such as any health and safety risks.

If you need help understanding hot-desking, our experienced employment lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents for a low monthly fee. So call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.

Frequently Asked Questions