The hidden hell of hot-desking is much worse than you think

Penny-pinching ploy that casts people out to the noisy, chaotic wasteland of shared work spots

Few aspects of office life are more dispiriting than hotdesking, the penny-pinching ploy that strips people of their own desk and casts them out to the noisy, chaotic wasteland of shared work spots.

But not that long ago, I discovered an even more troubling side to this irksome practice.

It happened when I was invited to hear an HR boss from a large global company give a private talk in London about the benefits of “agile working” in her office. I accepted at once, keen to hear more about the baffling concept of “agile”, an adjective that has morphed into a corporate jargon noun with a multitude of meanings, especially in the world of HR.

There, fans use it to describe a way of working that empowers employees to work when and where they feel like it as long as they get stuff done: at home, in cafés, anywhere around the office. But it can also save on office space and I have long had a lurking suspicion that for many companies, going agile simply means hot-desking.

The woman I went to hear confirmed that personal desks had

indeed disappeared at her firm after an office move, as is so often the case.

A small alarm went off in my head as she began to list the alleged benefits of ditching dedicated desks: employees could “work fast and more agilely” to give a “better experience to customers”. The alarm grew louder when she revealed the phoney slogan her company had used to describe the new system. “We didn’t call it agile working, we called it ‘fresh working’.” Most regrettable of all, though, were signs of a mentality I can only describe as correctional.

Hot-desking apparently goes cold when workers try to cling on to a desk by sticking a family photo on it or draping a coat over a chair, moves she described as “signs of encampment”.

Rules had been brought in to stem such practices. Anyone away from their desk for more than a couple of hours was supposed to “clean and clear” it. When the coat problem had worsened in winter, “we had to have facilities going around with a gentle reminder”. Disciplinary action was also taken when workers grumbled about the loss of roomy personal cupboards or shelves to stash their stationery and work papers.