The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Workers find 'hoteling' policies not so hospitable
Unpleasant experience may leave them feeling like replaceable cogs.
Q: Our large corporation is trying to encourage workers to spend more days in our new headquarters, which opened last year. Instead of assigned desks or offices, there is a “hoteling” policy under which we have to reserve workspaces on the days we plan to come in, and we are each assigned a small locker. As a result, my days in the office are significantly less productive than working at home.
Even when I reserve a desk, it may get “stolen.” Once, I came back from a meeting to find someone in my reserved spot, surrounded by their teammates. I didn’t have the energy to confront them.
I’d love to keep reference materials at work, but I don’t have enough space in my locker along with my personal belongings, tech gear and office supplies.
In addition to finding a new desk and unpacking/repacking my things at the beginning and end of each day, I have to make multiple trips to the locker area to retrieve items.
The locker policy is inefficient and annoying on ordinary days, but when it overlaps with menstruation and busy season, it’s far easier and more productive to work from home, even though I actually dislike it.
Is there a polite way to express the productivity concern to office decision-makers? Also, are there any laws requiring them to provide menstrual hygiene products in the restroom since we have limited space to store them?
A: With the lockers, desk-squatting and lugging your supplies everywhere, your workplace sounds a bit like high school — except that an increasing number of schools are being required by states to provide free menstrual supplies. Private-sector workplaces have no such requirements, although some voluntarily do so in the interest of gender equity, convenience and hygiene. (File under “It could be worse”: OSHA restroom rules don’t explicitly require employers to provide even toilet paper, except in agricultural workplaces.)
But let’s zoom out and look at the larger issue of hoteling, “hot-desking” and other space-sharing alternatives to the traditional assigned workspace.
Even pre-pandemic, offices were implementing these measures along with downsizing to reduce real estate costs. As remote work surged during the pandemic, the downsizing and space-sharing trends likewise accelerated.
And now, as this letter illustrates, the push to bring remote workers back to the office is colliding with hoteling to create the worst of all worlds. Readers responding to a recent query on hoteling complained about glitchy desk-reservation systems, inadequate space, a lack of supplies and the kind of isolation that convening in the office was supposed to alleviate.
Officials at HCG, a London-based workplace consultancy and change management firm, acknowledge these deficits in office-sharing setups.
“Hoteling and hot-desking speak to the temporary nature and almost exacerbate the feeling of non-ownership,” Sarah Bolas, a director at HCG specializing in change management, said in an email.
Workers accustomed to having their own space with photos, desk supplies and furniture set to their preferred height and angle may struggle with having to reserve a different desk each day, adjust it to their needs and then vacate leaving no trace of their presence, as if driving a different rental car each day. Contrary to pro-office rhetoric about collaboration and camaraderie, the hoteling experience may leave workers feeling like replaceable cogs.
Another HCG director, Dan Wakelin, said some of his company’s clients are adopting an “activity-based working approach” to hoteling, where the setup is tailored to the needs of different teams.
“Congruence is one of the most important considerations,” Wakelin said in an email. “Is the change being made one that links to the organization values, the brand, and how people work?”
In short, hoteling can meet employers’ and employees’ needs, provided management is deliberate and transparent about the setup and receptive to workers’ input on how to make it work for them.
But how to get management to listen when the setup isn’t working?
A basic formula is to describe the problem — in terms of quantifiable productivity, not personal inconvenience — and offer solutions within the current setup. If management balks, employees may have to forge their own collective solutions until management catches up with the times.
For example: One problem is the lack of convenient access to reference materials, which bogs down work during busy season. Ask if your hoteling system can be configured to allow established “neighborhoods” arranged by job function where workers can share and store resources. If that’s not possible, work with your teammates on coordinating reservations among yourselves to stay in proximity (and, incidentally, protect one another’s reserved seats).
And while you’d probably rather not go into detail about how many time-consuming detours you have to take to smuggle pads and tampons into the bathroom, I’m betting many of your colleagues would be happy to cosign a request that management make menstrual hygiene items a standard workplace supply, like toilet paper. If management declines, the next step is for employees to start their own bathroom collection: a basket of supplies with a jar for donating spare change to restock it.