What’s Trending: Hot Desking
February 25, 2025
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Hot desking became a trend as the “new normal” gained ground after the COVID-19 pandemic. As with many workforce implements, their effectiveness has been reevaluated since there’s less immediate harm in the air.
So what is it, are there any rules? Keep reading to see what top publications and experts have to say about desk hoteling.
The Indeed Editorial Team put together a long-form article explaining today’s most pertinent question, “What is the concept of hot desking?” In it, they go over all the pros, cons and in-betweens of this new trend. Or is it?
First of all, hot desking (also known as desk hoteling, free seating, and desk sharing) rose after the pandemic as companies found themselves with either too much or too little real estate. The idea is that they would have hybrid workers, and none of them would get assigned desks, and every time they’d get to the office, they could sit wherever they like and fit them best.
“As restrictions relaxed, many of these same employers had come to realize the advantages of remote work and adjusted their office arrangements to retain a work-from-home or hybrid model to some degree.”
This workplace arrangement has some pros and cons that make a lot of companies fans of it. The positives include saving money, as they can rent smaller real estate than they would need if everyone were at the office at the same time; encouraging collaboration, as people meet those of other departments more easily; and an equitable workplace, as ranks are not so easily established when the rules are first come-first serve in the desks.
On the other hand, many cons have caused workers to have unfavorable opinions. This includes incompatibility with some work environments, as some types of work may mean hauling along different equipment or needing quiet for work; thus, it could lead to distractions and conflicts, especially as some teams might have completely different dynamics; and cleanliness can be an issue, especially if people don’t feel compelled to clean after themselves as they will mostly move around.
Hot desking isn’t doing as hot as its name suggests, Ryan Anderson reports for Forbes. Even though it has caught on in places like Europe, India, and Australia, desk hoteling is far from being common in America—and it appears that it’s for the better.
Free seating has been thought of as a strategy for returning to the office, and as such, it rose from 38% to 60% of the workforce experiencing it in 2020. Yet, a 2023 study by Workplace Unlimited and MillerKnoll revealed that unassigned desks were less desirable compared to assigned desks when asking people to return to the office.
“This was quite a surprising result—the fact that those people with assigned desks are ranked higher. A higher proportion of people who had assigned desks preferred the office to home.”
Having one’s personal space at work allows them to create a particular bond, which is interrupted by hot desking. Still, if a company is set on using this work mode, there are some rules they must follow:
Matthew Boyle wrote a piece for Bloomberg reporting that one of the most desired perks of returning to the office is for employees to have their own desks. That, coupled with an assigned chair, portend the end of hot desking in many top offices.
Having a personalized workspace is essential for people to feel compelled to return to the office. An office where nothing has an owner is soulless, with no photographs of family, no ergonomic chairs, and no preferred settings on their desks. All of these things might sound insignificant, but in the long run, these small gripes turn into 77% of employees being disgruntled, according to a Gallup study.
Issues like cleanliness were mentioned before, but there’s also the very real fact that people no longer fit in offices where hybrid work is implemented. Some companies decided to have stacked schedules to not have everyone in at the same time, but the most cited ratio remains 1.5 people per seat. To make matters worse, no one wants to share.
“Not everyone’s pleased with [desk-sharing], Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. has observed a ‘lack of acceptance of seat sharing, both by leadership and employees.’”
Desk sharing cannot replicate the control that the pandemic brought to office workers as they curated their own space in home offices. Some companies have stuck with desk hoteling, but many are slowly reverting back to the traditional singular desk per person as they don’t want people leaving more and more offices empty.
Hot desking might be on its way out. The benefits it brought during the RTO mandates are only focused on employers, while employees have many issues regarding it. A sense of ownership of the workspace, at least of a desk, is essential for people wanting to go back into the office.
Hybrid workplaces can get away with something like desk hoteling if they have enough space for everyone to fit in their real estate, but even then, many companies are just cutting the middleman and going back to the traditional arrangement.
Contributed by Ana Martinez
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