Office hotelling is a great way to get the flexibility and accessibility you need. It also helps to ensure that employees have the desks they need when they need them. This can be particularly important for companies with remote or traveling employees.
By making your space more flexible, a hoteling solution lets you use all your office infrastructure at once, but only when you need to. If your company is growing and needs more space, hoteling allows you to expand the amount of office space you have on-demand temporarily. You can shrink back down when you don’t need the extra space anymore.
Hotelling also allows for more efficient use of existing space. When people aren’t using their offices or cubicles, they can be moved around as needed to make room for other workers who need them—or simply be stored out of sight until they’re needed again (which means less time and money spent on unused furniture).
What are the best ways to improve office space with a hoteling solution?
Hoteling solutions are a way to make the most out of your office space. Here are some ways you can use them:
Diversifying your booking options
If you’re looking for office space, there’s no need to confine yourself to traditional office buildings. Office hotelling, or the use of hotel-style booking systems for office space, is a great way to get the flexibility and accessibility you need.
Companies should diversify booking options and methods to maintain broad—yet controlled—accessibility to workstations. Examples include:
- Email reservations via an automated system or administrative booking process
- Messaging apps with real-time access to desk availability and booking options
- Portal booking on a company’s intranet site or through a workplace mobile app
- Live booking
Centralize workspace management
Without a centralized workplace management system, office hoteling can quickly break down. WorkInSync’s real-time desk booking and oversight capabilities make workstation management easy. Here’s how it works:
- Requests are processed and reservations are made via the central system. This ensures that there is always a clear understanding of how many desks are available.
- Confirmation standards are in place to ensure that employees can change or cancel their reservations as needed.
- The system offers real-time updates on desk availability, so employees can always find an available workspace.
With WorkInSync, office hotelling is easy and efficient – perfect for busy modern workplaces.
Track occupancy and utilization metrics
Like all workplace development initiatives, hoteling benefits from key performance indicators (KPIs). Occupancy and utilization metrics shed light on how well you’re managing hotel desks, as well as measuring demand.
Hotel desks occupied 100% of the time each week indicate a need for more workspaces, while a 15% usage rate offers opportunities to use space for other options. Other factors like the length of a booking, the types of employees who book space, and the physical location of popular or unpopular bookings all contribute to hoteling best practices. By tracking these metrics, you can ensure your office hoteling system is efficient.
Define and enforce space management parameters
When it comes to office hotelling, it’s important to set some parameters for employees in terms of how they book space and use desks. This will help them understand the benefits of hoteling, and also make sure that everyone is on the same page in terms of etiquette and expectations.
Some things to consider defining include:
– How long employees can book space for, can they block the desks for a day, a week, or a month?
– Create rules around cancellations and rebooking best practices.
– Establish rules and regulations around office hoteling etiquette. This may include requiring employees to clean up their workstation before leaving for the day, or prohibiting personal belongings from being left in desk areas.
Once you’ve established these parameters, be sure to enforce them consistently. This will help everyone get the most out of office hotelling, and avoid any potential conflict or confusion.
Diversified and ample space
Space diversity is one of the hallmarks of flexible space and broad office utilization. Not everyone needs the same type of workspace, and different types of work necessitate different types of work areas. Hoteling allows you to provide booking opportunities for different types of space to increase adoption and stay true to the concept of a flexible workspace.
Some employees may prefer a blank-slate desk where they can open their laptop and spread out to work. Others may prefer a standing desk near a window. Some may need a room with A/V capabilities. Hoteling can even extend to conference rooms, huddle rooms, and other office amenities that employees may need access to on an as-needed basis.
By offering a variety of spaces, you can make sure that everyone has what they need to be productive – and that your office is being used as efficiently as possible. Hoteling is a great way to promote space utilization and get employees on board with the flexibility that your office offers.
Final Word:
There’s no doubt that your office is your business’s heart. It’s where you do your best work and make all your big decisions, so you must have the right environment to make those things happen.
If this sounds like something that could help your business grow, please reach out at WorkInSync today! We’d love to talk with you more about how we can improve your office space for you and all of the employees working there.
