MIT seems to find a correlation between smarts and messiness, but it’s MIT, and is probably filled with messy-desked people who might be skewing the results in their favor.

Anyways, they say that “Messiness is often associated with artistic, creative and scientific or mathematical genius, spontaneity, but also with carelessness, eccentricity, madness and unreliability.”

They also noted that other messy-deskers were Francis Bacon, Alexander Fleming, and Alan Turing.

Thoughts?

Sources: Einstein, Jobs, Twain

Clearly people like the idea of greenery inside or installing fake grass inside wouldn’t be popular. Let’s go ahead and look at some of the ways people have incorporated plants into their offices.

In one study, Knoll essentially defines the goal of office design as being an “…to create office work settings that positively influence desired work behaviors and employee performance.”

Why Evaluate?

• Like any large purchase, if you’ve spent a large sum on office design, you want to protect the integrity of the space and your investment by reducing possible problems.
• It can also help you optimize your office space to peak performance by allowing you to understand the particular needs of your employees. And if your workspace is meeting them.

How To Evaluate

Start by creating a “workplace balanced scoreboard” of metrics. These metrics should be relevant to the intentions of the design and the organization’s business objectives. Include measures that reflect financial, behavioral, work process, health or other outcomes pertinent to the business.

“Less is more.” Select the fewest, highest impact measures possible. Do not collect data unless you know in advance exactly how you plan to use it. Double check to make sure it relates to your Workplace Balanced Scoreboard.

Establish Baseline Measures. Baseline measures establish a reference point against which you can assess the success of changes made to the workplace over time.

• Use a survey to measure employees’ perceptions of behaviors related to project goals, such as comfort, degree of collaboration, quality of group decision-making, etc.
• Collect objective metrics from other sources, such as HR databases for attraction and retention rates, health claims rates and costs, or other metrics that are related to financial outcomes.

Collect data on an ongoing basis (quarterly or semiannually). This will provide an ongoing stream of objective information that can keep the workplace design aligned with employee needs and business goals.

Keep the reports simple. This will enable everyone to understand the results and thus be able to act on them.

Remember to manage the “human side” of the project. A technically successful assessment program can still fail if people don’t buy in to the effort. Thus to assure the support and engagement of employees within the organization, ensure that everyone understands the purpose, approach and benefits of the program.

The idea behind hot desking is that each employee is not assigned a particular desk, but rather given a variety of places to work within an office that might include desks, casual seating areas, conference spaces, or a cafe.  Many times, there are actually less desks than employees.

Making it Work

It would be incorrect to say that all companies could or need to implement hot desking, but many companies have seen positive results from their adjustment in workstation policy. Let’s take a look at how they did it.

Modernized and Modular Systems

One reason companies have found it difficult to imagine hot desking is because workstations can be jam-packed with personal items and work-related paperwork. In order to alleviate those problems, companies like UVIT have done away with paper files for their mobile workforce. Other companies provide lockers or other spaces to store necessary personal items. [1]

Consolidating Part-Time and Sales Employees

Some employers find that a large portion of their workforce are part-time or sales staff that are regularly out of the office and whose desks sit empty for large portions of the day. Companies like ICL have consolidated those workstations to hot desks to maximize efficiency and floor space. In 2002 ICL had 320 desks supporting 600 people. [2]

Teams

While showing up every day with no desk and no organization might be confusing, some companies have solved the problem with breaking down the workforce in teams. Macquerie Bank’s employees are given a locker for personal storage and an anchor point where they can congregate with their team at the beginning of the day. Then they choose a place to work – anywhere in the building.[1]

Real World Problems

Not trying to paint a rose colored view of hot desking, it is essential that we look at some of the negatives that arise.

TBWA Chiat/Day

In a fantastic article in Wired, we see an interesting approach to maintaining the freshness:

“[Jay Chiat] declared that “nesting” – parking in any one place for more than a day – was strictly forbidden. In the “Chiat High” he’d created, he acted as both principal and hall monitor. Says Rabosky: “Jay would walk around, and he’d give you this look and say, ‘Did you sit here yesterday?’ And he’d make you get up and move.”

It seems like hot desking, at least in this particular environment was either unnecessary or too ahead of its time. Basically, people were uprooted from their personal spaces in one office and told that that wasn’t how it was going to be any more. If we can learn something from this, it is probably that a gradual and measured approach probably works better.

Less Team Cohesion and the Need for Familiarity

A 2008 study also found “that employees that do not have a desk of their own have a weaker sense of cohesion within a team”. [4]

Many employees also feel a sense of belonging and desire to call a space their own. [5]

Balance and Understanding

As you may have observed, hot desking is not for all companies everywhere. Instead it is another unique tool that some companies have used to successfully mitigate inefficient office spaces or spur collaboration. Lets take a look at some tips that might help you when considering hot desking:

• Make sure it makes sense for your line of work
• Find out what employees think of the idea
• Install necessary technology
• Don’t just flip the switch overnight
• Add a couple workstations and encourage employees to try moving around