7 Best Office Hoteling Practices Every Organization Should Know

Open floor plans and hoteling, also known as desk booking, give numerous benefits to the office. These include improved collaboration and reduced real estate costs. But to achieve this, business leaders must implement it in a way the organization and team members can benefit from.

After ensuring that it is appropriate for your company, you must ensure that your implementation plan accounts for the different existing factors. Some organizations want to reduce expenses on real estate and improve office spaces, while others desire a more flexible workforce. Either way, you will need to empower your workers to find a quiet, productive area and one for meeting and collaboration.

The office changes necessary for successful hoteling initiation also support the mobile workforce, attracting and retaining top talents. However, mobility does not only mean working from home. It could also mean finding the right hoteling app to reserve and sit down at any place in the office. Or it could be being able to seamlessly connect to video conferencing software if your teammates are out of the office.

You want to ensure that your new office strategy addresses your different team member needs and expectations. To make this possible, here are the seven best practices that you should know.

1: Creating Different Types of Spaces

When talking about effective workspaces, one setup isn’t enough. You have to have a variety of spaces, especially if you consider the needs of different team members. For example, on some days, a marketer might brainstorm with other team members about new projects. Or he may have to work with another department for external events and would need time alone to make necessary material. These two situations require different spaces to work on, and you should have them in your office.

With hoteling software, you can easily support your team members whose roles need a high level of flexibility. Allowing them to choose from various spaces will enable them to be their most productive selves. The system will help them secure their area, whether a cozy seat, socially active working spots or long working tables.

2: Allowing for Personalization

Take a look at traditional offices. You will probably see numerous ways team members marked desks as their territory. It can be by displaying photos, arranging personal belongings on the table, or putting any personal touch. Expectedly, people expect that this type of work arrangement does not allow for personalized spaces.

This working system opens the door for unique storage ideas. It helps facility managers provide a separate area that allows for a variety of personalization. One recent forum found out that an enriched office where employees can personalize their working environment leads to a 15% increase in productivity.

3: Adopting a Well-Established Hoteling Software

Nothing happens worse than showing up to work each morning without a secured station for the day. There may be spare spaces for you, but they may not be suitable and conducive to working productively.

This is one common problem in the traditional setup for office spaces. When facility managers assign a permanent seat for all team members, some may not like their area. The different factors include lighting, noise, space size, accessibility to other equipment and tools, and people around. It then leads to unmotivated team members and low productivity overall.

With the right office hoteling software, you can conveniently implement a first-come, first-served basis for your team members. The uncertainty is indeed stressful for some people, and using an appropriate system can help them avoid unlikely situations. For example, a team needs to collaborate or discuss a project but cannot find a space. They can use the app and find the best room to accommodate their group or determine which room is available soon.

Companies want to have systems that will significantly streamline their reservation process. And as technology advanced, hot-desking models also evolved to be more straightforward, feature-rich, and customizable. Features of an ideal desk hoteling software include:

• Detection and reservation of workspaces according to user permissions
• Displaying available rooms according to availability, type, and location
• Viewing photos, floor maps, and details tied to each space

4: Enabling Notifications for All Missed Check-Ins and Abandoned Reservations

Adopting reservation software in offices helps reduce the pain of uncertainty that goes with having flexible workspaces. However, it can also be possibly abused. Instead of a risk needing a workspace that may not be available, team members often book rooms or areas “just in case” they’ll need it. This practice potentially leads to unattended workspaces and eventually a significant decrease in productivity, sales, or investment return.

Setting up hoteling that imposes simple check-in and checkout process helps you identify no-shows and abandoned reservations. In just 15 minutes after each scheduled reservation, you can open the space back up to those who use it. Monitoring your space usage is pretty straightforward with the right software.

5: Making Excellent Use of Utilization Reports

Underutilized spaces only bring more costs, and the primary driver of the global move to office hoteling practice is eliminating misused spaces.

Facility managers and business owners can create data-driven decisions to optimize space utilization through reports that capture and analyze usage information. Apps and software systems automatically record reservation and usage history and generate a summary of space bookings in the office.

Overall, making clever use of room reservation software system reports help you eliminate unnecessary spaces or improve them according to your team members’ preference.

6: Keeping the Work Environment Safe and Clean

Employees typically move from place to place, and as they do, they bring many germs back into the office. This increases the chances of spreading diseases, especially now that there is an ongoing health crisis.

And because it is risky, ensuring sanitation in workspaces is vital. Team members must know the basics of good hygiene, and the company must invest in regular deep-cleaning services.

Aside from that, your software system must-have features for automated cleaning and sanitation schedule. It can come as an alarm or detect newly-vacated seats and keep them unavailable until sanitized.

7: Making Your Team Members Involved Before the Transition

Change is difficult as it can be something significant and impactful. Even though everyone involved in the shift believes in a positive result, it will still be challenging. On the other hand, if your team members do not favor the proposed amendments, the process will either be more difficult or a downright failure. Here are some basic steps you might need:

• Involve your team members in making the switch to office hoteling practice, especially those who will get pretty much affected.
• Gather opinions as much as you can—input from a small, representative group or team.
• Create a trial run to see, on a small scale, how things will go. Through it, you can learn from your mistakes ahead before they can significantly affect your company or organization.
• Ensure you have an efficient strategy to counter any potential issues and establish a strong foundation

Best office hoteling practice and desk booking software system are not just creating open spaces for collaboration; it only decreases real estate costs. It is an all-inclusive strategy for modern workplaces to achieve a systematic, thorough, and accurate internal process. According to research, the best practices discussed in this article are the most efficient practices. And, of course, with the right technology and techniques, you can have a flexible, productive, and cost-efficient office.