26A — June 18 - July 22, 2021 — Owners, Developers & Managers — M id A tlantic Real Estate Journal
www.marej.com
O wners , D evelopers & M anagers
By Casey Murphy, HF Planners The New WFH – Working from Hoteling
A
s we all face the chal- lenges of a new world under the shroud of
ing” space that specializes in this concept. An employee will reserve a workstation based on their current needs within their given space ahead of time, or arrive with an “open ticket”. This gives the workers options to access desking, conferenc- ing, and amenities. Some of the largest companies in the world rely on a concierge or facility manager to maintain their hoteling workplace sys- tem to ensure their employees are productive, engaged and comfortable with whatever their duties may entail. The greatest benefits to hoteling are that this system allows a
company to reduce its physi- cal footprint by having a lower ratio of desks to employees, while promoting collabora- tion and movement within a space. Although it may seem as though this could be derailed with the movement to work from home, it has continued to be one of the fastest growing facility design concepts in the last several years. According to Coworking Resources, a publi- cation serving as a resource for facility spaces, the forecast for coworking office spaces with hoteling design “is projected to reach almost 20,000 this year and cross over 40,000 by 2024.
While the industry is set to grow at a slower pace in 2020, we expect growth to rebound and develop even more rap- idly from 2021 onwards, with a yearly growth rate of 21.3%” (Di Risio, 2020). With these types of sharable offices being readily available, workplaces will maintain or improve their hoteling strategies to keep up with trends for employee com- fort and productivity. While co-working spaces were on the rise earlier this year, Covid-19 has created several new concerns, such as the openness of a hotel space, multiple users at single desks,
and the basic idea of working in a space with large groups of people. Fortunately, the ben- efits out weigh the risks when proper precautions and space planning techniques are put into place. Solutions The initial, preliminary pre - cautions taken include tem- perature checks of employees, sanitization stations, and fre- quent cleaning. Even with these measures, a seasoned facility manager will want to engage further action to bring employees and clients greater comfort level. This will bring about great success for the worker, the facilities team, and your corporation’s bottom line. Integrated technologies will support a COVID-safe environ- ment. A hoteling space can offer sophisticated teleconferenc- ing to reduce the number of people in face-to face meetings. This can be in a medium sized conference space with socially distanced seating, or even ap- propriate headsets and minia- ture cameras at each desk loca- tion. An additional technology benefited by hoteling spaces is instant connectivity. A facility manager can incorporate con- nectivity within workstations that allow instantaneous setup time when an employee arrives at their workstation. Aside from normal startup time, ho- teling workstations offer easy and adaptable connectivity to whatever the workstation may entail. This could include immediate network and voice connections as well as laptop charging stations already avail- able at the workstation. Since these hoteling technologies are meant for adaptability, they sometimes offer even more ef- ficiency and productivity than permanent workstations with only one streamlined worksta- tion type. Proper space planning is a facility manager’s best friend when it comes to the new nor- mal in work space. This can of - ten be done with ingenuity and a little elbow grease, there is not always a need to purchase new furniture. A simple option is to “close off” every other desk in a space to ensure than only a portion of desks are utilized. For example, the common “6- Pack” type of work station configuration can have the center two desks turned into “safe zones”, so that only 2/3 of desks are available for use. continued on page 32A
a global pan- demic, mov- ing forward is at the top of our minds. One critical topic is how to return to t h e o f f i c e . While there
Casey Murphy
are myriad of options, a very promising method is hoteling, also known as “hot desking”. Hoteling is a system of unas- signed seating in a corpora- tion’s building, or a “co-work -
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