Part 1: What is a Desk Booking System

A desk booking system, also sometimes referred to as a desk reservation system or a desk hoteling system, is a set of software and hardware tools that are used to help in the organizing, managing, and tracking of office desks.

 

Why does one need a desk booking system?

There are different reasons for adopting a desk booking system in your office. Among them, the most common reasons include:

1. Ensuring an adequate supply of desks based on the demand of its occupants.
2. Implementing a consistent set of rules for the usage of the desks.
3. Tracking of usage to help in proactively planning of the office space.
4. Implementing sustainability into your office space.

Let us uncover more from the objectives mentioned above.

 

Ensure Efficient Usage of Desk Space

With the growing prevalence of flexible working, coming to the office has become optional. The visit to the office has become driven by the need for collaboration and ad-hoc work needs. Because of the ad-hoc nature of office visits, there is no control over the demand for the desks which can vary daily. A desk booking system provides the necessary tools to help determine demand and adjust supply.

 

Consistent Rules of Usage

Before the move to flexible working, there was no need to manage desk rules because a desk was permanently assigned to one employee. If the employee never showed up, the desk remains unused. However, the move to flexible work has resulted in open seating across the office space. It has become a fight for desks with the best location, amenities, and privacy. Politics, frustration, and collusion are laid bare. A desk booking system provides the necessary and consistent set of business rules to make sure that desks are available to everyone.

 

Usage Tracking

The transition to working from home and flexible office has exposed the necessity to track the usage of the desks. Coming out of the pandemic, businesses have seen rows of unused desks lining the offices. Many have shrunk their office space after their lease expired and are now on a much smaller footprint. In some cases, offices have shrunk so much that they cannot accommodate a 100% capacity of their staff. To make sure that staff are kept aware of the availability of desks and to ensure that adequate desks are provided, a means of measuring and tracking the desk usage becomes crucial. A desk booking system can provide the necessary insight into this usage. With information such as occupancy and utilization, management can plan renovations, upgrades, and leasing in the future with more data and insight.

 

Sustainability

Sustainability has become a very important consideration when managing offices. When looking at the Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) aspects of sustainability, Social is a key part of the initiative. To ensure that occupants are well taken care of in the workplace. This includes ensuring that the workplace meets their work needs and reduces friction. In an open and flexible environment, there are new aspects of “friction” that can cause loss of productivity such as noise, disturbances, climate, and comfort. Designing workplaces requires that these aspects are taken care of. A desk booking system provides avenues for helping employees choose the right desk for the kind of work for which they come to the office.

 

When do i need a desk booking system?

Not all organizations require a desk booking system. Consider a desk booking system under these circumstances:

1. Your organization is moving or has moved to a open and flexible seating arrangement and there is no oversight on how the desks are being used and there is general confusion on the seating arrangements.
2. You find many human centric problems such as trying to permanently occupy desks, desks that are reserved but unused, arguments over reserving desks, complaints about lack of privacy and noise, etc.
3. Your office space is disproportionate to the number of users and you are unsure about whether you need this space at all or perhaps need more.
4. Your management wants to report on sustainability and need insights into the general usage of the space, its occupancy, and utilization. in cases where tracking energy usage, occupancy, and utilization metrics are required for reporting, a desk booking system can be used even for a traditional office space with permanent desks assigned to each staff.

Under these circumstances, it may be a good idea to get a desk booking system for the office. With a proper desk booking system in place, many of the problems highlighted above can be resolved.

 

What are some common terms used in a desk booking system?

Some of the common terms used in a desk booking system are provided below.

Hot desks – are desks that are available for anyone to reserve for any duration. Users can check the availability and book it from the web or mobile app. However, they can book desks only on the day they come to the office. Advance reservations on these desks cannot be made.

 

Desk Hoteling – Is the same as hot desking, however, users can book these desks up to a few days in advance. This allows users to reserve desks with specific amenities for their work or colleagues can book adjacent desks for collaboration.

 

Fixed desk – These are desks typically assigned to a single person on a long term basis. For example, the secretary to the CEO may be assigned a fixed desk near the CEO’s office. This allows them to be near the focal point of work and also allows them to keep documents, files, and folders in a locker on the desk. These desks are not available for others to book.

 

Check-In/ Check-out – It is the process of informing the desk booking system that the person is occupying or releasing the desk. When a desk is reserved by someone, it is best practise to ebsure that the user checks into the desk when they arrive. This ensures that their booking is confirmed and they are using it. When done, users are encouraged to release the desk by checking out. By doing so, they inform the system that their reservation has ended. This allows the desk to be available for others to book.

 

Desk ghosting/ No Shows – happens when a desk is reserved but is not physically occupied. This happens due to last minute cancellations of the reservation where the user did not cancel the reservation in the system.

 

Desk occupancy – is the detection, tracking, and measurement of whether a desk is being occupied by the user. This requires some method of sensing whether a desk is actually being used by someone.

 

Desk utilization – is the measurement of how efficiently a desk in the office is being utilized. This is different from occupancy in that utilization measures the total duration of bookings while occupancy measures the actual duration when the desks are being occupied.

 

Desk blocking – happens when a desk is prevented from booking by anyone. The desk is blocked usually when it is undergoing maintenance or repairs. It could also be blocked if it is required to be used fir a specific purpose. For example, a few desks could be blocked for external auditors to sit during the audit process. This prevents others from booking those desks during that period.

 

Desk zoning – is the process of allocating a specific group of desks for specific set of users. This is essentially hot desking or desk hoteling for a small subset of users in the organization. Zoning ensures that those set of desks can only be booked by people who are allowed to book them. An example will be zoning of desks for human resources so that HR employees can sit together and prevent others from sitting there.

 

Will implementing desk booking solve all my problems?

Well, not really. But like all other IT system, desk booking system is just a tool to manage the process. It has to come with policies, procedures, planning, educating, and repeatedly training people. From experience, human behavior is not predictable and without the guardrails of policies and procedures, a booking system can become just another IT system to manage.

 

What are the components of a desk booking system?

A desk booking system is a combination of software and hardware tools that allow you to achieve the goals that have been mentioned above. It comprises of:

1. desk booking software
2. mobile app
3. QR-codes
4. hardware tablets
5. Occupancy sensors

While all the items above are not required for implementing a desk booking system, having them all will provide the most complete and comprehensive control for your office. Let us explore more on each component mentioned above:

 

Desk Booking Software

 

The desk booking software is the core software upon which all the other components rely on. It is a web-based portal that allows users including the administrator to manage the entire office.

Typically, desk booking software comes with:

1. Login that authenticates users. This is usually tied to corporate directory services providing single sign-on (SSO) service.
2. A means of booking using a scheduler, form, or an office floor plan layout.
3. Administration panel to manage desks, business rules, users, groups, and permissions.

With these basic features, you can have a desk booking system up and ready for use.

 

Mobile App

 

A mobile app is a must-have for a desk booking system. It provides an avenue for mobile users to book desks. For example, field agents, sales professionals, and staff under flexible work policies can use the mobile app to book desks. It also provides the capability to receive notifications and reminders of tasks such as upcoming bookings, and approval requests for administrators. Finally, an app can provide access to a camera that allows users to scan the QR code (discussed below) to check in and out of their desks.

 

QR-Codes

 

QR codes provide a means of accessing the specific desk’s information. Each desk is registered with a QR code that can be scanned using the mobile app to check the status, make bookings, and check-in and check out. This is the most common and economical way of tracking usage. Most desk booking software comes with auto-generated QR-codes that can be downloaded, printed, and stuck on top of the desks. While QR codes are effective and cheap, they do have some drawbacks. They are not fool-proof when it comes to scanning and authenticating. For example, images of QR codes can be used to check in even when not in the office. To resolve this issue, the below two additional items come in handy.

 

Hardware Tablets

 

Hardware tablets are digital devices that can be mounted on top of the desks. These devices provide the capability to display the current desk status, allow users to view and book the desk as well as provide the capability to check-in using a PIN or NFC-enabled staff card. These tablets also come with LED lights that broadcast their status across the office. While this is a secure way to fool-proof the authentication problem with QR codes, it is quite an expensive affair when it comes to investing in the tablet at each desk. It also requires the need to run cables to power the tablet. However, the tablet provides a very effective and efficient way to manage desks.

 

Occupancy Sensors

 

Occupancy sensors provide fine-grained, real-time updates on whether the desk is being occupied or not. Using sensing technologies such as infrared waves, and occupancy sensors can help in determining the presence of people on the desk. Combining them with the desk booking system, a full and realistic picture of desk utilization can be achieved. When monitored dynamically, the desk booking system can even manage the bookings. For example, if the booking is made but no one is sitting there, then it can be automatically released. Occupancy sensors come in different sensing technologies but the most common is infrared. They are affordable and can be easily mounted under the desks for sensing.

 

Concluding

With the above set of technologies, incorporating a desk booking system into your office space is quite easy. With more organizations moving towards a flexible work policy and working from home becoming accepted and even expected among employees, having an efficient means of managing office desks is critical to the success of managing the workplace.