We all have a side of the bed we prefer to sleep on, our own self-designated space in a gym studio or a chair at the dinner table that is ‘ours’ because we are creatures of habit and it makes us feel safe.

Now, if someone were to sleep on ‘your’ side, stand in ‘your’ space or sit at ‘your’ seat you’d most likely get frustrated but would you sleep any worse, sweat any less or not eat as much? If we are totally honest the answer to those questions is no.

And the same applies in the workplace. We are creatures of habit when it comes to where we sit – because ‘it’s always been that way’ - but would sitting somewhere else make you work any less? No, because your work ethic isn’t tied to where you sit. Your work ethic is something you carry with you wherever you go.

As we move to become a more modern and collaborative organisation mobile and flexible working, including hot desking, will become the norm for the vast majority of us, and the roll-out of technology to enable more people to work this way is well underway.

But here’s the good thing about hot desking, you don’t necessarily need a Council laptop, tablet or smartphone to work this way. You you can still hot desk thanks to:

• Falkirk Cloud (Citrix) desktop: this allows you to log on to the Council network to access your files and do your work wherever you are.
• Follow-me phone system: log on to a desk phone with your unique pin and all calls to your Council work number will be directed to that handset. You can then choose to transfer your calls to any of your other numbers e.g. your mobile phone if you work outwith the office.

Benefits

Hot desking means you aren’t tied to a single desk, you can sit wherever you want to do your job each day and that brings opportunity to:

• share skills, information and expertise with colleagues
• create connections and make contacts across teams, divisions and services  
• easily collaborate on projects
• learn how others work and tackle problems 

To get the most benefit out of hot desking we need:

• Employees to CLEAN UP
• Manager’s to focus on outputs rather than micromanage presence because the simplest, easiest and most effective way to bring about change is to trust people to get the job done

Teams that can hot desk should already be doing so but, if you currently work in a room that isn’t quite there yet you can still reap the benefits by opting to work from one of our touchdown locations.

By pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, by actively mixing-up where you sit each day, you’ll also learn about your own capacity for change and get a greater understanding of the organisation you work for, and that can only be a good thing.