Hot Desking

Shared desks for more flexibility, energy savings and cost reduction in the office

There are many reasons why desks are not used as regularly as maybe originally planned: Employees become ill, have vacations, go on business trips or work remotely.

So, wouldn’t it make sense to work from any free desk in the office, ideally being notified beforehand which desks are being free via an app or having this information available on a dashboard when entering the building? That’s what hot desking is all about. It’s a form of workplace organisation, where employees no longer have a fixed workstation in the company, but desks are shared and reassigned on a daily basis. Employees either have a personal laptop or dial into the network via a virtual desktop.

A hot desking system means cost savings and increased efficiency. Especially when there are fewer workstations than employees, expenses are eliminated: The office space can be smaller, rent and heating costs are cheaper, there are fewer computers to look after, and so on. For employees, hot desking promises increased flexibility in working hours. The workplace can be chosen according to current needs, for example to work with a specific colleague or to work in a silent area.

Our self-powered sensors are ideally suited for a hot desking system as they don’t need wires or batteries. Just stick them onto the desks and they immediately detect which ones are being occupied. Solutions from our partners visualize this information in dashboards and apps so that all employees are always up to date. Have a look at the jointly developed solution EnOceanSpaces.

Case study: smart office solution

Digital Catapult needed a quicker way of checking whether hot desks or meeting rooms were available. The company has a number of flexible desks, private booths and meeting rooms for multiple occupancy in the office on Euston Road, London.

IAconnects installed a smart office solution enabling employees to check individual and multiple desk and meeting room availability, along with the temperature and CO2 levels in different areas of the office. The installation included:

  • MobiusFlow IoT Edge gateway
  • NodeRed dashboard, allowing employees to make an informed desk choice based on a number of factors
  • Desk occupancy sensors to show which desks are available
  • EnOcean door and window magnetic contact sensors to show which doors and windows are open/closed
  • EnOcean presence detection sensors for meeting rooms and communal areas
  • A combination of EnOcean temperature and humidity sensors and air quality (temperature, humidity, CO2 and VOC) sensors which will push alerts to the building and office managers informing them when levels are too high and action needs to be taken.

Further applications

Smart Spaces

Smart Cleaning

Asset Management

Contact