WTF is office hoteling software?

By Sara Guaglione

Once upon a time, an employee would walk into their office building every weekday morning, head to their desk with their name on it and log into their computer to start their workday. They would sit next to their coworkers, usually in an area designated for all the people on their team.

Those days are long gone for many companies, even as some have begun to reopen their offices to employees. Instead of jumping right back to a schedule of five days a week at a designated desk, the return to office has typically eased into in-office work with a hybrid approach, where employees come into the office a few days a week.

But how do you manage a dispersed workforce coming back into an office building? If a company has 300 employees, but 20 are coming in on a Tuesday and 50 are there on a Wednesday and no one is there on Friday, the old way of having 300 designated seats for every employee every day doesn’t make much sense anymore. It can be a headache for company management to keep track of who is coming in when and how often (or unoften) people are using the office.

Enter workplace software companies — like Envoy, Condeco, Teem, Robin, OfficeTogether and OfficeSpace — that offer office “hoteling” services.

WTF is “hoteling” software?

“Hoteling software” refers to a platform employees can use to reserve a desk space in advance, like you would book a hotel room. The concept of hoteling (and hot desking) began for people working from coworking spaces or for those in roles like consultants who were moving around different clients’ offices and needed a space to work from. It’s since been adopted by more companies to manage hybrid workforces during the pandemic.

The term “hoteling” can sometimes be used interchangeably with “hot desking” — which makes the whole thing even more confusing. Those who work in workplace software often argue that “hot desking” refers to booking an unassigned space in an office (and physically finding a desk on a first-come, first-serve basis) while “hoteling” means reserving a specific desk. Most workplace software companies offer the option for companies to allow both.

How does hoteling software work?

Hoteling software companies range in the features they offer, but the gist is employees who want to come into their company’s office can download an app on their phone or go to a website to book desk space or a meeting room.

Envoy, for example, offers a mobile app and website dashboard to book office space. Envoy can automatically assign employees a desk, or they can select one on their own. A virtual maps feature lets employees see who is working in the office that day and where they’re sitting.

Companies can also set parameters, too. They can designate areas of the office for specific teams, and employees in those teams can choose a desk only in those areas. They can choose to allow employees to book …read more

Source:: Digiday