Business matters: Is hatred of hot-desking a hot-topic in your office?

Sunday, 29 June 2025

How your workplace allocates desks - and how coworkers cope with hot-desking - has a huge impact on office politics.

Amberleigh Jack is a lifestyle columnist for the Sunday Star-Times.

OPINION: If you Google “why does everyone hate hot-desking”, the results produce a stream of marketing or HR-style blogs, reddit posts filled with workers that have plenty of gripes. Stuff told us employees aren’t fans back in 2015. The Wall Street Journal dissected why employees hate hot-desking and Forbes reckoned that hot-desking will kill your company.

When looking into the popular (for businesses, apparently) office setup - where desks are shared, swapped and used on a first-come basis - Sunday Star-Times’ chief news director confidently told me he’s sure nobody likes it.

“Most people hate it,” he told me.

Find out how workplaces need to rethink the traditional 9 to 5.

Sure, I get it. As soon as I left a hot-desking environment for full-time work from home, I turned the spare bedroom into the one part of the house designed for, and belonging to, only me. When I start my day, everything is exactly how I need it for premium comfort and productivity. Still, I’m yet unsure whether the news editor was attempting to convince me, or justify his own stake-claiming in the hot-desking office with plants and personality that send a pretty clear “this space is mine” message.

Intrigued, though, I went hunting. Do people exist that don’t hate hot-desking? Is it really just a cost-saving measure without benefits? And if someone was to plonk themselves amongst the news editor’s plants and set themselves up for the day, would it start an all-out office war?

University of Auckland School of Business professor, and New Zealand Psychological Society fellow, Maree Roche, says hot desking isn’t a one-size-fits-all issue. There’s contempt from some, sure. But there is a love camp here, too.

There’s flexibility, for a start. Keen for “social snacking”? You can jump in with the chatty crowd for the day. Need to concentrate? Go hunting for a quiet spot away from the noise.

University of Auckland School of Business professor, and New Zealand Psychological Society fellow, Maree Roche has her take on the perils of hot-desking. “When things are routine, when we know what we're doing, when we know what to expect, it just becomes part of our subconscious. We don't need to think about it, and we feel a lot safer.”

There are brainstorming and collaborative benefits too, especially for creatives and “industries that require a lot of working together or bouncing ideas around”.

Rachel, who requested her last name be withheld, “loves the daily change of scene” and, importantly, “if you get hōhā with a colleague you can give yourself some space”.

She gets a choice of the best city views if she beats the crowd and can choose to sit with her mates or make new ones. Plus, she sees her hot-desking environment as a very real networking opportunity.

“I can attribute my most important career boosts to being sat beside a colleague who has been willing to share their insights with me,” she says.

And there are opportunities to have a bit of fun, too.

Of course, you could always camouflage your favourite desk with an assortment of plants, literature and coffee paraphernalia.

“I love to disrupt a clique by putting myself right in the middle of one,” she laughs.

Still, there’s nothing more annoying than packing up everything at the end of the day and lugging all your things on a heavy commute. Or having no safe space to add subtle signs of ownership or home, like that cool photo of your dog or your favourite mug.

So what about those coworkers that stake claim to the best spots, setting up mini gardens, mug and family photo collections and probably - if they could get away with it - wouldn’t say not to a barbed wire perimeter?

I confess to Roche, with a nervous laugh, that I would, on occasion, innocently plop myself down on one of those desks just to see if I’d get called out.

Staking territory, or “accidently” taking someone’s spot just to be a dick (my word, not Roche’s) can cause conflict, she says, if it goes beyond good fun and humour.

Glue your cup to your favourite desk to keep others away or real, passionate disputes over desk space can “impact on others’ wellbeing and it can impact team performance”.

“If you've got the potential for disputes this can create a negative atmosphere, that's not good for an organisation, and it's certainly not good for the people within the organisation.”

If you are working with someone who appears overly possessive over space though, there could be reasons behind it. Especially if the organisation has made a shift to hot-desking.

“If somebody has had their own desk or office space … and all of a sudden they’re hot desking, that's a big change,” says Roche.

It can lead to feelings of lost status or autonomy.

And loss can have a big impact. Psychologically, says Roche, “we often feel loss more intensely than we feel the positives.”

“When things are routine, when we know what we're doing, when we know what to expect, it just becomes part of our subconscious. We don't need to think about it, and we feel a lot safer,” she says.

“Changes can threaten that.”

As for whether the news director will take down those plants and open up his prime desk real estate to fellow colleagues?

Magic 8 Ball says don’t count on it.

“You could let him know if he needs to talk about it, my door is open,” laughs Roche.

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