For a company to expand into new markets and recruit the best staff, employees need the freedom to work from home, work on the road, work at remote locations, and go where their customers are. For organizations with a lot of mobile employees, there is a growing trend to leverage the agile concept of “hot-desking” of those employees when they do come in to an office location. This gives workers the freedom and flexibility to work in open-plan office spaces, shared cubicles, designated guest offices, conference rooms, or anywhere that space is available.
In a “hot desk” office, each desk space is not allocated exclusively to a single employee. Instead, multiple people can share a single work area that is allocated on a rotating system based on the worker’s task or time in the office. For example, some areas can be designed collaboration zones for staffers who need to actively work in direct contact with each other, while other areas are set aside for those who need quiet in order to focus on an individual task. Hot-desking eliminates inefficient empty desks, unused equipment, and office spaces set aside for employees who travel frequently, work from multiple sites, or work from home.
Hoteling is a similar concept where contractors, interns, or other temporary workers have access to an appropriate workspace when they need to be in an office environment, but a company does not need to dedicate large amounts of office real estate and IT equipment budget for workers who will be in the office for a short time or on a revolving basis. This simplifies the onboarding process so that part-time and temporary workers can connect to the resources they need and be productive more quickly.
Some workspaces even make it the norm rather than the exception so that all employees and consultants are free to set up their workspace in the location that fits with the task they are working on and the colleagues they need to interact with. This helps with open-source projects and collaborative environments where employee interactions are the keys to success.
In offices that take advantage of hot-desking, the Kensington Thunderbolt 3 Universal Docking Station is the perfect solution for connecting laptops to monitors, networks, and peripheral devices. When someone sits down to work, it doesn’t matter who it is, what kind of laptop they have, or what kind of peripherals they need. They can use a single Thunderbolt 3 cable to connect to the Kensington Thunderbolt 3 Universal Docking Station and have power, network access, and connections to external displays and peripheral devices.
When an organization standardizes on the Kensington Thunderbolt 3 Universal Docking Station, mobile users have the flexibility to carry only their laptop because every Kensington Thunderbolt 3 Universal Docking Station provides the power and connectivity to networks and peripheral devices that they need. Whether they are anywhere in the office or working offsite, a power user’s configuration can be tailored to their current task.
The advantages of hot-desking are not limited to corporate environments and can be used in any situation where both employees and customers are best served by a flexible workforce.
For example, a healthcare office can provide each doctor, nurse, and medical assistant with a secure laptop protected with fingerprint security that grants them full access only to the protected patient information that they need to serve their patients. With a Kensington Thunderbolt 3 Universal Docking Station in each examination room, the practitioner can have complete access to all the information they need to do their jobs while they are with the patient. Shared spaces used by multiple people for charting, reviewing records, or other tasks can also be configured to use the Kensington Thunderbolt 3 Universal Docking Station so that users have access to patient records stored on external devices and to higher resolution monitor displays that they need to provide comprehensive care.
Next week’s blog entry will give you insight into the extensive rigorous testing process used to make certain that they Kensington Thunderbolt 3 Universal Docking Station provides optimal speed, reliability, and performance with every supported device.