Hotelling (office) - Background

Background

Offices generally support three kinds of seating assignment:

• Shift/Workshop - People take a seat for a given time-shift. The seat is then released to another person on the next time-shift.
• Assigned - One and only one person is assigned to one or more workstations. Likewise, the workstations are assigned to be used exclusively by one person.
• Unassigned - A person is not assigned to any particular workstation. Likewise, the workstation is not assigned to any particular person.

"Recent studies of knowledge workers, particularly salespeople, customer representatives, and consultants, indicate they spend only 30% of their time in the office. Teleworking also contributes to less frequent presence in the office. So why have a workstation?" Companies are also finding that people may need different kinds of workstations at different times for different tasks (e.g. an enclosed office one day and open space the next and a war room the next - all within the same office.) This means that nomadism is not only inter-office (travellers and teleworkers), but intra-office.

Many companies are beginning to rethink whether assigned seating makes the most sense. With the increasing price of commercial real-estate the modern corporation is always looking for ways to maximize office space of an ever growing business. Corporations attempt to divide up their resources in an efficient and effective manner. A new system that companies have begun using is called hotelling. Hotelling is a fairly recent idea which has begun to pop up in many large corporations with travelling employees. The idea stems from that of a hotel where employees must reserve their spot for a specified period of time.