What is “Hot Desking”?

Hot desking originates from the definition of being the temporary physical occupant of a work station or surface by a particular employee. The term hot desking is thought to be derived from the naval practice, called hot racking, where sailors on different shifts share bunks. Originating as a trend in the late 1980s to early 1990s, hot desking involves one desk shared between several people who use the desk at different times.  A primary motivation for hot desking is cost reduction through space savings - up to 30% in some cases.

This work surface could be an actual desk or just a terminal link. In any event the concept of the hot desk is that the employer furnishes a permanent work surface which is available to any worker as needed.

Hot desking is regularly used in places where not all the employees are in the office at the same time, or not in the office for very long at all, which means actual personal offices would be often vacant, consuming valuable space and resources.


With the growth of mobility services, hot desking can also include the routing of voice and other messaging services to any location where the user is able to log in to their secure corporate network. Therefore their telephone number, their email and instant messaging can be routed to their location on the network and no longer to just their physical desk.

Today, businesses are turning to flexible communication solutions to reduce costs, increase employee productivity and improve customer interaction, with a payback on investment measured in months, not years. The Panasonic Hot Desking solution can deliver these business results, providing one number access to employees, wherever they are.

Reduce real-estate costs by allocating shared desks and phones, enabling buildings to be sold or sub-leased and real-estate expansion to be avoided. Save office energy costs by closing offices, for
example on weekends or evenings, by using remote or home workers to provide call coverage.

Reduce communications costs by leveraging desk phones (internal and external) whenever possible as a lower cost alternative to the mobile phone.

Improve productivity for office workers who frequently travel or work from home. Flexible working arrangements can also boost the morale and motivation for many employees, leading to decreased absentee days and lower turnover.

Increase revenue opportunities by providing your customers with single number access to account representatives so that fewer calls are missed or not completed.

Plan for business continuity by enabling workers to set up virtual offices easily from remote locations.

Hot Desk to any phone.  Users can temporarily assign any phone as the user’s primary business phone, providing one-number reachability.  Any incoming call to the user’s business phone number is automatically re-routed to the assigned hot desk phone. The hot desk phone can be any type of phone. internal or external, desk phone or mobile phone, with the only requirement being that the phone supports Direct Inward Dialing (DID).

Contact Key Communications today to see how Hot Desking can work for you!