From lockdown to remote working and on to hybrid working, the way we work has evolved and reinvented itself since the arrival of COVID-19.

According to a 2022 study by INSEE (France’s national statistics institute), “almost one employee in five worked from home at least one day a week. More than three quarters of remote workers are satisfied with their number of remote working days per week”.

Today, however, the new trend is the flex office, also known as the flexible office or hot desking. In this article, we share 5 tips to help you improve the way you manage your flex office.

If you are still hesitating to take the plunge, read our article of 7 July 2023 on the benefits of this new trend in how work is organised.

Tip 1: Communicate transparently

The first step to making a flex office work well is good communication with everyone in your organisation.

As a reminder, the flex office, also known as the flexible office, is a new way of working that lets employees choose their workspace according to their needs and daily activities. Unlike traditional offices where each employee has an assigned desk, the flex office offers a more flexible working environment that adapts to what people want.

Today, most managers and professionals in the Île-de-France region (Greater Paris) believe they are more productive when working from home, but many questions remain, mainly about how team members organise themselves. That is why the flex office is becoming the middle ground. With this way of working, you can book desks close to your colleagues, which makes communication and problem-solving easier while encouraging teamwork.

It is therefore crucial to talk to your employees to improve how you manage your schedules. The aim is to optimise and manage your flex office while encouraging team collaboration and productivity.

Tip 2: Create collaborative spaces

A collaborative space is a space designed to make it easier for people to work together. This kind of coworking space improves productivity and creativity by encouraging people to share ideas and work closely together to deliver a project.

If you opt for the flex office, you are advised to foster stronger team cohesion. With dedicated areas, give your employees collaborative spaces by creating break-out rooms (table football, coffee area, rest area…) or by planning moments of entertainment. This will help create a friendlier, more collaborative working environment and improve their wellbeing.

Tip 3: Involve your employees in the roll-out

Moving to a flex office is a major change, not only to working methods but also to habits. That is why we recommend explaining to your employees the benefits of this increasingly popular approach and how it works.

We also encourage you to involve your employees in setting the new rules, but make sure you show them that their opinion is taken into account.
This will lead to:

  • Greater buy-in to the flex office
  • Better respect for the rules of living together
  • Smoother day-to-day operations
  • Simpler management of hybrid working.

Asking for your employees’ views helps improve the layout of your workspaces and strengthens team cohesion. It is always easier to occupy spaces that reflect your own preferences in decoration and layout than spaces that are simply imposed. Your teams will take ownership of the flex office more easily, which will have a positive impact on your office occupancy rate. The detailed reports in a flex office booking tool will help you track this rate and every other indicator you need to improve your organisation.

Inviting your teams to book a desk close to their project colleagues will help organise tasks and assignments, and also create a friendly working atmosphere, an essential foundation for everyone’s wellbeing.

Tip 4: The role of the IT department

The IT department, the team responsible for a company’s information systems, must take the move to a flex office into account and reorganise its structure accordingly.

As IT managers, they need to adapt their approach to flex office software in order to best meet their colleagues’ needs and help them work more effectively.

To do this, the IT department has several options. It can set up wireless networks, secure data access systems, laptops and many other tools that help management improve the efficiency of employees’ work and make them more productive, such as simple flex office booking software.

Tip 5: Choose the right flex office software

Finally, our last tip is to use flex office software. It will help you improve how your organisation is run and optimise the management and booking of your desks.

Good flex office software will help you:

  • Make booking flex office desks easier.
  • Book your desks online in real time, wherever you are.
  • Manage desk occupancy and therefore make the most of your floor space.
  • Analyse statistics and reports on desk occupancy, so you can plan resources and equipment according to headcount.
  • See at a glance which teams are in the office and which are working from home.
  • Receive notifications to confirm, change or cancel your bookings.

Above all, this flex office management software must be easy to use for both employees and managers. Once you have chosen it, remember to train your employees to use it so that it is fully adopted across the company.

By applying these 5 tips for managing your flex office, you will significantly improve your organisation, your teams’ efficiency and the way you manage your desks. Hamilton Deskbooking, our flex office booking software, meets these flex office requirements. It is a simple, flexible tool that suits the needs of organisations of different sizes. This flex office software lets you manage and book your workspaces efficiently and digitally through its intuitive platform. This powerful desk booking solution also lets you book desks next to the colleague you want to work with on a shared project, creating a friendly environment that encourages teamwork.

So never launch a flex office project blind, without a tool to support you, or you risk missing out on the benefits of this way of working. Hamilton Apps is a software publisher that has specialised in workspace management technology for 30 years. Would you like free advice on optimising your flex office organisation? Our experts are on hand to discuss your challenges and support you in your thinking.