The lack of ownership of space in the agile working or hot desking workplace is both a strength and a flaw. On one side of the coin, it opened up businesses to greater collaboration by ensuring the workers did not become geographically isolated in teams or departments and offered flexible working spaces, yet on the other side, some workers have been known to feel displaced without a solid ground to call their own.
One solution to offer a bridge of the gap between fixed and hot desking offices has been the agile working box - a caddy which allows for storage of work essentials that’s easily portable and can be stored in on site lockers when not in use.
Designs of agile working boxes vary - from basic, company-provided (and often branded) cardboard caddies to sleek ergonomic designs that could even be ported home with little difficulty if the need arose.
Not only do they mean that employees wouldn’t need to limit their working environment to whatever they could carry to work that day, but it also reinstated the charm of being able to personalise your working environment – a relic of private, individual space in a new way of working.
In terms of the ‘new normal’ - a post-COVID-19 workplace that wants to retain its openplan nature but adapted to social distancing and heightened hygiene measures - the agile working box may have a role to play.
Action from the industry suggests that hot-desking and agile working will prevail during and after the pandemic, but the way in which workers will interact with their environment will change. Agile working may be less flexible, with one worker per desk per day. Couple that with less use of communal areas such as kitchens and canteens and the changes will be offering a semi-permanence to using a workplace.