Homezone is a term from the field of desk sharing. It refers to an office space to which one or more teams (departments) of a company are assigned. The associated employees no longer have fixed assigned desks, but choose their workstation flexibly via workstation booking software. This means that the people who actually work together can always sit together. In this way, collaboration can be redesigned every day.
Homezones & Desk Sharing
For desk sharing to work, clear rules are required. For example, an employee may only occupy a workstation when he or she is actually working. In addition, a so-called"clean desk policy" applies. This states that the desk must be completely cleared for every break and at the end of the working day. For this purpose, each employee has a locker in the home zone where he can lock away his work materials when not in use. After all, the workplace should be available to the next employee clean and tidy.
Different models can be used to agree who can use which desk and when. Some companies have a schedule, others rely on the "first come, first served" principle. Another variant is digital workstation booking. With this, a interactive live overviewshows which positions are already occupied and which are still free. From the latter, the employee can select the workstation that best suits his or her current requirements.
Desk sharing, including its flexible workstations, offers companies the advantage of space and cost savings. For startups in particular, getting by with as little space as possible can mean big savings. Neither partition walls between desks nor offices for individual employees are needed. In addition, fewer workstations are generally needed than there are employees, since they do not all come to the office every day.
Ideal for agile working models
The flexible choice of desks in the Homezones is ideal for agile working methods. Anyone who sits next to another colleague every day automatically comes into contact with more people than is the case with fixed desk assignments. This promotes the exchange of information, which can result in new approaches and ways of thinking. This not only has a positive effect on creativity, but also on motivation. Another plus point is cleanliness. Since the desks have to be tidied up when they are left, there is no messy paperwork and collecting of deposit bottles, as is more often the case with fixed office workstations.
The numerous advantages of working in home zones are offset by a number of disadvantages. First and foremost is the time-consuming organization of work. Searching for a free workstation every morning, after every break and after every meeting and setting it up again appropriately takes time, as does cleaning up after work. This can lead to a loss of productivity. In addition, not every employee finds it easy to adjust to a new office structure every day. While some don't care where they sit, others always need time to settle in. This can disrupt concentration and cause stress.
Rules / Policies as the basis for Homezones
In principle, the flexible sharing of workstations in home zones can only work if all employees accept and implement the associated rules. Otherwise, tensions can arise in the team that disrupt the workflow and impair the performance of the entire company.
To ensure that you can implement all rules regarding policies of your company, Locaboo offers a generous set of rules for you and your employees. Just get in touch with us.