'Hoteling': Employees share desks as they check in to work

Central Penn Business Journal, Apr 17, 1998

Ernst & Young expects to outgrow the space it leases at 2601 Market Place in Susquehanna Township.

But the Big Six consulting and accounting firm won't move into new digs.

Instead, it will absorb its new employees through the latest trend in office-space design: Hoteling.

Already, Ernst & Young's Philadelphia accountants and consultants -- people who spend most of their time away from the office -- don't have permanent desks.

Instead, on rare days when they need to be in, they "check-in" to an office, just as they'd book a hotel room.

A "concierge" prepares the office. He sets up files, puts personal knickknacks on the desk and forwards calls to the right phone.

"It allows a company to use less space," explained E. Garrett Brinton of the Brinton Group, a Harrisburg-based office-design firm. "Let's say they have 100 employees they need to accommodate. Instead of 100 work areas, they need only 75."

The key to successful hoteling is having a good concierge, said Brinton. "If you don't provide something that people call their own ... there may not be a sense of belonging."

But if done right, hoteling can make employees feel downright pampered, added Brinton. "In a larger market this is taken to an even greater degree. Employees waste time going to dry cleaners and taking care of personal things. So a company will have a huge staff that does nothing but support work."

Good technology is another essential part of hoteling, said Bill Fellows, director of marketing for Ernst & Young's Philadelphia market. "Our investment in technology has really allowed us to make this work."

Employees each have their own laptop computers, which they plug into network jacks at their temporary desks. That allows them to check their e-mail and connect into the company's database.

Ernst & Young is doing some hoteling locally, mainly when out-of-town employees need to spend time in Harrisburg.

But the company's Philadelphia and Central Pennsylvania offices are growing fast -- 10 percent in six months, according to Fellows.

So it won't be long before the Harrisburg office of roughly 80 employees begins to feel cramped, said Stephen Franklin, the firm's associate director of real estate in New Jersey.

When that occurs, it will rely upon hoteling to squeeze in the new employees.

Obviously, hoteling works best for companies that have lots of employees who are out of the office most of the time, like consultants or sales staff, said Brinton.

But why not just let them telecommute?

Because setting up a home office is costly, said Franklin of Ernst & Young. Besides, one of main reasons employees come in to the office is to get items, like files, that they can't get at home.

For the most part, hoteling has yet to catch on around here, said Randy Wirth, president of Office Interiors in Harrisburg and Lancaster.

That's probably because it makes more sense in urban areas, where saving on sky-high real estate costs more than offsets the expense of setting up hoteling, he said.

Yet Franklin noted that while real estate costs are lower in Harrisburg, A-plus office space is scarce. So hoteling will still make sense for Ernst & Young.

A simpler version of hoteling may work for other firms, said Brinton.

It's called team-based design, a concept in which office space remains in constant flux, allowing people who are working together on a project to sit in the same space. Once the project is over, they move elsewhere in the office to sit with their new team.

"What that implies is that furniture has to be flexible, movable and skid-able, so it can tear down very easily," Brinton said. In other words, office space becomes flexible and dynamic instead of rigid and static.