We had an office where they tried this as an experiment. Each desk was sit-stand, had one or two 24inch monitors, a chromebox + mouse + keyboard, plenty of wall sockets easily accessible at the top of the desk and powered-USB port for charging etc. People either plugged their laptop in, or just logged in on the chromebox and were away.
And it was awful.
* People started to have "their" desk where they "always" sit, and left things like coats on the chair, running shoes under the desk, folding bikes (you name it) at the desk. This had the effect of taking the desk "out of circulation" meaning when the "usual" occupier wasn't there for a day people still didn't use the desk, or someone did use it but the usual occupier came in late and someone else was there it was a super-awkward moment of either the first person packing up and moving elsewhere, or the usual occupant getting in a huff with someone in "their desk" and/or continually interrupting the other person when they come over to collect their notebook or headphones or something.
* There were less desks than people. 90% of the time this was fine as usually enough people were on vacation/at clients/on training etc. Occasionally though it meant there was no space and people roamed the office for 15 minutes before having to go and work from Starbucks (if they had brought their laptop with them)
* If you were at meetings or otherwise away from your desk, you would often come back to your desk to find that someone else was now sat at the desk you were sitting at before.
* Even if you found a desk, you were often not near your team. Cue constant "Where are you sitting?" instant messages and people wandering around trying to find each other.
* Desks often had missing cables and stuff - so even if you did get a desk sometimes it was on that one desk where the monitors dont work, or someone had taken the power cable, or the keyboard had a "sticky H key" or something. Because no one "owned" the desks, no one bothered to report the faults to the people managing the facilities and just moved to another desk or stole the cable/keyboard/mouse/whatever from another nearby desk.
* Engineers could not use desktops (since they would have to move them every day, and company policy is no source code stored on laptops) so the computers got given a fixed location, and the nomad engineers had to find a desk to remote desktop into the desktop each day. This is fine for short periods, but day-in, day-out 8+ hours a day looking at remote desktops leads to sea-sickness due to the small lag. So even if the receptionist or admins or spreadsheet jockeys could go and sit in the cool-zones for their work, the engineers were stuck at a dekstop because they need the monitors and stuff to do their job.
After about 9 months or so we moved to a different building due to growing out of the experimental building and went back to assigned-desks in an open plan office which was hugely improved.
Please, for anyone reading this, please please please do not instigate non-designated desks for your workers.
tl;dr - non-designed desks had all of the same problems as an open office, but with extra additional micro-stresses every day that really add up over time to make your working day a misery.
I think the line of thinking was to try and reduce the number of desks/space needed.
The idea I think - and it is perfectly valid idea - is that most of the time only ever about 70-90% of people based in an office are actually physically there. The rest of the time they are on vacation/training/client-meetings/working from another office/working from home etc.
So there are a LOT of empty desks any day of the week, so why pay for office space to accommodate all of your staff when it is very, very rare for 100% of people to be there?
I understand the rationale, but in practice it really sucked.
Some suggestions for improving non-designated seating would be:
* Run things at a more generous margin (e.g. space for 90% of employees rather than 75% - made up numbers but you get the idea)
* Sort out issues with equipment - either through daily checks of everything or a more stream-lined approach to getting faults fixed (i.e. dont go through "raising a ticket" ball-ache, but something like put a rubber-duck on the desk or something then someone comes and checks out everything, or have floor-walkers who can be grabbed ad hoc)
* Have a STRICT no-camping policy, and clear the desks Every. Single. Day. so that anything left behind is put into lost property bins at the end of the day, then given to charity at the end of the month if not claimed.
* Clean & Tidy the desks up every day so it doesn't look like an explosion in a hacker's bedroom every morning.
* Anchor specific teams in specific area - i.e. allow people to go anywhere if they want, but give some teams designated spaces where they get priority - e.g. "This is the QA team area", or "This is the test team area".
* Allow people who need specialist equipment (e.g. developers) to have fixed desks with their equipment.
We had an office where they tried this as an experiment. Each desk was sit-stand, had one or two 24inch monitors, a chromebox + mouse + keyboard, plenty of wall sockets easily accessible at the top of the desk and powered-USB port for charging etc. People either plugged their laptop in, or just logged in on the chromebox and were away.
And it was awful.
* People started to have "their" desk where they "always" sit, and left things like coats on the chair, running shoes under the desk, folding bikes (you name it) at the desk. This had the effect of taking the desk "out of circulation" meaning when the "usual" occupier wasn't there for a day people still didn't use the desk, or someone did use it but the usual occupier came in late and someone else was there it was a super-awkward moment of either the first person packing up and moving elsewhere, or the usual occupant getting in a huff with someone in "their desk" and/or continually interrupting the other person when they come over to collect their notebook or headphones or something.
* There were less desks than people. 90% of the time this was fine as usually enough people were on vacation/at clients/on training etc. Occasionally though it meant there was no space and people roamed the office for 15 minutes before having to go and work from Starbucks (if they had brought their laptop with them)
* If you were at meetings or otherwise away from your desk, you would often come back to your desk to find that someone else was now sat at the desk you were sitting at before.
* Even if you found a desk, you were often not near your team. Cue constant "Where are you sitting?" instant messages and people wandering around trying to find each other.
* Desks often had missing cables and stuff - so even if you did get a desk sometimes it was on that one desk where the monitors dont work, or someone had taken the power cable, or the keyboard had a "sticky H key" or something. Because no one "owned" the desks, no one bothered to report the faults to the people managing the facilities and just moved to another desk or stole the cable/keyboard/mouse/whatever from another nearby desk.
* Engineers could not use desktops (since they would have to move them every day, and company policy is no source code stored on laptops) so the computers got given a fixed location, and the nomad engineers had to find a desk to remote desktop into the desktop each day. This is fine for short periods, but day-in, day-out 8+ hours a day looking at remote desktops leads to sea-sickness due to the small lag. So even if the receptionist or admins or spreadsheet jockeys could go and sit in the cool-zones for their work, the engineers were stuck at a dekstop because they need the monitors and stuff to do their job.
After about 9 months or so we moved to a different building due to growing out of the experimental building and went back to assigned-desks in an open plan office which was hugely improved.
Please, for anyone reading this, please please please do not instigate non-designated desks for your workers.
tl;dr - non-designed desks had all of the same problems as an open office, but with extra additional micro-stresses every day that really add up over time to make your working day a misery.