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Articles on hybrid working and desk booking

Writing from the people who build intheOffice, on running an office people come back to.

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Office workers in suits squaring up to each other across a row of desks and monitors

Desk booking ·

Office Wars: The Dark Side of Desk Booking

Rigid rules and poor communication turn desk booking into a daily argument. Jon Kent on what goes wrong, and on the flexibility that puts it right.

Jon Kent and Adam Scorey on a video call, recording the first episode of intheOffice Cast

Podcast ·

The intheOffice Story

Adam Scorey interviews founder Jon Kent on how, and more importantly why, intheOffice came to be built. The full transcript of the first vlog.

A woman working on a laptop at a standing desk beside an office window

Desk booking ·

The Pitfalls of Desk Booking Software

Why desk booking rollouts stall: low engagement, cultural resistance, and a gap between what the software does and what the people using it want.

A yellow U-turn road sign beside two signs pointing to the office in opposite directions

Opinion ·

Fear and loathing in Las Boardroom

Adam Scorey goes looking for the reasoning behind the return-to-office U-turn made by some of the world's biggest employers and their chief executives.

Rows of humanoid robots working on laptops at a boardroom table

Opinion ·

What is the office, anyway?

Five hundred years of the office, from the scriptorium to the cubicle to the empty Friday, and what today's workforce actually wants from the place.

A hand stopping a row of falling wooden blocks before it reaches the ones still standing

Opinion ·

Redefining Hybrid Working: A Shift from Crisis Mode to Experimentation

Hybrid working is treated as a compromise between two extremes. Jon Kent argues for a move from crisis mode to deliberate, measured experimentation.

A microphone, a pair of headphones and a sign reading PODCAST on a mint green background

Podcast ·

Podcast: How can technology support hybrid working?

Jon Kent on Paul Essery's Tech Business Podcast: why office usage data misses most of the picture, and what to look for in hybrid working tools.

A straight desert road painted with 2021 and 2022, under the title A Hybrid Working Retrospective

Hybrid working ·

Hybrid Working: Lessons from 2022 and what to focus on now

Step out of crisis mode and into experimentation: a talk on the flexible tools and methods it takes to find the way of working that suits your company.

A man sitting alone at an old office desk in the middle of a desert

Office attendance ·

Organically increase office attendance

Nobody commutes in to sit on their own. Why coordination, rather than a mandate, is what fills an office, and how to make the office days line up.

The intheOffice stand at the Office Management Show: a laptop and leaflets on a table beside a roll-up banner

Events ·

Flexible Office Approaches - The Winter Showcase Wrap-up

What the Winter Showcase said about hybrid working: people scheduling matters more than desk scheduling, and a policy has to be able to change.

No card, no contract, nothing to install.