What Is Hot Desking?

Hot desking is a workspace arrangement where nobody owns a particular desk. Instead of a permanent workstation with your name on it, you use whichever desk is free when you arrive — either first-come, first-served, or by booking one ahead of time.

That's the whole idea. What makes it confusing is that the phrase gets used for two fairly different situations, and most explanations only cover one of them.

The two things people mean by "hot desking"

Inside your own office. A business has forty staff but twenty-five desks, because people are in two or three days a week. Nobody has an assigned spot. You turn up, find a free desk, plug in your laptop, and clear it at the end of the day. This is what most search results are describing, and it's usually a decision made by an employer rather than by the person sitting at the desk.

Somewhere else entirely. You're a sole trader, a freelancer, or a small team with no office, and you need a proper desk for a day — somewhere with wifi, a chair that isn't your kitchen stool, and no one asking you to buy another coffee. You book a desk in someone else's space for the hours you need it.

Both are hot desking. They feel completely different from the inside, and if you're searching this term because you want somewhere to work on Thursday, the second one is what you're after.

How does hot desking work?

The mechanics are much the same either way:

• You book, or you don't. Some setups are purely first-come, first-served. Others let you reserve a specific desk for a specific time, which is what most people prefer once they've been burnt by arriving to a full room.
• The desk is generic on purpose. A screen, a power point, wifi, a chair. Nothing personal, because someone else sits there tomorrow.
• You clear it when you leave. Clean-desk habits aren't a rule so much as the only way shared desks stay usable.
• Your things go with you. Anything you can't carry out at the end of the day needs a locker or a drawer, and that's worth asking about before you commit.

When you're booking a desk in someone else's space rather than your employer's, one more thing matters: you should know the price and the hours before you turn up, not after.

What is another name for hot desking?

You'll see the same idea under several labels, and they aren't quite interchangeable:

• Desk hoteling — hot desking, but you reserve the desk in advance rather than take your chances.
• Desk sharing or free seating — plain synonyms, common in HR documents.
• Activity-based working — a broader idea, where an office offers different kinds of space (quiet booths, collaboration tables, phone rooms) and you move between them depending on the task. Hot desking is usually a part of it, not the whole thing.
• Flexible or agile working — umbrella terms that often include hot desking along with remote and hybrid arrangements.

If someone offers you a "flexible workspace", it's worth asking which of these they actually mean.

How much does a hot desk cost in Australia?

There's no single rate, because it depends on the city, the suburb, the building, and what's included. What you'll run into is roughly three pricing models:

• Memberships — a monthly fee for access, sometimes with a set number of days. Good value if you go often, poor value if you don't, and the reason plenty of people give up on coworking altogether.
• Day passes — a flat rate for a day at a coworking operator, no commitment.
• Direct from a business with a spare desk — you pay that host's hourly or daily price for the time you book.

On CoHub the price is set by whoever owns the space, not by us, and you see it before you book. The desks listed in Bankstown as this is written are $55 and $60 a day. That's two real listings in one suburb — CoHub is a new marketplace and we'd rather show you what's actually there than quote a national average that doesn't mean anything.

The practical advice: before you pay for anything monthly, work out how many days a month you'd genuinely use it. Below about two days a week, booking as you go almost always wins.

What are the disadvantages of hot desking?

It isn't the right answer for everyone, and the honest problems are worth knowing:

• No certainty. If it's first-come, first-served, a busy day means no desk. Booking in advance solves this, which is the main argument for it.
• Nowhere to put anything. No drawers, no second screen you've set up how you like, nothing left overnight. For people who need a particular setup, this is a genuine cost rather than a minor annoyance.
• Noise and interruption. Shared, open-plan space is louder than a closed room. For deep focus or back-to-back calls, a private office or meeting room is a better fit than a desk in the open.
• It can be unsettling. Not knowing where you'll sit, or ending up somewhere different every day with no one you know nearby, wears on some people more than others. It's a common complaint when an employer removes assigned desks, and it's worth taking seriously rather than dismissing — the people who find it hardest are usually the ones with the least say in the decision.
• Hygiene. Shared keyboards and desks need cleaning between users, and whether that actually happens is a fair question to ask.

Most of these get smaller when hot desking is something you choose for a day, and larger when it's imposed on you five days a week.

Is hot desking still a thing?

Yes, though the reason has shifted. It started as a way to cut floor space. It stuck because hybrid work made half-empty offices normal — a business paying for forty desks that are never all occupied at once has an obvious problem, and hot desking is the obvious answer to it.

The newer version is the interesting one: businesses that have spare desks anyway making them available to people outside the company. That turns an empty corner of an office into something useful in both directions.

Hot desk, private office, or meeting room?

They solve different problems:

If you're not sure, start with a desk. It's the cheapest way to find out whether a space works for you.

What if you're the one with the spare desk?

Most of this article assumes you're looking for a desk. Plenty of Australian businesses are on the other side of it — a room that's half empty since the team went hybrid, a corner that only earns its keep on Tuesdays.

You can list a spare desk on CoHub and set your own price, your own availability, and your own rules. We take a flat 15% from your payout, and nothing is added on top of what a guest pays. The first 50 hosts pay 0% on their first booking. CoHub doesn't lease, manage or operate your space — you're licensing the use of it for the hours you agree to, and you decide who and when.

List your space →

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CoHub is an Australian marketplace for commercial space booked by the hour or day. This article is general information, not legal or financial advice.