The business leader’s guide to designing productive bench desks

Bench desks or multi-person back-to-back desk frames are extremely so popular in today’s open-plan offices and it’s easy to see why. They are simple, cost-effective, and economical on space. They allow teams to collaborate and information to flow freely between team members and among colleagues.

What is a bench desk?

Bench desks take their name from benches (think oversized picnic benches). They tend to be a single long desk that houses several workstations down each side, but you can get small bench desks for just two people facing each other, or large ones for even as many as 20 people. Bench desks can be easily configured to meet an organisation’s needs by placing them against walls, against other bench desks or beneath windows. They can be positioned at right angles too, to achieve the desired shape and make the most of the office space available.

The benefits of using bench desks

• More space

Bench desks are very versatile and can be placed against walls, beneath windows or even backing onto another bench desk for additional width. Many people can be sat together without gaps between desks, and without leaving space for desk legs, which means that using a bench desk, you can usually fit more workstations into any given space.

• Flexibility

It’s really easy to add to or remove from bench desks as your need for workspace grows or reduces. And, depending on what you use your space for, you could lay the bench desks out in a U shape, in lines, or around the perimeter of the room. You could have a 2-person bench desk or you could opt for a much larger bench desk to accommodate teams.

• Cost-effective

Bench desks are extremely cost-effective. The design is simple and the straight lines make it possible to maximise the lengths of wood used, and they can be easily added to, which means you can make your desk budget go further.

• • Convenience

Bench desks are typically high enough and wide enough to fit a wide range of storage solutions underneath, so belongings can be close to hand, yet conveniently tucked away.

• Enhance collaboration

Sitting with colleagues makes it easier to share ideas and explore concepts without leaving your desk. Of course, this can also have some drawbacks, but there are ways around these too.

• Suitable for hot desking

Bench desking works really well with hot desking. With hot desking, employees do not have their own desk, instead, they sit where they feel they will be most productive that day – this could be with a specific team, person or part of the office depending on their workload, project or environmental conditions and bench desks make this extremely easy as each workstation is identical.

Bench desks are perfect for:

• Call centres
• Recruitment businesses
• Multi-person teams within an office
• Hot desk areas
• Breakout discussion zones (tall bench desks)

And so many more.

Things to consider before you design your bench desk

1. What space do you have available? You need to ensure that your bench desk solution can accommodate each of your employees and that each employee has the space they need to perform their job comfortably.
2. How many team members do you need to accommodate?
   Is each desk to be split into teams? If so, how many teams and how many members are within each team?
3. How often are they likely to need to liaise, collaborate or share information?
   If information flow is constant then a simple bench desk format will make working together easier. If collaboration isn’t top of the agenda, then maybe some dividers will offer a degree of privacy and deliver a quieter work environment.
4. How much are they likely to discuss confidential issues?
   Again, for industries such as recruitment or HR, if team working isn’t a high priority, then consider dividers or screens to make it easier for confidential discussions to take place.
5. Are the bench desks for comfortable all-day seating or temporary project-based discussions? If the bench desks are for short-term use of a meeting, or an hour or two, then tall bench desks and some stools could be the answer.

For project-based discussions, a tall bench desk may offer the perfect solution of somewhere for colleagues to collaborate, but also with more of a breakout feel.

If choosing a bench desk layout for your office is more about fitting everyone in, than about free-flowing information, or if those using desks are likely to spend a lot of time on phone calls, desk dividers and partitions can be added for privacy or to reduce the noise as it travels around the office.

For more information about our bench desks, dividers or even our under-desk storage, please call us on 01295 565001 or chat with our friendly advisors online.