A clean desk rule is the sentence that makes a shared desk shareable: at the end of the day nothing is left on the desk, nothing is left in its drawer, and the next person finds it as the first one did. It is searched for as an information security policy, and it is that too, but on a hot desk floor it is first a facilities rule, because a desk with someone's papers, mug and monitor stand on it is an assigned desk whatever the booking system says. This guide is the clean desk rule from the workplace team's side: what it has to say, who owns which part of it, and how it sits inside the desk sharing policy that the return to office policy template on this site builds from your own figures.
What the rule has to say, in four lines
Nothing on the desk at the end of the day; nothing in the desk, which means no assigned drawer on a shared desk and a locker elsewhere for what people keep; the desk released by a stated time so the next booking is real; and what happens to things left behind, which is the line that makes the rest enforceable. A clean desk rule with the first three lines and not the fourth is a poster. The desk sharing policy is where it lives, because it is one of the four decisions that policy exists to record.
Why it is a facilities rule before it is a security one
On a shared floor the ratio is the whole design: 140 desks for 180 people at 7 desks per 10 works only if all 140 are available every morning. A desk that is left set up is out of the pool, and ten of them take the ratio to 6.5 per 10 without anyone deciding it. The clean desk rule is how the ratio the attendance supports survives contact with people, and the space utilization worksheet on this site is how the ratio was found in the first place, from your own average and peak counts.
Who owns which part
The workplace team owns the desk-clearing part, the lockers and the release time, because those are the floor. Information security owns the part about papers and screens and what is locked away, and HR owns what the policy may require of an employee and how a breach is handled. A clean desk policy written by one of the three alone reads as either a tidiness memo or a compliance document; written as one line in the desk sharing policy with the other two named, it is a rule people can follow.
Where it goes: inside the desk sharing policy
The return to office policy template on this site works the arithmetic under a desk rule, the average day, the clustered day, the desks short and the ratio the assigned desks leave for the shared ones, and the paid plan builds the policy document from those figures under your own name. The clean desk line belongs in that document beside the booking rule and the release time, as one of the things the rule requires of a shared desk, and HardFM asserts nothing about what the security or HR parts may require.
Questions people ask about clean desk
What is a clean desk rule?
Nothing on a shared desk at the end of the day, nothing in it, the desk released by a stated time, and a stated fate for what is left behind. On a shared floor it is what keeps every desk in the pool so the ratio the attendance supports actually holds.
Is a clean desk policy a security policy or a facilities one?
Both, and the parts have different owners. The workplace team owns the desk clearing, the lockers and the release time; information security owns the papers and screens; HR owns what may be required of an employee. HardFM builds the desk sharing policy the facilities part lives in.
Does HardFM write the clean desk policy?
It builds the desk sharing policy document from the worked desk arithmetic in the paid plan, and the clean desk line sits inside it. What security and HR require is theirs, and HardFM asserts nothing about it.