Staff Lockers: Giving Everyone a Spot of Their Own

Staff lockers used to be the thing you walked past on your way to the kettle. Then hybrid working came along, desks stopped belonging to anyone in particular, and suddenly half the office had nowhere to put a coat.

We get asked about them more often than we expected. The question is rarely “which locker”. It is usually “how many doors do I need, and where do I put them so people actually use them”. Both are fair questions.

Why lockers came back

When everyone had their own desk, personal storage sorted itself out. An under-desk pedestal held the mug, the charger, the paracetamol and the spare pair of shoes, and nobody thought about it again.

Share those desks two or three days a week and the arrangement falls apart. Yesterday’s drawer belongs to whoever booked the desk this morning. People start carrying their whole working life in and out in a rucksack, or leaving it in a heap by the window.

A locker sorts that out. One door with someone’s name on it, still theirs whether they are in on Tuesday or not in at all this week.

How many doors, and how tall

Lockers are sold by the column, and the column is divided by shelves. The Qube by Bisley comes with one, four or six, and the difference is bigger than it sounds: compartment heights run from 84.7cm at the roomiest down to 27.5cm at the tightest. Inside, every compartment is 24cm wide and 42.6cm deep.

That width is the number worth writing down. 24cm takes a rucksack, a laptop bag and a folded coat. It does not take a bike helmet sitting on top of a winter jacket, whatever the person asking for the six-shelf version is hoping.

• Fewer shelves means taller spaces, which suits coats, kit bags and helmets that need to hang rather than fold.

• More shelves means more people get a spot each, better for a bigger team who mostly need room for a bag and their lunch.

• Most offices land on the four-shelf version.

Both lockers we stock stand around 1.8m, so they clear the top of most partition screens without taking over the room. Each column is 30.5cm wide. Multiply that by however many you want and you have the wall space you need to find. Six columns is 1.83m, roughly the length of a two-seater sofa.

Locks, keys and the admin nobody plans for

This is the part that gets forgotten, and then it becomes my problem.

Decide before delivery who holds the spare keys. Write the numbers down somewhere that is not a sticky note on the back of the locker. Agree what happens when someone leaves and their key leaves with them, because it will happen in the first six months.

The lockers are quite firm on the subject themselves. The Qube staff locker uses triple locking on a high grade steel carcass, so the door is held top, middle and bottom rather than at a single point. It also arrives fully assembled, which saves an afternoon.

What a locker will not solve

A locker is personal storage, not office storage. It will not house the printer paper, the archive boxes or the four years of invoices somebody insists on keeping. That is a job for office cupboards and shelving, and mixing the two up is how you end up with a bank of lockers full of stationery and a team still carrying rucksacks.

A locker does not replace a drawer for anyone still at a fixed desk, either. If half your team is permanent and half is hot desking, buy for both: pedestals under the fixed desks, lockers on the wall for everyone else.

Where to put them so they get used

Lockers in a back corridor get used for a fortnight and then quietly become somewhere to store the Christmas decorations. Put them on the route people already walk: near the entrance, by the coats, on the way to the kitchen.

Two more practical things. Vented doors matter if there is any chance of gym kit or wet coats going in, which is why the Qube by Bisley has them. And leave a bit of space in front, so people can stand, open a door and rummage without blocking a fire exit.

Colour is worth a thought as well. The Qube comes in 25 finishes, so a bank of lockers can either disappear into the wall in light grey or be the one cheerful thing in the room.

Both carry a five year guarantee and both are made in the UK. Prices start at £151 for the Qube and £199 for the Qube by Bisley, with everything on the page as usual.

Have a look through the staff lockers we stock. If you want a hand working out how many doors your team actually needs, tell us the headcount and the wall you are working with, and we will do the arithmetic with you.