Open plan offices are the most common office space layout these days. The main advantage is facilitating communication and dialogue among colleagues. However, this comes with the downside of employees having to put up with constant noise levels. According to research done in Down Under around 50% of workers in open plan offices feel disturbed by noise. Have you done a poll in your office?
Some of the noise is created by colleagues speaking with each other. But a lot is also due to people on calls whether it’s with potential clients, existing customers or colleagues in other locations. Research quoted by the BBC states that open plan offices reduce employee productivity by 15%. What does this mean for you? It negatively impacts your entire organisation, whether you have a sales team, marketeers, developers, customer service agents, and so on. You get the picture.
In addition, employees often waste time finding a quiet space where they can make a call or have some privacy. Often they’ll end up in a staircase, outside on the street, or maybe even in the loo!
Let’s assume your organisation has 100 employees in its office. If every week employees spend on average just 5 minutes wandering around the office trying to find a quiet place to make a call that translates into almost 25,000 minutes (or 400 hours) lost productivity per year. Plus it can lead to some serious frustration among your colleagues.
Luckily minimising the downsides of open plan offices is easy peasy. Just pop in a few MEAVO phone booths. That means lower noise levels as calls are made inside the pod plus less time wasted trying to find a quiet place. Your colleagues will thank you forever!
P.S. Our Soho Office Phone Booth is back in stock!