Office phone booths are a modern integration that businesses around the world are implementing into their workstations. Instead of moving to an open office plan or continuing with an alternative style design, office phone booths provide a tertiary space where users can get deep work done, schedule and host meetings, and avoid workplace distractions.
Considering that around 85% of employees express frustration over a lack of privacy at work, office phone booths are a valuable solution that can improve employee focus and help to boost productivity. At MEAVO, we’re a leading name in the office phone booth industry, having worked with industry giants like Amazon, Google, Monzo, DHL, Barclays, and many more.
We’ve harnessed our expertise and gathered insights from years in the industry to create this definitive guide. It will help your business make an informed choice when selecting the right office work-booth.
In this article, we’ll discuss absolutely everything your business needs to know about office phone booths, including:
- What office phone booths are
- How much an office phone booth costs
- The benefits of using an office phone booth
- The different types of office phone booths
- How big office phone pods are
- How to use office phone booths to boost productivity
- How to optimise your office with phone booths
- The do’s/don’t of using phone booths at work
Let’s dive right in.
What Are Office Phone Booths?
Office phone booths are comfortable private booths that often have enough room for one or several people to sit down and work in. Depending on the size of the office pod – which we’ll discuss shortly – there could be a number of additional amenities in the workspace, like a monitor, a full-sized chair, and charging stations.
The main purpose of an office phone booth is to give employees a well-equipped space to retreat into when they want to get some deep work done. As a space that is resistant to sound, employees will be able to work without fear of distraction from noisy coworkers or office chatter.
Considering that over 84% of employees feel distracted at work, this space provides a sanctuary in the middle of your office. And, now that companies like MEAVO are producing office pods that are affordable to companies of any size, these productivity-boosting spaces are more accessible than ever before. Be sure to read our extended article about the key features of office phone booths.
How Much Does an Office Phone Booth Cost?
A number of factors will impact how much an office phone booth costs. Keep in mind, the company you choose for your purchase has its own internal costs and manufacturing considerations, affecting the final price. Additionally, factors like accessories, additions, and material quality impact the office phone booth cost.
Another factor to consider when determining the cost of an office phone booth is its general size. Most office work pods will fit one singular person. Larger office pods which fit 2-4 people will naturally have a higher cost, as there is more of an upfront cost to produce these larger models.
While many office phone booths cost upwards of £10,000, MEAVO offers a number of models for heavily discounted prices. At MEAVO, our dream is to bring flexible and comfortable working accommodations to every business around the globe. Instead of only focusing on enterprise clients with big budgets, we’ve kept costs minimal while maximising quality. Here is a glimpse of some prices you’ll find MEAVO’s office pods:
- The Soho Booth (One-Person Office Phone Booth): Starts at only £3,499 + VAT.
- The Soho Workstation (All-in-one conference system): Starts at only £4,199 + VAT.
- Camden 2&4 (Office Phone Booths for Multiple People): Starts at only £7,999 + VAT.
- The Shoreditch Phone Booth (One-Person Office Phone Booth): Starts at only £2,399 + VAT.
By reaching out to our team, you’ll be able to find out about customization options, helping to make your money go that bit further.
What Are the Benefits of Using an Office Phone Booth?
There’s a reason that you can now find office phone booths in all of the biggest companies around the globe. The benefits of office phone booths are simply too great to overlook. From removing distractions from the office to streamlining workflows and allowing people to get more done in less time, businesses are set to experience a whole range of benefits from using office phone booths.
The benefits of office pods extend from employee mental health benefits to bottom-line gains for your business. With that in mind, here is a glimpse of the most impactful advantages that your business can expect:
Improved Productivity
Each employee loses around 60 hours a month due to being idle at work, whether that’s because they’re taking extended breaks, engaging in distractions, or simply not completing their assigned tasks. By providing a private space where employees can avoid distractions, you’ll increase the opportunity for them to engage in deep work, helping to raise productivity rates.
Better Collaboration
Multi-person office meeting pods provide a private space where between two and four employees can come together to work on group projects. With enough space for people to spread out, these pods are perfect for meetings, brainstorming sessions, or simply periods of extended collaborative working. With these group office pods, you’ll be able to facilitate better collaboration and steer your projects to success.
Increased Employee Wellness
Around 37% of employees in the UK feel continually stressed when they’re at work. By providing a space where employees can have time to themselves and get on with work at their own pace, they’ll be able to escape the bustle of the office and feel more calm while at work. Over time, this will help to relax employees, avoid burnout, and increase general levels of wellness.
The Different Types of Office Phone Booths
There are many types of office phone booths, each of which provides a slightly different function in the office. The typical model which most employees and offices will have come into contact with is the one-person model, which provides enough space for a single employee to step into the booth and get working. However, there are actually several different types of office phone booths available:
Standard – The standard office phone booth is a compact space that fits a desk chair or a stall, providing a private space for employees to settle into deep work.
Extended – Extended office phone booths, like our Soho or Workstation model, is a leading office phone booth style, providing additional space to ensure that companies can fit a comfortable chair into these work pods. Most standard office phone booths only include a stall, which can become uncomfortable, especially if you’re working on one for several hours. Our Soho Model fixes this issue, providing enough space for comfort and creativity.
Multi-Person – Collaborative phone booths are larger model phone booths that can fit up to four people in with ease. These are wonderful if you need to get some group work done or want to huddle together for a quick meeting.
Phone Box – A phone box office booth is a small unit connected directly to your office’s wall. This provides a small space that reduces sound from phone calls and other quick communications. These come in handy if your business routinely receives calls and you don’t want your employees to be distracted by ambient noise in the office.
The vast majority of office phone booths that you see on the market will fall into one of these four categories. However, some companies provide a greater level of customization than others, allowing you to personalize your office phone booth in terms of the colours and finishes you choose. MEAVO’s office phone booths are customizable and available in 1,000 + colours to match your interior design.
How Big Are Office Phone Pods?
The most important factor to consider when determining how big an office phone booth has to be, will always be the type of office pod you go for. Of course, an office phone booth designed for four people will be significantly bigger than one made for a single person. Understanding these variations will help you better assess your workspace and decide how to fit in these productivity-boosting stations.
While each company will have different measurements and specifications when it comes to their office phone booths, here are our MEAVO office phone booths sizes to give you an idea:
The Soho Workstation Office Phone Booth Size
– Exterior Size: H: 2150mm x W: 1000mm x D: 1280mm
– Interior Size: H: 1975mm x W: 926mm x D: 1218mm
The Soho & Shoreditch Office Phone Booth Size
– Exterior Size: H: 2250mm x W: 1000mm x D: 100 mm
– Interior Size: H: 2040mm x W: 926mm x D: 938mm
The Camden Two Meeting Pod Booth Size
– Exterior Size: H: 2150mm x W: 2100mm x D: 1000mm
– Interior Size: H:1975 mm x W: 2024mm x D: 937mm
The Camden Four Meeting Pod Size
– Exterior Size: H: 2150mm x W: 2100mm x D: 1280mm
– Interior Size: H: 1975mm x W: 2024mm x D: 1217mm
The office phone booth size that will work best for you will depend on the function you’re looking for. For instance, while all office phone booths can help employees avoid distractions and concentrate on their tasks, not all of them offer ample space for collaboration. With that in mind, be sure to start with the result you want to get from your office phone booth and work backward from there.
This strategy will help you to determine whether you need a larger quantity of smaller or collaborative workspaces.
How To Use Office Phone Booths to Boost Productivity
Across the globe, an hour of work yields staggeringly different results in terms of the average GDP that those 60 minutes produce. In countries like Iceland and Luxembourg, an hour of work can produce as much as $110 of GDP, while in a country like Russia, this figure is only around $30.
Regardless of where you are in the world, one of the most effective ways of increasing the average GDP your workers produce per hour is to ensure they get more done in that hour. Using office phone booths is one of the most effective tools to help your employees to concentrate and boost productivity. Without office distractions, they’ll be able to concentrate for longer periods of time and get more work done in a shorter stint.
Data demonstrates that a singular distraction can cause an employee to lose focus for 23 minutes. When this occurs repeatedly, you’re looking at hours of every single day being lost to small office distractions. Office phone booths boost productivity because they provide solace from office distractions and noise.
As most office phone booths are sound resistant, they are able to keep an employee in a private, quiet, and comfortable space. In this state, employees will be able to get into a deep work mindset, entering into a flow state where they can get lots of work done quickly. And, without other coworkers disrupting this flow, they’ll more easily flow through their work and achieve highly.
That’s not even mentioning the positive mental health and wellness benefits that employees can obtain from the solace that office phone booths provide!
How to Optimise Your Office with Office Phone Booths
Over the years, offices have changed to reflect common ideas and methodologies behind workplace culture. While previous decades were all about cubicle working, modern trends have launched into an open-office culture with a more flexible approach to working. Especially in our current age of hybrid working, with 74% of US companies offering a hybrid-work model, the modern office has gone through a period of incredible change.
Part of embracing this change is understanding positive implementations that other companies are making and incorporating them into your structures. If you’re looking to optimise your office, then using office phone booths is one of the leading strategies you should look into.
As we’ve already discussed, office phone booths come with a large range of potential benefits, allowing your business to:
– Boost productivity
– Decrease office distractions
– Increase employee wellness
– Help increase concentration
– Boost collaboration
What’s more, office phone booths are a great representation of flexible working culture. Unlike open office plans, they involve minimal changes to the actual structure of your office. Most businesses will simply select a few corners or walls of the office and place these working pods along them.
Outlining the Dos/Don’t of Office Phone Booths
No matter how useful they may seem, office phone booths are still a fairly new working structure. With that in mind, we’ve seen lots of questions about how to use them effectively, where to put them, and what to avoid doing with them in your office.
To clear up some of the most common questions about office phone booths, here are some Dos/Don’ts to pay attention to:
– Do – Set Clear Usage Rules: It’s always a good idea to clearly define your usage rules when you bring office phone booths into your office. You can set up some general guidelines about how many hours someone can use one in a day. These ground rules will prevent any conflicts between employees.
– Don’t – Implement Usage Hierarchies: One mistake we see companies make when introducing our pod workstations to their offices is saving them only for managers and C-suites. These should not be a tool only for leadership roles, as absolutely every employee is set to benefit from their presence.
– Do – Incorporate Pods Into Office Culture: When office pods arrive at your business, your employees may never have used them before. In order to demonstrate the benefits to everyone, be sure to allow people time in their first week to use the pods at their leisure. Once they understand how beneficial an office pod is, it’ll quickly become an ingrained part of your culture and people will begin to go there for deep work.
– Don’t – Disrupt Others: One of the main benefits of working in an office pod is that they provide space for distraction-free work. If you see someone working in one, it’s likely that they don’t want to be disturbed. You should refrain from interrupting someone in these pods.
The extended article will give you a great idea of the range of dos/don’ts that businesses establish when incorporating office pods into their workplace.
Final Thoughts
Office phone booths are one of the unmistakable productivity tools that the last few years have revealed. Across the globe and in industry-leading clients, office workstations have become a useful space that facilitates productivity, collaboration, and distraction-free working. No matter the industry you’re in or the role your team fills, absolutely everyone can make use of an office phone booth.
If you’re intrigued, MEAVO would be more than happy to answer any additional questions you have. Whether you want to know more about a specific office phone booth model or simply want more information, we’re always just a message away.