Open plan offices have become the norm today. Long gone are the days when every employee had their own office or cubicle. Well, who wants to work in a cubicle anyways!
According to the International Facility Management Association around 70 percent of U.S. offices have no or low partitions. It’s probably a similar figure in the U.K.
The advantages driving this trend are twofold: Open plan offices are primarily there to foster communication between workers. Secondly, the layout also comes with cost savings if you’re able to squeeze in more employees per square foot. The average space per employee dropped from 225 square feet in 2010 to 176 square feet today which is no surprise given some of the crazy rents businesses have to pay in places like London.
The downside is that employees often feel disturbed by noise, in particular when they have to concentrate on a tricky task or if they need to get on a call while someone nearby is shouting on the phone. Those over-ambitious sales managers can cause havoc!
Based on research done in Australia around 50% of employees in open plan offices feel distracted by noise compared to only 16% for those lucky enough to have a private office. What does that mean for your business? To start with, it lowers your colleagues’ productivity, your employee satisfaction tanks, and in the worst case, employees might just pack up and walk over to your competitor!
With MEAVO office phone booths you can have the best of both worlds. Office phone booths come with a range of benefits – workers can still communicate easily in open plan offices but if they need some quiet space they can retreat in one of our privacy booths whether it’s to make a phone call or to have a noise-free environment to concentrate on a difficult project. Plus, our phone pods aren’t just about privacy and tranquillity – they’re also there to contain the noise and disturbance created by people making phone calls. Yes Mr. noisy sales guy, I’m talking to you.
So, do your business and your colleagues a favour and get our Soho office phone booth or Hoxton Phone Pod today! You’ll be the most popular person in town.