Office phone booths have emerged as a win-win solution to the problems associated with open office working environments. With phone booths, there's no more forced work distractions & no more frustration on the part of employees because they lack privacy.

They also provide employers an efficient, cost-effective way to create healthy, productive workplaces. Adding one to the office means companies won't have to invest in expensive renovations to provide workers with an alternative to the stressful open office concept. 

Thanks to the immense benefits, the variety of uses, and thoughtful features, Zenbooths have become a modern staple for organizations across the board, from growing businesses to major companies like Bosche and Capital One. 

Here are 17 key reasons why an office phone booth or office pod can enhance the way you and your team get stuff done.

Office Phone Booths Improve Employee's Mental Health

Working in an open environment for 8 hours every day can lead to increased stress and anxiety. It comes from the constnat exposure to noise and visual distractions. This condition isn’t just an issue for introverts, who aren’t interested in the high number of social interactions that an open office inspires.

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One of the most frequent requests from our customers has been for an adjustable desk.  That's why we're proud to announce our new electric adjustable desk option for our Comfort Booth and Executive Booth XL.

The Zenbooth electric adjustable desk option is the first electric adjustable desk in the phone booth market, and is designed to fit seamlessly with the look of your Zenbooth.  It's easy to use, accommodates a range from 28" to 54", and is covered by a 3-year warranty.  The option will enable companies to make office phone booths more accessible for their entire workforce.

Get work done in comfort

The main benefit of our adjustable desk option is being able to work in comfort.  While our standard booth is super comfortable for a majority of users, they can sometimes be hard to use if you're very short or super tall (like our friend Keven, standing in a booth above).

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For over a generation, American businesses, non-profits, government agencies, and other institutions have committed themselves to the open office concept. Developed in the late 1940's, its inventors and advocates speculated that it would revolutionize intra-office cooperation. 

Make the walls disappear, they reasoned, and employees would have more opportunity to communicate. This new environment was supposed to foster innovation and creativity, while boosting productivity.

While some narrow groups, such as young office workers and extroverts, did react as expected, the open office has proved a headache — in some cases, quite literally — for most who must work there.

Common Problems Encountered in the Open Office Environment

After the turn of the century, studies began to show alarmingly negative impacts both individually and collectively. In most cases, the open office failed to live up to expectations. Instead of boosting morale, production and other measurables, performance suffered.

The problems faced in open offices stem from two sources: visual and audial distractions. At best, distractions can wreck havoc on work that requires concentration.

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Creating an office design that works for everyone can be challenging. Small individual offices are quiet and more private, but at the same time they can be isolating and take up too much space. 

Open offices are great for collaboration, yet they can be very distracting, creating a noticeable drop in productivity. So what’s the solution?

Ideally companies want mixture of both worlds, and they can find it in a new concept called office neighborhoods.

What's Inside an Office Neighborhood & How It Helps Your Business

Office neighborhoods provide a great compromise between a completely open plan office design and a more closed off style with cubicles and fully enclosed office spaces.

Companies embracing the office neighborhood concept ditch the traditional idea of everyone having a fixed workspace and instead create flexible activity-focused work zones that employees can move between freely.

Office neighborhoods split the workforce into groups or “communities” who need to work together on a particular day or for longer term projects. Being a part of a community instills a sense of belonging and promotes collaboration and communication between team members.

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Office design is constantly evolving and as design trends come and go, so too do different styles of working in an office environment. The workplace has become more flexible – it’s no longer the case that employees are expected to sit at their desk or cubicle from 9 to 5.

While the open office and hot-desking first found popularity in the ‘90s, from the year 2000 and beyond, offices started to become more playful and fun to reflect the younger and more entrepreneurial workforce and the growing importance on work-life balance.

Almost two decades later, these concepts have become more refined, resulting in what has commonly become known as “Millennial” office design – taking its name from the Millennial generation born between 1981 and 1996. Millennials are predicted to make up 35% of the global workforce by 2020.

What Is Millennial Office Design?

To understand exactly what Millennial design looks like, it makes sense to first understand the characteristics and motivations of the Millennial generation.

This is the first generation to have grown up with the internet as a part of their lives from childhood – they’ve basically never known a world without mobile phones, being constantly online, and the ability to access information instantly at any time of the day or night.

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If you work in an open office environment, it’s inevitable that you’ll eventually have to deal with the excessive noise factor. One of the most annoying elements of office noise pollution is music being played too loudly by coworkers.

Sometimes it plays via desktop radio or mobile phone speakers, or it might even seep through earbuds that don’t contain enough sound. That can sometimes be worse because all you hear is tinny percussion or the music’s bass line.

A recent study by Oxford Economics showed that noisy open offices negatively affect employee retention. It also determined that only one percent of employees are successfully able to block out noise and other distractions on their own, without taking additional measures. 

Here are some solutions, ranging from the simple to the more complex. Hopefully one will work for you, so you can focus appropriately on your work and keep your productivity up.

Problem Solve With Your Noisy Coworker

The first step is to talk to your fellow employee. They might not even realize their music is as loud as it is. Maybe you can ask them to turn it down or to limit playing music to morning coffee times and the end of the day. If you both like some musical artists in common, perhaps you can agree on a playlist.

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When you think of an open office environment, what comes to mind? For some people, it’s a cool, Millennial-style office space straight out of Silicon Valley, full of low-slung sofas and coffee tables. But for others, it’s an unproductive petri dish, where they have to fight to maintain their concentration.

While originally heralded as the solution to poor teamwork and over reliance on electronic versus face-to-face communication, open offices are slowly being revealed for what they really are: a detriment to the workforce. Here’s a look at the negative effects of open office environments, along with what you can do to reduce their impact in your business workspace.

Open Office Environments Produce Excess Noise

Noise pollution is frequently cited as one of the biggest downsides to an open style workspace. There are numerous work related examples that affect office volume levels, including:

• Far too many employees in the same area
• Construction of the environment (“live” space that echoes vs. dampened sound)
• Amount of phone talk required for work
• Noise from work machines (printers, buzzers, etc.)

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The open office, once the trendiest office fad, has hit a downturn in popularity. From academic studies to exposes in The New Yorker, BBC, and elsewhere, experts and employees alike have complained about the detriments of the open office.

Although most organizations will not revert to the traditional model of having a number of private offices, help is on the way in 2019. Many have started looking into the value added to their work environment by office privacy booths.

These are nine reasons why companies have started looking at phone booths and moving away from the open office towards an evolved concept called the “agile office." This style combines the best of the open and traditional office concepts & privacy booths can help make the retooling easier and more cost-effective.

The Problematic Open Office

From the 1950s until the first decade of this century, the open office has slowly taken over the work world. German experts created the concept after World War II as a way to force colleagues to occupy the same space instead of hiving off into their own separate spheres. They believed that without walls between them, employees would create a more communicative and creative environment.

By the 1990s, tech companies embraced the ideal just as corporate America was searching for cost cutting measures to remain competitive.

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The way we get work done is changing fast, and therefore the office environment must change with it. To ensure maximum productivity and employee satisfaction in a world where today’s workforce will have five different jobs before the age of 35, company's need to get creative. 

Advertising for, interviewing, and training up new hires is expensive, so it makes sense to provide a workspace where employees will feel comfortable and free to work in a way that ensures high levels of workplace satisfaction. Soundproof office booths help to achieve this goal by lowering anxiety and offering people privacy. 

The Stress Problem Caused By Modern Offices

Open plan offices have been a popular style of workspace design for decades, but we now recognize that while cost-effective and practical, this type of office space may not always be in the best interests of its employees, or result in optimum productivity.

An open office space fosters communication and collaboration, which can improve employee relationships and lead to a more innovative and creative working environment.

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In recent years, workplace culture has shifted away from the ‘traditional’ format of employees being segregated into cubicles and discrete spaces for purposes of focus and control, to an experimentation with more open formats that attempt to foster collaboration. Now there's the more hybridized concept of the so-called 'agile' workspace.  

Working agile respects an employee’s individual need to operate solo or in groups, depending on the moment. It also respects a ‘flatter’ corporate hierarchy, one in which open commentary and input are welcomed to ensure the benefits of creative diversity are captured. 

However, a more open working culture also requires a certain sensitivity to the needs of others; the respect to let them work as they need to without interruption or diversion. It’s the cultural ‘software’ that goes with the territory.

It doesn’t give free license to create noise, disrespect colleagues. So, when an employee displays overly talkative, loud behavior, how can managers confront them effectively? 

When Confronting Talkative Coworkers, Define The Default Setting

First, define what the accepted ‘norm’ is for your working environment. 

Although outright silence isn’t a prerequisite for workplace productivity, given the choice between ‘more noise’ and ‘more quiet’, a quieter environment prevails because it caters to the needs of the majority. If music is required, it can be collectively chosen or selectively listened to via personal headphones. 

Excessive talking doesn’t come with a volume control. It infringes upon the ‘default setting’ of workplace calm, breaking up concentration and flow. When talking oversteps the common boundary of acceptance it may be one of several things in play; a ‘cry for help’ in gaining attention when that employee feels pressured, a form of ‘presenteeism’ by making an auditory statement to conceal the fact that work isn’t being done, or the employee in question may be used to different conditions.

Either way, handling that employee requires a few key steps to align their understanding of what the ‘default setting’ needs to be, and those steps also require a certain level of diplomacy and tact on the part of HR or management.

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The open office plan was created to save both space and money. By placing desks in close proximity to one another, rather than giving each employee their own office or cubicle, it seemed like a smart way to conserve resources. 

It was also believed that an open space would foster collaboration and a sense of equity at work. The reality? Open offices are actually causing more stress and distraction for employees throughout the workday.

The open office consists of rows of desks, sometimes with low cubicle-like partitions, that afford no quiet or privacy to employees when working. This causes a good deal of interruption during the day, especially in situations where high-performance employees are expected to handle multiple tasks quickly and efficiently.

Office phone pods by Zenbooth offer a viable solution to the problems caused by open office plans, eliminating distraction and restoring calm and quiet in the workplace. 

They boast many great features and offer a wide range of benefits that make them the perfect choice for any open office setting. Here are the top five features we think potential buyers should know about.

1. Office phone pods allow you to choose your own office space

Because Zenbooths are available in varying sizes, you can choose the mobile office solution to fit the exact issues plaguing your offce. From small comfort pods created for one person use, to the executive model designed to accommodate two people, these quiet spaces are perfect for getting work done or conducting important conferences or meetings.

You'll be able to step inside your own personal workspace whenever you need it. 

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The open office plan has become extremely popular over the last few years, particularly riding the expansion of the start-up tech company culture that prized creating the opportunity for open collaboration. In fact, it is estimated that over 70% of modern offices now employ some kind of open format. 

It was a logical reaction to the much longer-standing tradition of the cellular or closed office space plan, in which cubicles and partitions underlined individual focus and corporate hierarchy.

However, despite the best intentions of companies to pool teams together, concentrating differing talents around clusters of tables or long benches, the open-office format is simply not delivering.

The modern workplace needs to offer one attribute above all — flexibility. By offering only a highly socialized environment, the open office has failed to be flexible. 

Yes, it’s egalitarian, but it simply doesn't cater to the very relevant need for personal privacy and focus, and the bottom line is that productivity is suffering as a result.

So, what’s the solution?

Creating Agile Offices

The agile working concept is the key to improving baseline focus, creativity, and output in the modern workplace. Put simply, it achieves this by not planning a top-down assumption of what people need. It looks at work as an 

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Over the past decade open-plan workspaces have gained popularity across the country despite studies showing that they're not in workers' favor. 

It's an office design concept that encourages collaborating together and a smooth flow of information from peer to peer. However, with an open-plan workspace comes a few new etiquette tips that you may want to practice so you can mitigate its downsides.

These tips can help ensure that everyone is comfortable and able to get their work done in a timely manner. 

1. Be Mindful of Your Noise Level 

Open-plan workspaces don't have a lot of buffers for noise, and people cause distractions as they move around and work together. This can make it very hard for people to hear important phone calls, conference calls or to concentrate on their work. 

It's essential that you're mindful of your own volume. Speak at an indoor level, set your phone's ringer on silent or so it's not as loud as it can possibly be, and have extended conversations away from the workspace. If you enjoy listening to music, always bring headphones. 

2. Consider a Separate Meeting Space 

If you have a lot of group meetings, webinars, or conference calls, consider having a separate space for these activities, like an office meeting pod. It should be closed off from the open workspace. This will provide a buffer for your group to complete their calls and webinars without interrupting your coworkers who are working on different projects. 

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In 2016, we at Zenbooth set out on a mission to help individuals overcome the challenges of the “open-office” and introduced the single-person Comfort Booth. Now, after several iterations, the new two-person model is tackling even more of those pain points, such as the lack of adequate spaces to have private conversations.

From small businesses to larger corporate offices, the open-concept floor plan has made it challenging for the modern worker to not only collaborate with others, but to simply find focus. Conference rooms are often scarce. They can be difficult to book, or simply too much room for one or two people to occupy, when the room could be used for larger groups. The Executive Booth XL is the answer for employers looking for ways to make better use of their space.

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No matter how well you get along with people, there's usually one coworker that you simply can't stand. If you're a full-time employee, you could spend 40 hours per week with them. It's like a prison sentence where your cellmate is Dwight from The Office. 

Fear not, these nine tips for dealing with annoying, distracting coworkers can help. (Sorry, we don't include vengeful, hilarious office pranks to get even.)


1. Develop a Solid Exit Strategy 

Every time your coworker starts on one of their soul crushing dialogues, have an exit strategy in place. This will help to limit the time you spend with them each day.

It could be something as simple as saying that you have to make an important phone call, complete an urgent report or work on a project that's due immediately. When your coworker realizes that you're not listening to them or entertaining their negativity, they usually give up. 


2. Keep Your 'Tude Positive 

If you're having a problem with a coworker being obnoxious, chances are other coworkers are having similar issues. It's important that you keep your attitude upbeat no matter how frustrated you get.

People naturally gravitate to those who keep a positive attitude, and this can discourage your negative colleagues from hanging around.

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Every day we're surrounded by noise, from the moment we wake up until our head hits the pillow . Some noise is pleasant, like your favorite music or the sound of falling rain. Other types of noise can be disruptive and unwelcome, and this is the type of noise that can negatively affect your stress levels. 

Below we describe which types of noise are disruptive and the myriad of negative health consequences they stir up.

First, The Main Causes of Disruptive Noise 

Although there are technically hundreds of causes of disruptive noises, we've narrowed it down to a few broad categories. These categories have the biggest impact on your everyday stress levels. 

• Traffic - Cars are one of the biggest causes of noise pollution in modern society. Even muted traffic sounds can push your stress levels up when it is a chronic disturbance. From speeding autos, motorcycles to frustrated drivers honking their horns, the roadway is not a peaceful environment by any stretch of the imagination. 

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Times change and each successive generation brings a different cultural viewpoint to the table. Millennials, with birthdates landing between the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, are conspicuous as being the first cohort to emerge with the defining trait of extensive web and mobile technology use from an early age.

They are, in short, the first truly tech-connected generation, and this has driven a huge shift in expectations of work, job frequency, the education required to clinch those jobs, and the technological methods of communication and collaboration employed to succeed.

They seek to balance professional and personal obligations, find deep importance in relationship networks both at work and at play and are generally less blindly work-oriented for the sake of a company or employer.

This all has massive consequences for office design, challenging workplace thinkers to optimize their surroundings to fit an evolving concept of what works best.

Millennial Office Design: Out with the Old

The major shift in millennial thinking has been the demise of the so-called "cellular workplace." This was the organizational layout that arranged separate desk spaces, floor plates, or cubicles designated to each employee.

Partition walls were the rage and the idea that you were given your own privacy was a pretext for siloing employees to create an atmosphere of heads-down focus. 

This layout worked for jobs that demanded discretion and privacy. Calls could be made, repetitive administrative tasks could be processed, and high focus could be achieved without distraction.

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Over the last few decades, the nature of office layouts has evolved. Closed rooms used to reflect the hierarchical structure of offices, but today it’s more common to work in an open environment.

Although open offices convey plenty of benefits in terms of interactions between workers, they’re far from ideal for productivity. For example, those who work in open offices take up to 62-percent more sick days. Additionally, 25-30 percent of those who work in open office environments dislike the noise levels they experience. At Zenbooth, we believe our office meeting pods allow you to enjoy the best of both worlds. Our pods block up to 40 decibels of noise, allowing those who work in open offices to find peace when need it. Thanks to their mobile nature, you can add one to your open office and rearrange it with minimal fuss.

Details about Zenbooth office furniture

Zenbooths are a non-confined space that employees can use for intensive work tasks. Our design team has created a product that is fully flexible, relaxing, and ideal for creating an office environment that evolves with your business’s needs. For example, you may choose to invest in one of our

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Does your office need more privacy? 70% of American offices have adopted an open plan design, but they're not always conducive to peace and quiet.

Those who work in them take up to 62% more sick days, which suggests a lot about how the stress and noise levels of these office styles hurt workers' immune systems. 

Additionally, 58% of high-performing employees state that they would like their office at a lower volume to be more productive. 

At Zenbooth, we recognize that open offices come with unique advantages. By banishing the hierarchy that comes with secretive cubicles, they make it easier for employees to engage with one another, no matter what their job title is. With excellent communication generating new ideas, abandoning this aspect of an open office work space wouldn't be a positive move.

Additionally, open offices could reduce isolation in the workplace, giving colleagues the chance to get to know one another. Again, this is an excellent asset in terms of collaboration and team building.

But there's a need to overcome the chaos that open offices bring. With our private phone booths, you can retain the benefits of an open office environment while giving your employees somewhere calm and quiet to work on high priority assignments. 

With clients such as Bosch and Samsung under our belts, we proudly deliver tranquility to offices throughout the U.S. 

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Open office plans may be an economical way to save space, but they cause excessive distractions for employees. hampering their productivity.

25-30 percent of people working in an open office environment report being dissatisfied with the level of noise at work. Add to that the 54 percent of high-performance employees who find their workplace too distracting, and its clear companies need a solution. 

When offices have low partitions between desks - or none at all - workers are not afforded any amount of privacy or quiet they need to get things done. Enter noise reduction phone booths, a viable solution for eradicating distraction and restoring peace at your office.

Zenbooth offers modular office booths that come in varying sizes. From small, singular, comfort booths to larger executive booths that can accommodate up to two people, these solutions offer a quiet space for completing work or conducting important meetings. 

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Companies have recently placed a heavy importance on office morale and space utilization. Savvy business owners are finding innovative ways to achieve positive outcomes in these areas while maximizing savings. 

One trendy way to refresh the workplace for you and your employees is to opt for an agile office layout. Companies like Zenbooth eliminate the downsides of open-style offices with modern phone booth furniture.

Why Are Open Offices So Popular?

Proponents of open offices argue that they can be much more cost effective than cubicles and private offices. It's no wonder that 70% of offices now have no partitions — or if they do have them, they're at very low height. 

It's true that open offices can make better use of space. The "open area" allows workers to share resources, so you can purchase fewer printers and the like. The more meaningful benefits of the open office, however, revolve around collaboration. That's why it's ironic that many of the challenges presented by open offices relate to employees' peak performance.

Is Communication Better Between Co-Workers?

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Walk into any bustling office in America and you'll find that most workers share the same grievance: their disruptive working environment. 

While some people find that open office plans suit their personality type, others would rather immerse themselves in a world of seclusion. Workers may also have expectations that shift in accordance with their role. For example, while some execute tasks that require hours of peace and isolation, others need to collaborate before heading into a meeting.

At first glance, it's easy to assume that there's no way to please everyone. However architects around the world have recently begun carving out a new concept called office neighborhoods.

In short, office neighborhoods feature an amalgamation of working environments that adapt in accordance with the workplace's needs. 

If you think the idea of an office neighborhood design sounds crazy or unattainable, you're not alone. Many people felt the same was about agile offices. But when you start learning more about how they function and the ways big brands use them, you'll likely change your mind.

How office neighborhoods differ from other layouts

The two most common types of office layouts act as polar opposites. On the one hand, you have traditional office styles with a peaceful setting where each person benefits from their own room. Such offices are becoming more rare nowadays, but they feature something very important - an available meeting space for essential group decisions or projects. 

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Did you know that people who work in open offices are 62 percent more likely to take sick days? Although there's a chance those sick days come as a result of spreading germs, you could also argue that stress is a factor. 

The fact that 25-30 percent of open office employees express dissatisfaction with workplace noise levels is a revealing statistic in and of itself. Trying to meet targets in a hectic environment can feel chaotic, and where there is chaos, stress often follows.

Open offices do come with plenty of benefits, though. Employees feel less isolated when they're able to interact with one another away from the confines of office walls. Additionally, it's easier to gain support from each other. Employees can bounce ideas without heading to a meeting, and asking someone to pitch in with a task generates immediate responses.

As open offices convey benefits, it's down to you as an employer to find a solution that delivers the best of both worlds. One way to achieve this is through the use of office meeting pods. 

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Open office plans have become common workplace environments. While the idea was originally meant to increase communication and improve collaboration, the end result was a decrease in focus and productivity.

According to an article written by Jeff Pochepan in The Chicago Tribune, “The open office plan was supposed to be less expensive and conducive to building a lighter, happier, more open and collaborative company culture. But it’s backfiring.”

Open office plans often consist of a large open space with desks or cubicles strategically placed throughout. While the cubicles allow for a modicum of privacy, they don’t suppress outside noise because they aren’t truly enclosed spaces.

This lack of enclosure makes it easy for phone and in-person conversations to be easily heard by others, which causes distractions for those who need peace and quiet to work. It also compromises confidentiality in situations where sensitive information needs to be provided by clients or customers.

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Open plan offices have been popular since the 1950s, but various studies conducted over the years have revealed significant flaws in the concept. While they were initially created to cut down on business costs and promote the sharing of ideas, the open desk placement or cubicle-less environment has caused issues with productivity and wellbeing.

Open office plans save money by saving space that would otherwise be used to build physical offices, but placing employees in a large area with little to no privacy causes unwanted distractions. Add to that the potential confidentiality breaches brought on by such placement, plus the absence of quiet meeting spaces, and the end result is a decrease in productivity and increase in unhappy employees.

One way to counteract this problem is to implement the office neighborhood design. This popular idea is taking hold in a variety of settings, and even some of the largest, well-known companies are beginning to embrace it. 

Now, tech giants like Uber are navigating away from the traditional open office plan in favor for one that is more conducive to work productivity and employee collaboration. According to an article titled Goodbye Open Office, Hello Office Neighborhoods, “Instead of vast floors of workers buzzing next to each other, Uber’s avant-garde plans involve organizing its new offices into ‘neighborhoods,’ creating communities of 30 to 60 employees.”

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When you add a meeting pod to your office, you should aim for high quality over what looks like a bargain. Overall, the goal is to create a peaceful meeting space that's free from noise pollution and distractions. In addition to preventing office noise from filtering in, your meeting pod should also maintain absolute privacy.

Holding sensitive conversations or making important phone calls that escape prying ears makes your investment worthwhile. So does ease of use, functionality and durability. 

Unfortunately, the meeting pod market is brimming with cheap imitations. Although they may save some money initially, you run the risk of having to purchase a better model when you realize it doesn't meet your needs. 

If you're not convinced that a high-end model is more practical, now's the time to read further.

Cheap meeting pods don't offer reliable soundproofing 

Around 70 percent of American offices now use open plan layouts. The original aim of the open workspace was to eliminate the isolation that is intrinsic to cubical working. Open offices do allow for greater collaboration between workers, and in addition, they remove the hierarchies that come with traditional offices.

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Managers around the world have learned in recent years that offices lacking privacy are counter-productive. Staff need places to get away from the chaos of the open office to complete projects, hold meetings, or to make confidential phone calls.

Thankfully, Zenbooth offers the highest quality office pods made in the USA.

Zenbooth Comfort Booths and Executive Booths, as featured in the New York Times, have helped to drive the movement away from pure open offices, which lack barriers or privacy for staff. They instead form part of the “agile office,” which recognizes that while offices do benefit from more openness, staff benefit from having areas to do work or communicate in private.

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Do you ever wonder how you can increase work productivity and long-term success without the hassle that often comes from redesigning your whole office?

At Zenbooth, we understand this unique challenge and have come up with modern phone booth solution that aims to reinvent the way companies address workplace efficiency.

Modern Phone Booths Offer A Balance of Discretion and Usability

Thanks to our extensive lineup of office phone booths, your business can attain the perfect mixture of seclusion and usability when your workers feel they need a quiet place to be productive.

Our products are proven to significantly reduce background noise and distractions. They're a great fit for whenever a team member needs to take an important phone call or have a private business discussion.

We use special soundproofing denim material in the insulation of our phone booths, which blocks out excessive ambient noise to create a peaceful workspace. 

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Office designs and concepts constantly evolve as managers of private sector, non-profit, and government facilities alike search out the best way to inspire the most productivity out of their workers. 

Yesterday’s ideal set up, the “open office” design, was meant to break down every wall and barrier to facilitate communication. Advocates of the concept believed that it would lead to enhanced innovation and productivity.

They, however, got it very wrong. Their were far more cons than pros to this new layout. Extroverted younger people tended to favor it (no word on if it made them more productive). But studies showed that most people struggled with open offices overall. 

Many who worked in the open office merely faced too much distraction. Studies indicate that once lost, concentration on work could take up to 20 minutes to be restored. 

Some saw the effects of constant noise and no escape from others harmful to people's health.

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As recently as last year, 80 percent of American offices had embraced the failed open office concept as a way to increase productivity, enable more frequent and better communication, and create an improved office environment.

Unfortunately for offices who invested in these changes, studies show that entirely open offices create a number of downsides that often lead to unhappy staff and lowered productivity.

Open plan office research also showed that almost two-thirds of high-performance employees claim that they need more quiet at work to focus. 

A New Work Environment & The Rising Need for Office Phone Pods

The problems created affect not only productivity but also employee health. Those working in open offices take over 60 percent more sick days than their counterparts in other office configurations. Faced with such issues, many American offices looked for other ideas around which to design their workspaces.

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