Having you been hearing a lot about huddle rooms lately? Here’s a quick intro course on what these products are all about, why they are beneficial, and how you can get one for your office.
What Is Huddle Room Furniture?
A huddle room takes its name from sports terminology, where athletes come together in a tight bunch to plan their strategy on the field or the court. Likewise, huddle rooms in the workplace are an alternative to giant conference rooms, meant to get a small group of employees together to collaborate over work ideas.
In most offices, huddle rooms are used for both scheduled and impromptu meetings. They can be signed out for team planning sessions or put to use on the spur of the moment when a few employees need to address a new concern or check in on a project.
Why Are Huddle Rooms So Popular?
Huddle rooms are the new collaborative rage, and it’s easy to see why. They solve many of the problems faced by both open office environments and offices traditionally laid out with only one enormous conference room.
Simultaneous Meetings
With several huddle rooms, instead of a giant conference room, employees can carry on multiple meetings simultaneously. This alleviates the pressure of having everyone competing for the same space at the same time. Ditch the sign-up sheets!
Greater Scheduling Flexibility
With the use of huddle rooms in your office, being able to have several meetings going on at once affords greater scheduling flexibility.
Rather than having people sign up for the conference room days or even weeks in advance, employees can meet as needed with little to no notice. If an issue arises suddenly that requires the entire team meet, they don’t have to wait for the conference room to be available when there are huddle rooms present.
Less Wasted Space
Have you noticed that often when your conference room is signed out, only a few people are using it, meaning much of the room’s space is wasted? Using huddle rooms means this is no longer a problem.
You can make much better use of your office square footage with several rooms, instead of one overly large conference area.
Respite from Open Office Noise and Distractions
While open offices were originally touted as a positive design strategy for improved collaboration, recent studies have shown that they are actually a detriment to productivity. Employees in open office environments are plagued by a wealth of distractions:
- Noise from people talking about work and personal topics
- Music and computer-generated audio
- Sounds from office equipment, elevators, and doors
- People walking by or moving within their peripheral vision
This contributes to anxiety and dissatisfaction in employees, who must constantly refocus when they are disturbed. It can take more than 20 minutes to regain concentration after an interruption, which is lost productivity and lost revenue for the employer.
The stress of working in a noisy environment contributes to increased worker sick time, low employee retention, and difficulty recruiting new employees.
Having a place like a private booth to work quietly and uninterrupted with a few colleagues can increase employee satisfaction and boost health. It also keeps small meetings and discussions from disturbing fellow workers in offices without adequate sound barriers.
Privacy for Discreet Conversations and Activities
The same open office environment that fosters excess noise and disruption offers insufficient privacy for confidential conversations and discreet activities. Managers who need to have private employee reviews or converse with each other are left without adequate screening in most open offices. Other people who desire workplace privacy include:
- Employees making phone calls to spouses, physicians, or childcare providers
- Workers speaking confidentially with clients or contractors
- Nursing moms
- Employees who need time apart for health reasons
Huddle booths afford employees and managers the privacy they desire without a lot of fanfare. Workers can slip into a huddle booth to make a quick phone call, and two managers who need to talk urgently can do so, knowing their conversation won’t be overheard.
Technology Instantly Available
Huddle rooms are constructed so technology is available instantly. Each room has USB charging points and electrical outlets. Employees can run through presentations, work on their laptops, call clients, and do everything they would normally do at their desks or in a conference room.
Cost Efficiency
Huddle rooms are much more cost effective when compared to traditional conference rooms. Rather than using permanent walls and doors, these novel office structures are more like office phone booths that can be erected wherever you have space.
For businesses that rent their office space, these rooms can be disassembled and moved with the office, if and when relocation occurs. This makes them far more affordable than adding conventional conference rooms to the workplace.
How Can You Create a Huddle Room in Your Office?
As you’ve learned above, creating a huddle room (or several huddle rooms) in your office doesn’t need to involve calls to contractors or disruptive construction. An easy way to add huddle rooms to your workplace is to order several office phone booth-style huddle rooms from Zenbooth, which have models for two to six people.
Zenbooth huddle rooms have a number of features that make them highly desirable for open offices or workspaces that don’t wish to use one large conference room:
- Ability to add an adjustable-height desk to the Executive Booth XL, designed for two to three workers
- Space for four to six people, with or without office furniture in the Executive Room
- Interior ventilation
- Plexiglass ceiling for natural light
- Instant technology hookups with 110V electrical outlets, USB outlets, and a grommet to run phone cables
- Acoustic insulation for noise screening inside and out
- Self-closing door with latch and accessible handle
- Low threshold door for easy accessibility
- Natural wood exterior
- Three-year warranty
You could have a set of huddle booths in your office in no time by contacting Zenbooth today.
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