The hottest new office amenity: a place to actually focus
Workers in hybrid arrangements are running into a real problem on some of the days they work in offices — finding a space to focus and get work done. Working from home allowed people to design their home offices around their productivity, but heading back to open offices means much more socializing, collaboration and distractions — and far less privacy.
“The office is great for meeting other people — it’s not always the best environment for actually being able to be productive,” said Paaras Parker, chief human resources officer at HR software firm Paycor. “Where huddle rooms or quiet spaces are available, people are just booking them up all day, because if they have to be there, they want a quiet, focused place to work,” Parker said.
Employees said the most important function of office space to them is having a place to focus on their work, followed by being able to meet and collaborate with others, according to Gensler’s 2023 Global Workplace Survey, which included responses from over 14,000 office workers across the globe.
“Employees spend an average of 35% of their typical week working alone. They say it is critical to performing their job and that 73% of their time spent working alone requires a high level of concentration. Yet, across all countries, the workplace is not supporting this critical work mode,” the report said.
Some newer productivity-centric spaces are cropping up in offices in the form of libraries or other areas that are dedicated quiet zones, where conversation and taking phone calls are not allowed. Other companies are turning to more pods, phone booths and other spaces to provide workers with the privacy and distraction-free spaces they desire.
In newly built offices, employers are designating more space than they had previously to accommodate more partially or fully enclosed workspaces for staff, said Shaina Phillips operations manager at Nook, a company that sells office pods. “Whether it’s a built-in or a phone booth, they’re giving a good amount of space to those in new builds,” Phillips said.
In older buildings, many companies are finding they don’t have enough space for more new pods, and are putting them in unusual locations like lobby bays, corridors and under stairwells. “They’re really activating those spaces and getting creative with the space that they have available to them,” she said.
But pods and phone booths aren’t always ideal spaces for actually getting work done. “Oftentimes they’re to take a call, not just to go in and do deep focus work,” said Janet Pogue McLaurin, global director of workplace research at architecture firm Gensler.
So instead some companies are redesigning existing spaces in open offices to add more designated focus areas, she said. “There are ways that we can create all these types of spaces to allow people to have that deep concentrative work, without necessarily creating cubicles,” she said. That may be in the form of libraries or quiet zones, but also enclosed spaces that are roomier than small phone booths. Pogue McLaurin estimates demand for smaller, enclosed rooms with a door has increased – and also enclosed booths without a door – in offices, is up about 20% to what she’s seen previously.
But the overarching trend in office design today is adaptability, as employers predict ongoing changes in their office layouts to accommodate new needs in hybrid working worlds.
“What we’re finding more often than not is people are looking for something that can adapt, because I think a lot of people are still really unsure of what the office is going to be from day to day. So things that they can easily change, move around and just kind of adapt as spaces continue to evolve post-Covid,” Phillips said.
“I think the more that employers and employees can ground themselves on where they’re working based on the type of work that they need to get done, it’ll hopefully accelerate us learning and figuring out how to do it,” Parker said.