Monthly Archives : March 2013

It’s always amusing to see the pendulum swinging back and forth between the champions of the open office and the proponents of the cubicle. We blogged about the “Me Place” workstation back in July of last year. But the latest publicity at OfficingToday.com gave us a chance to check out the video featuring an interview with the designers of this piece. They are very careful not to call their invention a cubicle. The article about the un-cubes describes them thus, “This particular workstation range features enclosed desks with walls”. Hmm. Sounds a lot like a cubicle.

But the creators of the Docklands furniture range say this station is not intended to be used as a cubicle. The enclosures are smaller than a cubicle and not as fully equipped. Instead, these pods are intended to be:

• A touch down space for workers who aren’t always in the office
• Hotdesking workspaces for organizations with a frequently varying on-site headcount
• A temporary workstation for visiting clients who need privacy
• A location where employees can go when they need an escape from the hubbub of an open office

Basically, these tiny freestanding offices are a potential solution to the fact that the open office with no walls, no privacy, and too much noise simply doesn’t work for everyone all the time. The designers are calling this a new furniture typology.

Not Quite So New?

We think it’s a cozy and attractive design, but there’s an excellent article by Simon Keane-Cowell at Architon that demonstrates quite effectively that the idea of “semi-private, space-shaping furniture elements” has been around for a long time. The original forebears of the modern cubicle may simply have been introduced before the time was ripe for such ideas. According to Cowell, the reason the Action Office and other early designs were commercially unsuccessful may have been, “…that they were too progressive, that they weren’t so much responding to a shift in organizational behavior, but rather seeking to effect organizational-behavioral change through design.” Today’s open office plans could be accused of the same thing by attempting to force a collaborative atmosphere by how space is used.

The Open Office of the Future Won’t Be Quite So Open

In any event, the current trend seems to be moving toward a balance of open and enclosed work areas. No doubt Docklands and other, similar products will be a part of this solution. However, these changes won’t be cheap. Keane-Cowell points out, “There’s a not insignificant financial investment required to populate your office with bays, pods and hubs.” Of course, he doesn’t know that we have a product that can turn a freestanding desk into a pod in less than five minutes. But you know! Contact us to order desk-mounted privacy panels today and get a quick and affordable retrofit for your open office.

Here at OBEX, we’ve blogged a lot about how you can dole out cubicle extenders based on employee preference for more or less privacy. But sometimes, it’s not the nature of the worker that makes a difference. The noise level of the work being done in a space can also indicate a need for higher walls to add acoustic shielding. Here are just a few examples of noisier work:

• Stapling
• Hole punching
• Printing on a desktop printer
• Constant data entry (keyboard tapping)

You can’t really fault workers for making these sounds. It’s just the equipment they have to use.

Of course, the behavioral noises that get on the nerves of coworkers are another matter:

• Rustling snack food packaging
• Eating chips
• Playing hold music on the speaker phone
• Slurping coffee or other beverages
• Clipping fingernails

These annoying habits that aren’t essential to work duties should probably be addressed with a polite reprimand. But if that doesn’t do the trick, you could at least put up some panels to keep everyone else happy…

Do you ever stop to think that your workplace has a “signature sound” that is as distinctive as your business brand? Now, you have the opportunity to be part of a worldwide experiment that puts office noise in perspective. The University of Salford in the UK is creating a map of sounds from around the world. Users can download a free app and use it to record their local “soundscape” to contribute to the map. The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (OSHA’s EU equivalent) is encouraging employees to record workplace noise. Participants don’t just record and upload sounds. They also comment on the quality. There are sliding scales for rating noises as pleasant vs. unpleasant, boring vs. exciting, chaotic vs. tranquil, etc.

How would your workplace be rated? Have you ever asked your employees how they feel about their office soundscape? You might be surprised by what they tell you.

We’ve been talking a lot over the last few weeks about the impact of noise and interruptions on employee productivity. But a new study is revealing even more troubling data about how employees respond to a lack of visual privacy. 3M commissioned a study regarding visual privacy from the Ponemon Institute (does anyone else misread that as the Pokemon Institute?) The results were pretty shocking – and counter-intuitive. You might think that having less visual privacy would mean workers spend more time working. That’s always been an underlying idea behind having a totally open workspace where everyone can see whether their coworkers are goofing off or surfing the web. But it turns out that employees actually work 50% less when they aren’t assured of visual privacy.

At least, that’s what happened in the test environment set up by Ponemon. They studied the reactions of 274 employees from 5 organizations in different business sectors. These workers were given an opportunity to perform work while waiting to take a survey about their employer. A stranger was hovering nearby during this work period, making them feel nervous. Then, the employees were asked to go ahead and complete the survey which included sensitive questions about their employer. It’s probably not surprising that in this setup that intentionally invaded the privacy of the participants, they chose to shut down (figuratively). They answered far fewer sensitive questions and worked only half as long as those who were provided with privacy screens for their computers.

It appears that transparency and productivity both increase when employees are assured of greater visual privacy while performing work. And this isn’t just about mobile employees working in public on a laptop. 69% of participants in the study said their visual privacy had been violated at the office. A full 80% of professionals said “prying eyes” were a concern. Employees over the age of 35 are more likely to be aware of these issues and women are more attuned to the problem than men. Filters that fit on computer screens are an excellent idea for increasing visual privacy in the workplace. But you can also add another layer of security and privacy with desktop mounted privacy panels or cubicle panel extenders. We think a combination would help workers feel much better protected and at ease in their work environment – and it could help keep sensitive data safe as well.

The folks at Bright Spot Strategies have published a really good blog post that features a roundup of the research about workplace noise. Naturally, the concept of the open office (which we’ve blogged about many times) comes under close scrutiny. The result is one of the most balanced and detailed looks we’ve seen at this complex topic.

Lots of Collaboration = Lots of Interruption

The article points to research showing that the collaboration many companies seek to create may indeed speed up the ability of groups to find creative solutions to problems. However, if you dig into the actual findings, the participants in frequently interacting groups felt: “more interrupted, less able to concentrate, and more hurried”. The study only evaluated the speed of idea generation and the speed of idea exchange – not whether the ideas were actually any good. Obviously, the employees involved in the experiment didn’t enjoy the way it made them feel. We suppose that could be a highly motivating factor to come up with a solution (such as finding a different job that isn’t so stressful).

Do Interruptions Help or Hurt?

In a study of Dutch and Russian employees, a work environment with frequent interruptions actually led to an increase in productivity – but at a price. The researchers found that “…interruptions cause people to perform the main task faster while maintaining the level of quality. Participants develop strategies enabling them to deal effectively with the interruptions, while actually over-compensating the potential performance decline. Interruptions do have a negative impact on emotion and well-being, and lead to an increase of effort expenditure, although not to an increase in activation. Thus the improved performance is achieved at the expense of higher psychological costs.”

Solving the Problem

This evidence suggests that employers may be sacrificing long term employee satisfaction for perceived short term gains when they don’t put strategies, technology and furnishings in place to limit interruptions. We’d hate to see more companies experience an increase in their churn rate from employee burnout. It’s time to take proactive steps to keep employees from being stressed with unnecessary distractions! Find out how our privacy panel products can help.

Check out Jen’s recent blog at Arnold’s Office Furniture about ways to cope with sound in your work environment. We particularly like the tip about grouping all your loudest employees together – except that might put the structural integrity of your building at risk. Imagine all these strong-lunged workers trying to make themselves heard when surrounded by others who also have difficulty moderating the volume of their voices!

It puts us in mind of a quote from the Dr. Seuss sleep book about Snorter Mcphail and the Snore-a-Snort Band, “They snore in a cave 20 miles out of town. If they snored closer in, they would snore the town down.” We advise corralling all your most vociferous employees far away from the rest of the group and surrounding them with our sound-dampening cubicle panel extenders.

In KI’s archives of Business Operating Management magazine, we found an article about how facility managers can find furniture that is the best fit for their company. The author, Karen Kroll, interviewed all the big names in the office furniture industry for this piece. So we thought we’d see what they have to say that’s relevant to our products. Here are some of the points we found particularly insightful:

• Jan Johnson, vice president of market development with Allsteel, notes that “furniture should be able to serve more than one function”. Our desktop mounted privacy panels can be fitted to desks, benches, conference tables, and many other surfaces making them extraordinarily versatile.
• John Lubbinge, director of product marketing for systems with Herman Miller, advises “evaluating a furniture system’s flexibility. You should review just how complicated it is to assemble and disassemble the pieces when an employee moves” (since this increases costs). Our products install in 5 minutes or less with no disassembly of the workstation required.
• Jonathan Webb, vice president of business markets with KI, says this about environmentally conscious choices, “As we go down the road of green furniture, the more they get used, the narrower the price gap.” That day is already here with our products. We use recycled and recyclable materials without a steep price tag.
• Jim Cahill, vice president of systems, storage and education with HON Company, says most office furniture is used (by its first owners) for 10-15 years. We aim to increase that useful lifespan by giving workstations a facelift with our panels.
• Mona Hoffman of Kimball Office has a knack for stating the obvious, “When you give people the right tools, they’re more productive.” She recommends auditing how employees actually work and providing tools they will really use. Hoffman also suggests letting workers try new office furniture and offer feedback. We love that idea! Why not buy a few panel extenders and let your employees give them a test drive?

After our recent series on workplace culture, we started thinking about how things work on the other end of the office furniture equation – where the planning and purchasing happens. We found a fascinating IFMA survey for 2011 that gives us a peek at the challenges facing facility managers who handle the needs of buildings in an international market. The differences in language, currency, and units of measure are just the most obvious differences to deal with. It’s not possible to implement a one size fits all approach to best practices. “Maintaining company standards and specs while balancing exceptions for local customs” is a lesson FMs who manage multinational properties must learn quickly.

FMs in the survey note some key differences between our business culture and that of other countries. For example, meeting deadlines and getting things done fast is a big deal in the US. Due dates on contracts are a much more casual guideline in many other countries. On the other hand, we may be sacrificing quality for speed without realizing it. According to one FM provider, “Contracts are very seldom based on performance criteria in the US which brings the input of the contractor and quality of the services to a lower level.”

Fortunately, at OBEX we offer the best of both worlds. We can guarantee that quality and performance won’t be a problem when facility managers do business with us – and we offer fast delivery too!

Etiquette Daily is the go-to source for opinions on how to behave (and how to get other people to behave) in any number of common situations. As you can imagine, one place where people often demonstrate poor manners is at work. After all, if you hang out somewhere for 40+ hours a week, it’s easy to get sloppy in your interactions. When you work next door to a bunch of other cubicle dwellers with very little privacy, you start to feel like you know each other well – perhaps a little too well.

In March of last year, “epi” asked about how to reduce interruptions. She has a cubicle (which means no door) and doesn’t want to be rude and simply tell people to leave. However, she knows that the constant disruption is impacting her productivity.

The response generated quite a discussion. The etiquette experts recommended putting up a small “Do Not Disturb” flag that can be raised whenever an employee wants to work with no interruptions. It could become part of the workplace culture. Kind of like the “Bat Signal” but in reverse (don’t come crashing in to save the day).

Flags Down, Everyone!

Some responders in the pursuing discussion thought this was a poor idea. Implementing yet one more set of workplace rules might simply make it more difficult for everyone to get things done. Why not ask everyone to correspond with you via email instead? Oops, then your inbox fills up and everyone thinks you are anti-social. You could set up an “Office Hours” sign, but that just makes you look pompous.

Some of the commenters did have excellent ideas. Anne says she simply stands up whenever someone enters her cubicle. It keeps conversations very short and lets her suggest a “walk and talk” if the discussion starts stretching too long. Read the full list of responses to get ideas for how to encourage coworkers to respect your time without seeming unfriendly or stuck up.

What’s Our Take?

Since we are specialists in creating more workplace privacy with our panel extenders and desk mounted dividers, you know we have an opinion! It’s not really about the specific mechanism you use (flags, signs, etc.) The important thing is to have a company-wide conversation about the impact of interruptions on work efficiency to brainstorm options and raise awareness of this problem. There are so many different ways to cut down on disruption, it’s just a matter of finding the right fit for your organization’s culture.

In 2012, Teknion previewed Interpret for the office furniture world to see. They promptly won a “Good Design” award for this modern desking system. One of the most prevalent features you’ll see if you click through the idea gallery is that these workspaces are designed to incorporate dividers down the middle. Teknion doesn’t simply expect workers to hide behind a large computer monitor to avoid uncomfortably prolonged eye contact with the person sitting across the benchtop. That’s a deliberate feature since Interpret offers, “varied levels of privacy through a range of screen heights.”

The manufacturer also takes into the account the backlash against the totally open office space. “Interpret is unique as it can be used to create open benching or desking environments, or more privacy-focused, enclosed panel-like environments.” Yep, the manufacturers are starting to realize that cubicles are still here to stay.

We have to admit, it looks pretty fab. However, we have a much less expensive and even more flexible option that would let you retrofit any worksurfaces (including your existing cubicles) for greater privacy. Check out our full line of universal privacy panel products here.