Yearly Archives : 2017

The new year is coming and with it comes a new series of office trends that will influence decisions about how to organize your office, which furniture you should buy and how you can use solutions like panel extenders for easy, affordable ways to transform your workplace.

One of the things we find fascinating about the world of office furniture and organization is how these trends change from year to year and decade to decade.

For example, open offices are a well-known office environment, but in terms of trends, the open office is old news.

We diligently read the popular business websites to keep track of emerging trends and office concepts that are in decline. Granted, panel extenders are a timeless accessory. However, our interest in office organization goes beyond our products; we like to know the entire landscape of what’s happening.

So, when we came across a recent Inc.com article about 2018’s biggest office trend, we were excited.

Contributor Jeff Pochepan put forth the following observation: Adding home-like features to today’s offices is the focus of this upcoming year. The concept is known as “close to home”.

What Is “Close to Home” Design?

When we talk about this new design trend known as “close to home”, we’re talking about creating workplaces that make employees feel comfortable, as if they’re in their own home.

“It’s the simple idea of making your office feel more like home, a place where employees are so comfortable, they have no trouble putting in longer hours or they feel less trapped by their surroundings,” Pochepan wrote. “Employers are figuring out new and fun ways to entice people into their corporate families and keep their existing workers happy for the duration they spend at work.”

A Good Example of Close-to-Home

This design concept affects different areas of the office in unique ways. For example, Pochepan points out, Jessica Alba’s Honest offices.

Alba’s goal was to make the office reflect her home, according to an April 2017 profile in Architectural Digest.

“The office looks very much like my home. I like vintage and some new things; I like luxe fabrics, but I don’t care about them being designer necessarily,” Alba told the magazine. “I want everything to feel cozy. I want things you can sit on and put your feet on. And I wanted that same vibe in the office.”

Creating a Workplace of Collaboration

Close to Home isn’t just about making an office look like a home. The comfortability this design trend brings is intended to coax creativity out of employees who, in theory, feel at ease enough to ruminate over new ideas and concepts.

Pochepan says as much in his exposition of 2018’s hottest office organization philosophy.

“People are more likely to share their sparks of creativity — even if not fully formed and ready for presentation — with their colleagues in an environment where they feel relaxed and unhurried, and this, in turn, gives rise to collaborating on those ideas to see them from conception to reality together,” he wrote.

Adding a Sense of Home to Your Office

This popular office trend isn’t one that takes a lot of extra money to implement. Though it would be nice to have a break-room kitchen that resembles something you’d find in a house, there are little things, Pochepan says, that can be done to make your office feel like home.

Here are a few examples of things you can implement in your office; some are more practical than others:

• Yoga rooms
• Designated food truck days
• Conversation areas with couches
• Floor amps for lighting instead of fluorescent lighting
• Showers
• Fun outdoor patio furniture

These suggestions may seem trite, but they’re the kind of small improvements that employees notice. Ideally, you’d be able to redesign your entire office — or even move into a new space and start over. Either way, the Close to Home movement is just as much a mentality about the workplace as it is a design trend for 2018.

“When laughter rings through a room, it puts people at ease and work becomes less effort and more engaging,” Pochepan wrote. “If your people know they can work in a place where kicking their feet up is not only allowed, it’s encouraged, they won’t have to go in to work every day, they’ll want to.”

We’ve talked at length about some of the myths behind open offices. Namely, the concept that employees are more productive and creative in an open workspace.

What we’ve learned through experience and research is that the human mind needs some level of privacy – with both sound and sight – to feel safe and focus on work.

We aren’t alone in this conclusion. Here’s a snippet from an article by The New Yorker that examined prevailing research on the brain and privacy:

“Psychologically, the repercussions of open offices are relatively straightforward. Physical barriers have been closely linked to psychological privacy, and a sense of privacy boosts job performance. Open offices also remove an element of control, which can lead to feelings of helplessness.”

“Feelings of helplessness” isn’t really what you imagined as the impact of an open office, right?

So, when we saw a recent article from Harvard Business Review (HBR) about coffee shops being more beneficial for employees than open offices, we weren’t surprised. We were, however, quite interested in what the article had to say.

 You Work Better with Coffee Shop Noise Than You Do with Office Noise

Citing a few different studies, HBR said that researchers have discovered that background noise isn’t always a detriment. In fact, the source of the background noise is the determining factor in whether you’re distracted by the steady hum of conversation.

“In fact, some level of office banter in the background might actually benefit our ability to do creative tasks, provided we don’t get drawn into the conversation,” contributor David Burkus wrote. “Instead of total silence, the ideal work environment for creative work has a little bit of background noise. That’s why you might focus really well in a noisy coffee shop, but barely be able to concentrate in a noisy office.”

Burkus also explored the idea that familiarity can be distracting; you know the people in your office, but the people in the coffee shop? Not so much.

Hearing familiar voices and the names of people you know in a nearby conversation grab your attention. Even face-to-face conversations can derail your creative process and keep you distracted.

“The problem may be that, in our offices, we can’t stop ourselves from getting drawn into others’ conversations or from being interrupted while we’re trying to focus,” Burkus wrote. “Face-to-face interactions, conversations and other disruptions negatively affect the creative process. By contrast, a co-working space or a coffee shop provides a certain level of ambient noise while also providing freedom from interruptions.”

Is it the Familiarity That Hampers you, or the Frustration?

HBR’s conclusions are pretty solid. We do better at coffee shops and co-work spaces because we can’t really get drawn into conversations as we probably don’t know who’s doing the talking.

In the office, it’s different. You know the voices, the stories and the people or incidents inspiring the banter.

However, says Inc.com Contributing Editor Geoffrey James, it may not be the familiarity you have with your co-workers, but the contempt you have for them that distracts you.

In an article in which he discusses the HBR article, James says you probably get distracted with the background banter because someone’s flaws are bubbling up amid the back-and-forth.

“In short, it’s not the noise that makes an open-plan office such a miserable place to work – it’s the inability to escape the proximity of the petty and annoying behaviors of your co-workers,” James wrote.

OBEX Panel Extenders Dampen Noise

Another aspect of the HBR article we found interesting was that we work best when there’s just enough background noise to let our minds wander to creative places, but not complete silence.

And that’s where our panel extenders come in to play. The products we offer install easily, look great and get the job done.

Our panels have NRC and STC ratings (industry ratings for noise reduction) that significantly reduce the noise in each cubicle without eliminating it.

If noise is a problem in your office and you don’t have the time or resources to do a complete overhaul of your current desk systems, stop by our website to learn about the solutions we have.

Our panel extenders can be used in a variety of ways, come in multiple colors and materials, have three heights and eight widths and carry a 10-year warranty.

Earlier this year we wrote a post about the myth of open office productivity.

As we pointed out, there are several studies that show open offices tend to make employees more distracted and reduce overall productivity.

For our current and future clients, these findings bring up an important question: How do you transition an office from an open concept to cubicles?

The answer to this question may seem formidable but it’s a lot simpler than you think. Open offices utilize desks and those desks can be transitioned from open to private via several different types of extensions, all of which can be installed within minutes to avoid costly labor shutdowns.

Desk & Table Mount Privacy Panels

If your current open office layout includes desks that have absolutely no separation between workspaces, then OBEX desk and table mount privacy panels are the most effective solution for reducing noise pollution and increasing privacy for your employees.

These privacy panels are integrated onto your existing desks with very little effort. Each panel comes with everything needed to install them. The panel clamps fit desk thicknesses between 0.75 inches and 2.75 inches.

Offices with high noise levels are a good fit for acoustical tiles, which come in 25 different styles. These panels are industry-rated to reduce more than 50% of the noise traveling into a workspace.

These panels hit all the key factors in the transition from an open office to a cubicle system: low cost, easy installation and effective sound reduction.

This photo shows you an acoustical tile privacy panel installation:

Desk Split Screens

These types of panels are a great choice if you have a lot of desks in a room and want to provide private work spaces that also serve as modesty screens.

The big advantage over desk and table mount panels is that these panels extend below the desk surface.

Like the desk/table privacy panels, you have multiple options for colors and material, including noise-reducing acoustical panels.

Free-Standing Privacy Panels

The final option we’ll mention here is our free-standing privacy panels. Unlike the previous two choices we mentioned, our free-standing privacy panels don’t bolt down onto a table.

What we like about these is that they come in the same sizes as other panels (24, 30, 36, 42, 48, 60, 66 and 72 inches), offering you mobile privacy for just about any situation.

Another perk to this option is that they’ll come in handy if you have a long-term plan for office reorganization, but want an immediate change from open to cubicles.

These panels meet that short-term need and, when it comes time to reorganize your desks and sections, you simply lift the panels off the old desk and place them on the new ones.

An Overview of What Makes Panel Extenders and Privacy Screens an Excellent Open Office Transition Choice

Making a move from an open-office layout to cubicles doesn’t have to be the fiasco you’re probably envisioning.

Our panel extenders are meant to be an elegant and simple solution to increasing privacy in an office where there’s really no time to shut down operations for rerouting cables, moving desks and installing dozens of heavy, clunky cubicles.

As we mentioned earlier, our panel extenders can be installed in a matter of minutes without disrupting your productivity. Think about it like this: We can install one noise-reducing panel extender in the amount of time it takes for an employee to go to the break room and brew a pot of coffee.

Consider this, too: Our panels come with a 10-year non-transferrable warranty that covers defects in materials and craftsmanship when incurred during normal use.

Our website has an extensive gallery of various types of panel installations that we think will help you visualize how our panels would look in your office.

Our gallery is a good way to view the various style and function combinations we have, too, as our frames and panels employ multiple materials.

Call us at 888-351-4197 or contact us through our website if you would like to learn more about what we have to offer.

For as long as workplace satire has existed on television and in the movies, cubicles have gotten a bad name.

What once was a visionary idea from leading workspace designers Herman Miller has now become synonymous with the drudgery of daily office life. Ask any young professional to come up with synonyms for “cubicle” and you’ll probably get a litany of negative equivalents.

But here’s the deal – more and more research is showing that the happiest employees are the ones who work in cubicles.

Yes, we know such a sentiment goes against the commonly held beliefs of the collaborative powers of an open office. If Google, Facebook and just about every other tech startup use open-office floorplans, how, in the name of workplace collaboration, could cubicles be the right way to do things?

We think research shows that cubicles have three specific advantages over an open-office floorplan, all of which we’ll cover in this post.

Cubicle Advantage #1: Your Space is Your Space; Not the Company’s

Let’s think about the open-office philosophy for a moment. Companies have shunned cubicles in favor of an open floor plan because it promotes collaboration and transparency. You’re removed from a private space and placed in a communal atmosphere.

In theory, this sounds like an excellent idea. But, consider this. When you opt for an open office, you’re sacrificing your privacy for the good of the group. Without getting too philosophical, think about how this affects your self-expression and privacy. You lose it, right?

You no longer have a space you can call yours, a space that’s shielded from coworkers and bosses. You’ve given that up for the sake of the company’s identity and culture. We’re all for company culture – it’s a hallmark of the new workplace revolution.

However, we think employees lose out when company culture requires them to surrender their personal space for an open floorplan.

Cubicle Advantage #2: Your Brain Needs Privacy to Excel

While it might sound appealing to tackle your checklist while sitting in an overstuffed bean-bag chair, the fact that another employee is doing the same thing just inches away on a picnic table does something to your mind.

You see, our minds can be more productive when they sense they’re in a private space. According to a 2014 article from the New York Times, researchers found architectural privacy has a direct effect on psychological privacy, which in turn increases workplace and occupational satisfaction.

Think of it in terms of working at home. If you set up your laptop in your living room, you’ll be at the mercy of distractions and sound pollution that will stymie your creativity. Kids playing with your mouse. TVs blaring. Babies crying.

But if you can steal away to an office space for an hour, you have the quietness and anonymity you need to generate ideas and focus.

In fact, a 2017 BBC article notes that we’re 15% less productive in open-office environments and the small distractions that are more frequent in these environments cost us up to 20 minutes per distraction.

There’s also this sterling conclusion from a New Yorker article:

“Psychologically, the repercussions of open offices are relatively straightforward. Physical barriers have been closely linked to psychological privacy, and a sense of privacy boosts job performance. Open offices also remove an element of control, which can lead to feelings of helplessness.”

 Cubicle Advantage #3: Less Sound Pollution

A 2016 article from Forbes points out that one landmark study showed that workers’ biggest complaint about open offices is noise, as more than 1 out of 4 respondents said they were unsatisfied with noise levels in their workplace.

Cubicles shield out much of the noise from coworkers and restrict the sound levels of your conversations, whether they’re sales calls or confidential conversations.

They also shield you from the stress that comes from having to focus on your work while the noise of your coworkers’ tasks spills into your desk area.

Making the Switch from Open Office to Cubicles Isn’t as Hard as You Think

Our line of simple desk dividers and panels can reduce noise pollution, increase privacy and boost productivity. Stop by our Products page to get a sense of what we can offer, then give us a call at 888-323-6986.

There’s a perception that Millennials have stormed into the office design world and demanded ping-pong tables, snack fridges, bean bag chairs and a litany of other office items once deemed too juvenile for the traditional office.

While some of those perceptions may be true, the fact is that the open office concept and the emphasis on comfort started at least 15 years ago with industry leaders like Google and Facebook.

What we find most interesting about the influence of Millennials on office spaces aren’t the stereotypes we read, but the hard facts about what’s actually changed because of their preferences.

To figure that out, we’ve combed through some research from leading business sites and found some very interesting observations.

A Renaissance of Thoughtfully Designed Furniture

In a May 2017 article in Forbes, contributor Sarah Landrum brought up an interesting dichotomy. Lucy Lyle, founder of furniture design company Perch, has started a line of thoughtfully designed office furniture that was, in part, launched specifically because of her dissatisfaction with Google’s influence over office design.

“If you want a pretty clear idea of how fast everything moves when millennials get involved, get a load of the contempt Perch founder Lucy Lyle has for Google and its decorating sensibilities,” Landrum wrote. “It feels like just last week Google was being held up as the gold standard for quirky, welcoming, happiness-improving, stuffiness-reducing, millennial-led design in the workplace.”

Rather than going for minimalist design, Perch focuses on creating beautiful pieces that function well, which is really no different than the original design for the office cubicle and the concept behind Herman Miller’s incredible office chairs.

That desire to merge anew the realms of form and function has created, Landrum said, a renaissance of office design.

“You might not be sold on standing desks just yet, but they’re probably the most visible example of this push toward ergonomically sensible and aesthetically attractive office design,” she wrote. “Turns out you can have it all.”

Movement is Making Office Life More Creative

Perhaps the biggest office news in 2017 is the forthcoming opening of Apple’s new headquarters in Cupertino. The company’s building has been likened to a spaceship; it’s a massive ring with a tree-speckled natural environment inside the ring.

One of the keys to their new headquarters and office life is the concept of movement, says Inc. contributor Jonas Altman. Rockstar Apple designer Jony Ive is behind the push for motion, carrying on an idea that he and Steve Jobs started.

“And what’s the chief emphasis for their vision? Movement. Whether it’s the quarter-mile hike to the office from the parking lot or climbing any of the four flights of stairs in the elevator-less ‘Infinite Loop’ – employees will be in perpetual motion,” Altman wrote.

What’s interesting about this setup is that it literally forces employees to think outside the box, and that decision is smart, according to research.

A team of scientists from Singapore Management University conducted a study in which they asked participants to solve word problems while sitting in a literal box. They then asked the same people to solve the same problems outside the box.

“Compared to those inside the makeshift box, those on the outside generated more correct answers, suggesting that the physical experience fostered creative thinking,” Huffington Post contributor Wray Herbert wrote.

A Few Final Observations About Modern Office Trends

It’s easy to get caught up in the most progressive, unique movements within office design. For many years, that movement was the open office concept. Its proponents hailed it as the ultimate way to encourage openness and collaboration for Millennials who value both.

As we’ve found in our own research, open office spaces aren’t the savior of productivity everyone thought they were. In fact, recent studies show that a lack of privacy leads to increased anxiety – each of us needs a certain level of autonomy to excel.

In terms of how you handle your desk spaces, consider this: Privacy screens and cubicle shields afford you the ability to modify your workplace on the fly, according to the needs of your employees.

Stop by our website to learn more about our products, which can help turn your workplace into a haven of productivity.

In case you haven’t noticed, open offices have dominated the American workplace recently.

In fact, one article from the BBC estimates that about 70% of American workplaces feature an open office concept. With that in mind, you might think it’s a little odd that we’re in the business of selling desk privacy panels and dividers.

Here’s the truth: American companies have seriously overplayed their hand when it comes to the open office movement. There’s an assumption that bringing down walls and removing private areas will promote the free flow of ideas.

In many ways, the open concept is a reflection of our society in general – the postmodern era not only brought down the rigid walls of modernism, but it also ushered out the popularity of walled cubicles and workspaces.

Open Offices Haven’t Increased Across-the-Board Productivity

Quoting a study by design firm Gensler, the BBC noted that “more than two-thirds of US employees are unhappy with noise levels at work.

“Already, workplace performance has dropped 6% since 2008, driven largely by the inability to focus,” the article read.

While the productivity decrease may have more to do with the onset of social media and fantasy sports, we do know that the overhaul of traditional workspaces doesn’t seem to be providing the results most offices hoped for.

We’re Starting to See Why Divider Panels Are Actually a Good Thing

History is like a pendulum swinging back and forth.

For a time, the pendulum of office design was madly charging away from walls and toward an open concept. That trend reached its apex around 2014 and 2015, and while it’s still the darling of office design, the pendulum is starting to swing the other way.

Take Microsoft, for example. In a 2015 article from the BBC, Pankaj Arora, a member of Microsoft’s Modern IT Innovation Group, said that there’s no question a private workspace increases productivity.

Before his team launched, they talked about the kind of office they wanted. They pondered the open concept but eventually decided against it.

“It was important to be able to hunker down and focus behind closed doors, but be in close proximity to each other so we could collaborate,” Arora told the BBC. “We never see the doors as barriers to communication, just as barriers to noise.”

Their solution was an elegant one. All cubicles had high walls to deaden sound and create privacy. Their office was a rectangle shape with cubicles lined up on the long sides of the rectangle, facing the wall.

If there were questions or collaboration was needed, all they had to do is push their chairs out from their desk and enter the common space between the two rows of cubicles. Arora’s team called it the “hallway of knowledge.”

Divider Panels Provide an Effective Middle Ground

There’s a big reason why the open office concept hasn’t led to more productivity – humans crave a certain level of privacy.

Psychologically speaking, having your own space gives your mind the spatial security it needs to think freely, be creative and focus on the task at hand.

Divider panels provide that space. What’s great about them in relation to the modern area of office spaces is that our desk-mounted panels can literally turn an open office space into a semi-private work area overnight.

Installing divider panels onto desks requires basic hardware and about 10-15 minutes. Businesses don’t have to worry about shutting down office operations or moving equipment out and back into their workspace. In many cases, our desk divider panels can be installed while people are working.

It’s not just about ease, though. The sound and visual privacy our divider panels provide give your employees the autonomy they crave and, as a result, their productivity will go up.

OBEX Divider Panels

Not only do our divider panels attach to desks that don’t currently have any walls or floor dividers, but they also easily attach to existing walls between cubicles.

Stop by our Products page and take a look at the various options we provide.

Yes, it’s that time of the year.

Business-focused website Inc.com has published their list of the top offices in the world and it’s another chance to get inside the workspaces of some of the most innovative and creative office designs on the planet.

What we like about their yearly articles on the best of the best is that they don’t just breeze over nine or ten workspaces. They get in-depth, launching more than a dozen pieces on various offices and design elements around the world.

In this post, we’re pulling a few of the concepts we loved the most, not only because they’re amazing, but also because we believe they can kindle some creativity in you.

The Castle Full of Bears, Star Wars and Employees

If you take a stroll through Gloucestershire, England, you’ll probably notice a massive Victorian castle and the steady stream of people going in and out of it.

Inside that Victorian castle is the headquarters of Money.co.uk, and what a headquarters it is.

The designers and architects the company hired brought a sense of wildness and modernity to the offices without sacrificing the traditional appeal of the castle itself. Bright colors and trendy furniture pieces sit alongside aged walls revealing the weathered history of the building.

Our favorite aspect of the offices? It’s a tie between the neon-paint splatter knight’s armor and the ice room, where comfy seating is couched in an Arctic setting featuring a giant stuffed polar bear.

The Moss Wall at LinkedIn’s Headquarters

Bringing the outdoors in has been a popular trend in the past few years, no doubt a desire to make the workspace a more holistic, natural space that doesn’t feel like a 9-5 prison yard.

The concept has produced beautiful office spaces in London, Lisbon and Stockholm, but we want to focus on a unique element of LinkedIn’s San Francisco offices: the fern wall.

The wall was designed by IA Interior Designers and features varying shades of moss swirled into circles. When you look at the living wall, you get the sense that you’re flying over a forest swirled with trees of different shades of green.

“IA Architects used different kinds of moss to create a living wall with more depth and texture than your average patch of grass,” Inc. wrote.

ByteCubed Gets Geometric in Virginia

The first thing we noticed when we saw photos of consulting company ByteCubed’s offices was the pervasive use of angles. Everything from the chairs in their lobby seating area to the designs on their wall to the company’s logo itself are replete with angles.

Perhaps our favorite feature of their Arlington offices is the cubby holes they’ve integrated into one of their office walls. The three geometric spaces include angled walls for reclining, soft recessed lighting and cushioned seats.

ByteCubed plays it straight in the dining area, where long white granite countertops, bar seats and picnic tables provide the perfect place for eating and meeting.

King’s Office in Stockholm Is So Much Better Than Candy Crush

King, the app maker who created the insanely popular sequencing game Candy Crush, has what could be considered the most incredible office in the world.

Located in Stockholm, King’s offices feature a “forest” comprised of silhouetted metal trees, carpeted “stone” terraces, pockets of fern and plenty of sunlight.

The company has even incorporated bean bag chairs camouflaged as rocks.

Here’s a sneak peek at this fascinating space:

Every New Office Design Starts Somewhere

Don’t get caught up in comparisons. Do, however, pull bits and pieces of each of these offices and consider how you can integrate these into your current office.

You may want to transition from full-blown cubicles to panel extenders that provide enough privacy for productivity and enough openness to connect with co-workers.

We can work with you to incorporate these changes. Head to our Contact Us page to send us a message or give us a call at 888-323-5126.

One of the questions we often get is how cubicle shields and divider panels are different and if one is better than the other.

Our initial response is that they’re different and which one you choose should be based on your office’s needs, what you’re trying to accomplish in your workspace and what your budget is.

But, there are more intricacies involved than just those general ideas. Exploring each of those topics – needs, goals and budget – will help you get a sense of whether a cubicle shield or a divider panel is best.

Cubicle Shield vs. Divider Panels: Your Office Space’s Needs

Take a minute to think about how your office is running right now and what each team member needs. Do you run a call center where space is limited and moderate sound reduction is needed? Are your employees handling sensitive information that requires premium noise reduction between cubicles?

We find that many offices are designed with space in mind but, in some cases, visual and auditory privacy is either forgotten or neglected. This is a mistake we often see and it’s easily remedied with cubicle shields or divider panels.

In situations where you need sound privacy and you have desks with existing low walls around them, cubicle shields are a good choice because you can easily attach them to the existing walls to add height around the cubicle and deaden sound.

If your office has more of an open feel and there aren’t walls around each employee’s tables, then a desk-mounted divider panel can provide a huge privacy boost and, as we’ve pointed out before, increased privacy leads to increased productivity.

Cubicle Shield vs. Divider Panels: What Do You Want to Accomplish With Your Workspace?

Many of our clients want to create a workspace with increased productivity and privacy. These topics go hand-in-hand because, as we mentioned in the previous section, studies are clear that privacy is a human need and that workers thrive when they feel like they have a certain level of autonomy.

We also know that traditional workplaces have a desire to modernize and, in this era of office design, open concepts are easily the most popular trend.

A lot of businesses hear the phrase “open floor plan” and automatically think of bean-bag chairs and free-form work areas with standing desks and community tables.

We believe that an open concept can be achieved with cubicle shields and divider panels because both are designed to offer enough auditory and visual privacy without disrupting workplace community.

Cubicle shields and divider panels provide a functional, effective middle ground between head-high cubicle walls and wall-less open workspaces.

Cubicle Shields vs. Divider Panels: The Cost Factor

One of the things that’s most appealing about cubicle shields and divider panels is that they’re affordable and effective.

Prices tend to vary most when you’re deciding between panels that provide visual privacy and ones that provide audio privacy.

Our fabric-covered sound-reducing panels are different than our other shields and dividers because they contain STC- and NRC-rated materials that absorb sound and prevent it from moving from one cubicle to another.

While the performance of our cubicle shields and dividers is among the best, our price points remain reasonable, making both options a good choice for your office.

Wrapping It Up: An Overview of Cubicle Shields and Divider Panels

Your office’s cubicles are an important part of how productive your team will be. The thought you put into your shields and dividers will either mesh or clash with your employees’ needs and your own vision for how you want your workplace to function.

Head to our Contact Us page to send us an email or give us a call. We’re happy to talk with you about what you want out of your office and how our products can provide a simple, cost-effective solution.

Take a minute to imagine the ideal office, the one you’d love to work in but just can’t.

What comes to mind? Google? Facebook? Any number of California-based tech giants and startups? And, most likely, those offices that you thought of are huge, open spaces where collaboration seems to be the prevailing theory of workspace design. Couches. Bean bags. Standing desks. Big tables.

The open-office theory of workplace interaction now has a pretty solid grip on the work world and is the undisputed spearhead of modern work innovation. However, people have started to question how effective an open office really is.

If those arguments could be summed up with one question, it would be: Are open offices really as collaborative and idea friendly as we think.

And, believe it or not, more and more experts are saying, “no.”

High-Achievers Don’t Function Well in an Open-Office, Collaborative Atmosphere

One of the things that’s rarely talked about in open-office discussions is the negative effect of the “all-ideas-are-welcome” philosophy.

You see, when high achievers are forced to work in an environment where their excellence is watered down by communal mediocrity, they leave. At least that’s the opinion of a recent Inc. article about why collaborative environments cramp superstars’ personalities.

“The problem is that rather than seeing a top performer as a role model,” contributing editor Geoffrey James wrote, “mediocre employees tend to see them as threats, either to their own position in the company or to their own feelings of self-worth.”

At the same time, these high achievers see collaborative environments as a burden they must carry. Burdens slow people down, and a slow pace, at least to high achievers, is seen as an acceptance of mediocrity.

“The No. 1 reason high performers leave organizations in which they are otherwise happy is because of the tolerance of mediocrity,” Inc.’s Les McKeown wrote in an article picked up by TIME Magazine. “When You’re a Ferrari (or think you are), you don’t want to spend your time idling at the curb.”

Privacy Actually Promotes Mental Acuity

A big emphasis of the open-office movement is that Millennials don’t want to take well to overbearing leaders and value community. Consequently, an open-office environment puts everyone on the same plane since managers and employees are working side by side.

However, research indicates that the mind is wired for privacy. In other words, your brain needs to feel a certain level of autonomy and privacy to focus enough to excel.

The evidence for this is a 1980 study published in The Academy of Management Journal, which noted that employees were more satisfied with their job when the office’s architecture allowed them privacy.

While the study is three decades old, it remains relevant if only because other studies were done in the past few years that have confirmed it.

In fact, a New Yorker article that summarized the research in this area resolutely concluded that open offices were not nearly as beneficial as most of us believe they are.

“Psychologically, the repercussions of open offices are relatively straightforward. Physical barriers have been closely linked to psychological privacy, and a sense of privacy boosts job performance. Open offices also remove an element of control, which can lead to feelings of helplessness.”

Another landmark study came from research firm Steelcase, who revealed that all was not well in the world of open-office workplaces even though the concept has its advantages.

“Throughout the world, too much interaction and not enough privacy has reached crisis proportions, taking a heavy toll on workers’ creativity, productivity, engagement and wellbeing,” Steelcase concluded. “Without question, successful collaboration requires giving coworkers easy access to each other. But it also requires giving each individual the time and places to focus and recharge, and too many workplaces today aren’t delivering on privacy as a necessity.”

Transitioning Out of an Open Office Doesn’t Have to Be Difficult

If you’ve been considering transitioning away from a full-fledged open office to something a little more private, contact us.

We’ll help you determine what you need to do to make your changes with the least amount of impact on your employees’ performance.

What an executive’s desk should look like is all a matter of where you work and who you work with.

If you’re a Fortune 500 accounting firm and you’ve got a C-level job, then there’s a good chance you’re going to go with something big, powerful and measured. A modern, dark wood behemoth with brushed nickel accents is a legitimate possibility.

However, if you’re a C-leveler at an emerging tech company, you’ll probably shy away from the bruising desk and cherry-wood swivel chair and push for a minimalist desk and a Herman Miller Aeron. The goal is function over form, pragmatism over elitism.

The overriding principle here is that your executive desk says something about your style of leadership and your personality as well as the personality of the company.

“As the boss, your office isn’t just an extension of you; it’s an extension of your company. A message is sent and received the moment someone walks in,” Shari Alexander wrote in a 2014 article for Entrepreneur.

Therefore, choosing what goes in your office is an important decision with several crucial implications.

Executive Furniture Can Be a Weapon…

For the longest time, the executive desk had one purpose: to express, in wooden form, the extent of your power. The bigger the desk, the higher the pay and the greater the influence.

Within that context of power expression, there’s also the nuanced use of the executive desk to gain the upper hand during interactions with an employee or a client.

In other words, the executive desk can be your way of making somebody feel small simply by how far away they sit from you and how high their chair is.

Not lost on this discussion is the old caricature of a subordinate sitting in an almost comically-low chair, peering over the edge of a massive wooden desk in hopes that their boss will spare them excessive punishment.

Alexander said it well when she described some executive offices as an interrogation room.

“This simple set-up creates a subtle psychological dynamic between interrogator and suspect. The suspect is stuck in one place while the interrogator can freely move around the room. Similar to a throne, the interrogator sits higher than the suspect,” Alexander wrote.

…Or It Can Be a Welcoming Environment

On the other hand, an executive desk and the peripheral furniture can help build connections between the executive and employees, clients and colleagues.

If you feel like you’ve accidentally turned your office into an interrogation room, you’re not a lost cause. There are simple things you can do to improve the feel of your office.

Alexander points out that adding a round table and a few chairs can, as a place where you can carry on a more intimate conversation, enhance the communal feel of your office without sacrificing your positional authority.

“Use those sections of your space for more personable or difficult conversations,” Alexander wrote.

Be Mindful of How Much You Emphasize Your Accolades

In the vein of old-school thinking about executive offices, many C-level bosses adorn a cabinet or a wall with their accomplishments, achievements and recognitions. This type of environment can make a visitor feel intimidated or insignificant and really isn’t necessary.

Choosing Your Furniture Wisely

Put some time into thinking about your furniture in more comprehensive terms than just, “What looks most powerful and reflects my position most accurately?”

The best office furniture providers in San Diego should provide you with a multitude of executive furniture choices that provide a middle ground between a welcoming environment and one that still gives a nod to your status as executive management.

Also, don’t be afraid to use color when selecting your desk.

According to a post from Founder’s Guide, orange is a creativity-associated hue while blue exudes a sense of tranquility and peace.

Just remember, though, the end goal is bigger than design and color.

“Don’t choose furniture just because you like its color or design. You have to choose one that goes with your brand or your office personality,” Founder’s Guide wrote. “Your office furniture must transcend the aesthetic and comfort value it provides; it must also reflect your company’s identity and culture.”