Monthly Archives : December 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.