Category : office design

The movement against open offices continues.

The headline on a TechCrunch acrticle published this past month says it all: “Yes, open office plans are the worst.”

Reporter Sarah Wells did a deep dive into some of the reasons why open offices present more problems than solutions, mentioning a recent Harvard University study that found open offices actually reduced productivity and face-to-face interaction.

The article spurred a lively conversation on Reddit, where there were more than 100 comments.

In this post, we’re going to review the article and the comments from the subsequent Reddit post.

Open Offices Result in Closed-Off Employees

The most striking point in Wells’ article came from the Harvard study, which noted that open offices resulted in more emails and less face-to-face interaction.

“Contrary to common belief, the volume of face-to-face interaction decreased significantly (approx. 70%) in both cases, with an associated increase in electronic interaction,“ the study notes. “In short, rather than prompting increasingly vibrant face-to-face collaboration, open architecture appeared to trigger a natural human response to socially withdraw from officemates and interact instead over email and IM.”

With this data in hand, Wells went on to note that increased email interaction and decreased face-to-face resulted in a measurable decline in productivity.

“While the concept behind open office spaces is to drive informal interaction and collaboration among employees, the study found that for both groups of employees monitored (52 for one company and 100 for the other company) face-to-face interactions dropped, the number of emails sent increased between 20 and 50 percent and company executives reported a qualitative drop in productivity,” Wells wrote.

She went on to point out some of the conclusions from the study, conclusions we’ve known for a long time. Primarily, that humans tend to want privacy when they’re faced with an open spatial environment that doesn’t provide them any anonymity.

Our brains are wired to perform at the peak level when they sense that there’s a certain level of spatial and auditory privacy. While there may be an anomaly or two, science notes that we’re hard-wired to excel in creativity and productivity when we have our own space.

Reddit Responds: The People Agree

As we mentioned earlier, more than 100 people responded to the TechCrunch link posted in Reddit’s Business sub (business-focused message board).

The top comment in the thread was from a user named “themick”, who wrote the following:

“I went from a job with an open office to a job with tall 6ft cubes… The cubes are the greatest thing ever. I have a little bit of peace and I feel like I get more done during the day.”

Another user named ”lemon_tea” pointed out another important aspect of a cubicle-based office – that you can’t really have a private conversation amid a sea of bean bags, desks and anchorless coworkers:

“The other terror is having a phone conversation with someone who sits in an open office or being on a conference bridge. Good luck picking their voice out of the background noise they continuously inject on the line. And for some reason they never mute their line to take care of the noise.”

“AiresWolf3” added another insight we’ve talked about in the past: cost efficiency. There may be instances in which a company chooses an open-office design simply because it costs less.

“Does anyone really believe that open office plans are about “driving informal interactions and collaboration”? I thought that was just a polite fiction given by management to justify cost-cutting,” the AiresWolf3 wrote. “Sort of like how ‘streamlining’ and ‘focusing on our core business’ is a polite way of saying they’re laying off entire departments.”

The user also noted that open offices aren’t always a good fit for introverts, especially in publishing jobs where editors need a quiet, focused space for their work.

“I worked for a publishing company with an open office plan, which was just cruel. Editors are some of the most introverted people on the planet and we all went to great lengths to pretend that we were not aware of one another,” the user said. “We would send IMs to people who sat two feet away.”

In the end, he or she said cubicle life was better for his or her job than an open office.

“I now work in an office with cubicles,” AriesWolf3 wrote. “I never thought I would have such warm and fuzzy feelings toward cubicles, but that’s adult life for you.”

Learn More About Cubicles

Open offices have long been one of those areas of office design in which the public-facing presentation didn’t quite match the science-backed conclusions.

Tech companies gravitated toward these minimalistic design trends for many different reasons, one of which is very logical: money. It costs more capital to buy cubicles for 50 employees than it does to buy 10 rows of tables and 50 chairs. Why buy furniture when you can hire another coder?

As the years have gone by, science has started to catch up to trend. There’s plenty of evidence that indicates private workspaces are crucial to productivity. Much of it has to do with your brain; we’re wired to thrive when our brain feels a certain level of privacy.

The Washington Post recently jumped into the anti-open-office movement when reporter Lindsey Kaufman included the open office in the paper’s annual Spring Cleaning edition. The theme? Ten things to toss.

One Reporter’s Reasons for Bidding Farewell to the Open Office

Kaufman’s piece on open offices is concise and echoes what we mentioned a few seconds ago: Science is emerging as an open-office naysayer.

“My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Granberry, sat her students around a big communal table where we could all see one another and be supervised,” Kaufman started her article. “There was yelling, commotion and general childlike chaos. The same things happen in an open office — only we’re grown-up professionals with deadlines, personal lives and a basic human need for some privacy.”

Opening salvos aside, Kaufman’s argument follows the privacy line—our minds need a sense of visual and auditory privacy to maintain focus on the task at hand.

The article references a Forbes piece from Dec. 2017 in which contributor Keith Flamer noted that current research shows that open offices reduce productivity by 15% to 28%.

Another side effect of the open office that most people don’t understand is that employees are twice as likely to get sick as their cubicled counterparts.

What’s most interesting about Kaufman’s article isn’t the stats about focus or sickness; it’s her reminder that some Apple employees are unhappy that the company’s new headquarters will use an open-office design.

Her article linked to another Washington Post piece detailing the grumblings of the tech giant’s disgruntled employee.

“Up until now you’ve been used to having your own office space. But the new Apple Park will change all that,” reporter Gene Marks quoted the employee as saying. “The programmers, engineers, developers and other employees who work there will be rubbing elbows with each other over long tables that they’ll be sharing in the company’s new open space environment. And some are not thrilled.”

The news was second-hand, though; the original claims of unhappy employees came from a podcaster and blogger who covers the Apple beat.

The article went on to say that the source noted some Apple employees threatened to leave the company if their offices weren’t suitable.

While those threats may seem a little entitled, we’ve read enough about the benefits of cubicles to know that there’s a lot more on the line than preference.

You Have an Open Office. Now What?

If you’re starting to have second thoughts about your open office, don’t worry. We’re not here to demand that you change the way you organize your workspaces.

Take some time to read through the articles we linked to in this post and decide for yourself if an open office is the right choice for your company.

If you think it’s time for a change, the table-heavy design of an open office can be transitioned into private spaces rather quickly using privacy panels of varying lengths and heights.

Our catalog offers multiple colors, material and styles, all of which can be installed on a desk within minutes. In fact, we’re often able to install desktop privacy panels while employees are working, cutting down on the lost labor that normally results from a full overhaul of an office space.

Head to our Contact Us page to send us an email or give us a call. We’ll talk with you about your space, what you’d like to see happen and how we can accommodate you.

The Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, more commonly known as “HIPAA”, went into effect in 1996.

More than 20 years later, medical offices across the country have gotten used to the idea that building an office is more than having enough exam rooms and an ample waiting area. Spaces where information is provided or transferred should be organized in ways that do compromise patient information.

Spatial privacy, however, isn’t usually at the top of the to-do list for a new practice. Getting clients, tidying up the new space and getting record keeping in order usually takes precedence.

We often find medical practices that move into a new space are left with a layout designed for the previous business, which usually means the former tenants weren’t concerned about HIPAA.

Transitioning your office to be HIPAA compliant isn’t as complex as you might think. In this post, we’ll explain the different ways you can modify tables and counters to protect your patient’s privacy and comply with HIPAA guidelines.

Privacy Screens Can Turn a Long Table Into a HIPAA-Compliant Patient Area

Imagine you’ve just bought a new office space for your medical practice, whether it’s a family care center, a dental practice or a lab.

You don’t want to buy new furniture to have a HIPAA-compliant office. You want an easy solution that won’t take much time to install. Efficiency and privacy are the keys.

You’ve got a long table in the reception area that would be an excellent space for patients to fill out paperwork. You’re aiming to have a bustling place of business, so there could be four or five people handling sensitive medical information at any given time at that table.

OBEX privacy screens are the solution because they meet both of your objectives: quick installation and sufficient privacy to meet the required guidelines.

Depending on the type of table you have, our privacy panels can attach to the lip of the tables in your patient area or the can sit on top of the table.

The panels we provide have eight different lengths ranging from 24 inches to 72 inches, a span of lengths that can fit practically any situation your office requires.

These panels have three different heights: 12 inches, 18 inches and 24 inches. We ensure that the panels we send you are tall enough to provide a sight barrier that protects your patients’ privacy. These opaque panels eliminate the possibility of wandering eyes catching personal information.

We also provide multiple color options to ensure that your panels blend in with the color palette of your office.

If, during our consultation, you decide that the standard options we provide don’t fit the requirements of your patient areas, we are happy to work with you to create a custom solution.

Should the standard options we provide be sufficient for what you need, we can ship the panels directly to you for an easy, DIY installation that will take minutes.

Warranties Protect Your Screens for 10 Years

In addition to being veterans of the panel extender industry, we stand behind our panels with a 10-year warranty to protect your investment in HIPAA compliance.

Our warranty covers defects in the material and craftsmanship that occur during normal use of your screens. Send the panels to us and, upon verification of a defect, we’ll repair or replace the screens and send them back to you.

Additional Information About HIPAA and Doctor’s Offices

Knowing all the nuances of how to protect patient privacy can be overwhelming. There are resources, however, that can help you understand the basic principles to the point where you and your staff can create a safe, secure environment for anyone who walks through the doors.

The American Association of Orthodontists has an excellent post detailing the various aspects of HIPAA and how they relate not just to a dental office’s reception area desks but the office as a whole, including operatories and other rooms.

24 By 7 Security, a Coral Springs-based security firm, has a great guide to doctor’s-office privacy that covers all the various aspects of protecting your patients’ information.

The Consumer Electronics Show concluded this past January with tons of fanfare surrounding the consumer products showcased in what is the premier tech show of the year.

Lost in all this techie talk was the fact there were some innovative products focused on improving the office.

We did some research and discovered some very interesting products that could provide your office with cutting-edge tech that will make your workplace a little more interesting.

In our conversations with exhibitors who hawked their creations to the country’s top investors and businesses, we found everything from the Google of video footage to innovative community phone chargers to ultra-durable power strips that can withstand power surges and the every-day abuse of the workplace.

Stepping Up Your Security with IC Realtime’s Ella

Let’s say you drive to work one day, put in a solid eight of hours of work and, when you head to the parking lot to drive home, you notice somebody sideswiped your car at some point in the day.

Normally, you’d have to connect with your building’s security department and ask them to pore over hours of footage to figure out who hit your car.

With IC Realtime‘s Ella, you can search your footage by using keyword searches just like you would when looking for something on Google.

For example, if you see black paint at the impact point, you can search “black car” and Ella will search through all the footage and isolate clips that include a black car.

The service also recognizes letters and numbers. So, if FedEx is late on a delivery or you never receive a shipment that was supposedly delivered, you can search “FedEx truck” and Ella will pull up all footage of FedEx trucks that pulled up to your delivery dock during the hours you specify.

“There was a lot of interesting buzz, for sure,” a company rep told us. “The Wall Street Journal included Ella in their list of the best tech to see at CES.”

Design Meets Device Charging: Humavox NEST

We’re not saying that charging your phone at your work desk is archaic but using a cord to charge your phone can be annoying for those who work in small spaces.

Humavox NEST has solved this problem by creating technology that can turn virtually anything into a charging station by incorporating near-field radio frequencies to charge phones and tablets.

Here’s how they explain the problem they say they’re solving:

“With the growing number of devices, charging has become a daily hassle that must be resolved with a simple, natural charging solution. But when thinking of what would be the most natural charging experience for users, we realized that it’s not unanimous, (it) changes with different products and between different users.”

Current NEST designs available on the Humavox website reveal personal-sized charging pods as well as community bowls where multiple phones and IoT devices can charge.

This novel idea for charging stations would be a great fit in communal areas where employees take breaks, brainstorm or meet, all without the need for charging cords.

Power to the People: Juice Mobile Power

Imagine the following scenario. You’ve got an event going on at the office — new employee orientation, for example — and dozens of people are crammed into a meeting room. The combination of phones, tablets and laptops needed to take notes means that some people are left without an outlet.

That’s the type of scenario some office managers had to be thinking about when they stopped by Bretford’s booth at CES and saw the company’s newest power solution: Juice Mobile Power.

Juice provides DC power for up to 20 mobile devices. One main power source plugs into the wall, and, from there, you can connect multiple power lines that roll out like a red carpet. The power strips are low-profile, durable and, as the company’s website says, they provide simple power solution without any retrofitting.

Here’s how a company representative explained the problem that Juice Mobile Power solves:

“Juice Mobile Power is the solution to this problem – the cost of rewiring a given room, whether that is an office conference room, an event space, or a classroom, is thousands of dollars and lots of time and energy. Juice Mobile Power takes the existing power available in the room and spreads it in a mobile, safe, adaptable way so people can stay charged and productive.”

There’s not much difference in the way that Bretford approaches power and the way we approach existing cubicles. We provide a simple solution that doesn’t require any work stoppages or costly disassembly of existing cubicles or desks.

Our panel and privacy extenders can be added to existing desks and walls in a matter of minutes. In many cases, we can add our panel extenders without interrupting your team’s workflow.

To learn more about our office solutions, call us at or head to our website.

You need to make changes to your office and you need to make them fast.

That’s usually the position our clients find themselves in when they contact us about our panel extender quick-ship program. The reasons for these quick changes are manifold: company transition, growth or seizing a can’t-miss opportunity to move into a new workspace with basic desks and/or cubicle walls.

In many situations, you aren’t as concerned about style as you are about function – the panels need to go up fast and the more neutral the color and form, the better.

The scenarios we mentioned here are pretty universal and our quick-ship program reflects that kind of one-size-fits-all situation.

Basically, the OBEX quick-ship can be broken down into three different parts: the panels themselves, shipping and warranty.

Quick-Ship Panel Extenders

While our normal line-up features dozens of different color and material for cubicle walls, privacy panels, panel extenders and modesty panels, our quick-ship program provides one, simple solution: aluminum-framed translucent polycarbonate panels.

We consider this single option a very utilitarian choice – they get the job done without any added frills. But don’t underestimate their design. Design not featuring flashy colors or materials, they manage to stay modern and blend in with just about any office environment.

Looks aside, polycarbonate is an effective way to reduce sound, too. The material is used all around the world as a popular sound deadener in offices as well as a barrier between transportation thoroughfares (roads, tracks) and neighborhoods.

Here’s a quick list of the available sizes (HxW):

• 12×24
• 12×48
• 12×72
• 18×24
• 18×48
• 18×72

These quick-ship panels come in three different install styles: freestanding, desk and panel. The panels you get from this program cover nearly any desk/cubicle situation.

Quick-Ship Shipping

What makes our quick-ship program unique is that your panels will ship within 48 hours of your order and you’ll get a 5% discount on the total order.

Our goal isn’t to gouge you because you’re in a jam; it’s to provide a straightforward solution to get you up and running as quickly as possible.

Our quick-ship shipping comes with a few things you should know. First, the maximum quantity you can order is 25 units.

Second, our quick-ship program requires cash on delivery for the first two orders you make. After that, you can work with OBEX to come up with credit terms to finance future purchases.

Because of the nature of our quick-ship program, once an order has been acknowledged and confirmed, it is final. Returns aren’t normally accepted, but if we do agree to it, there are re-stocking charges involved in the return.

Quick-Ship Warranty

OBEX’s 10-year warranty also applies to our quick-ship panel extenders and covers our products against defects.

Basically, if there’s a defect in your panel extenders that isn’t due to normal wear and tear and you’re the original owner of the extenders then you can file a claim with us. We’ll inspect the panels to verify that the product is defective and will decide if we’ll repair it or replace it.

Aside from normal wear-and-tear situations, other situations that wouldn’t be covered under our warranty would be those random situations in which, say, somebody at the holiday party gets too friendly with the open bar and then accidentally kicks a hole in a modesty panel.

Working With Us: The Leading Office Extender Provider in Southern California

This post has focused on our quick-ship program but OBEX certainly provides more than quick fixes for your company.

If you’ve got more time to make a decision about your privacy solutions, consider taking a look at our acoustical panels. They are, in our opinion, the superior choice for maximizing sound privacy in the workplace.

You see, a panel’s ability to deaden sound is based on two popular ratings: noise reduction coefficient (NRC) and sound transmission class. Our panels reduce sound by more than 50%.

In addition to their ability to deaden sound and provide a more tranquil workspace, OBEX panels are easy to install. In most situations, one individual can put a panel on a desk in less than five minutes. All hardware and the necessary Allen wrench is provided in the panel kits we send you.

Our panel extender installation guide gives you an excellent idea of what the install process is like. If you have questions, we’re happy to answer them. Give us a call at (888)571-8658 or contact us through our website.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

A calendar year can take a toll on an office.

Just think about the walk from your desk to the break room. The floor has new stains, cubicles are marked with dents and scrapes. Fabric dividers start to fray at the edges. Chairs squeak a little more and the fluorescent glow of recessed lighting just seems a little more yellow.

There are ways to combat this inevitable decline. We learned this over the past year by studying trends in office design and equipment, employee perks, dress codes and other areas of office life. During the next few months we’re going share what we’ve learned with ideas for sprucing up your office as we head into 2017.

It’s Time to Upgrade Your Office Chair

Over the past few years, we’ve read a ton of information about office chairs. Some of that research has been history based, while other bouts of fact-finding focused on the ever-timeless Herman Miller line of chairs.

Simply put, what you’re sitting in at work matters; it matters to your back and to the rest of your body. If your spine is aching or your wrists and hands are sore, you aren’t going to perform at the highest possible level.

If you’re going to splurge on a gift for yourself or work with your procurement department to upgrade, we suggest the Herman Miller SAYL. While it’s not at the level of Herman Miller’s legendary Aeron, the chair is a fantastic buy for someone looking for solid support, style and a reliable brand name.

We talked about the SAYL this past year, noting that one furniture site said the chair is better suited for the conference room than it is for the desk. However, between then and now, the SAYL has become somewhat of a unicorn in the tech world.

Not only that, but the chair made several appearances in the Hunger Games series and was a regular at the Hooli offices in HBO’s Silicon Valley, Business Insider contributor Melia Robinson wrote.

The sticker price on the SAYL is around $530 and the chair is worth every dime.

Kiss that Keyboard Goodbye

Anyone who’s worked in a traditional office has probably laid their hands on a standard issue HP or Dell keyboard with sky-high keys and that familiar muted thump-thump-thump.

In this new year, make the switch to a chiclet keyboard. These low-profile keys allow you to type quicker by using less pressure to push down each individual key.

One of the most popular (and affordable) chiclet keyboards at Best Buy is the HP K3500. It has the full keyboard with number pad and is wireless. For $29.99, you’ll have a hard time finding a better value.

Bid Farewell to That Ailing Mouse

Owning a mouse that isn’t quite perfect is like driving a car with a squeaky serpentine belt. Most of the time it works fine, but once it starts acting up, the annoyance is nearly unbearable.

In some cases, a mouse that doesn’t track or a scroll wheel that doesn’t spin is a matter of a quick clean. But, if you’ve given the old chap a good run and he’s near the end of his electronic life, it makes no sense to hobble into the new year with him.

Unlike a new office chair, a quality mouse will cost you less than $50. In fact, we found a pair of mice you can use for the office and travel than will cost you less than $40.

The Logitech M320 has been likened to the Honda Accord of the mouse world. It’s reliable, lasts a long time and comes from a reputable company.

The M320 has a two-button setup with a scroll wheel. It’s simple, but not shoddy; it was a PC Mag Editor’s Choice.

If you travel often for work, then consider the  Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Mouse 3600. This workhorse is small enough to fit in your pocket but provides the hand support you need when you’re clicking through reports for hours on a cross-country flight.