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Open Office Plans Vs Cubicles: Which is Better for Your Work Space?

27 April 2016Mark Canavarrooffice design No comment

Office Design There is an ongoing raging debate in the office world over which is a better working environment for employees, open office plans or old fashioned Cubicles. The best way to sort through this debate is to list the plusses and minuses of both.

The Benefits of Open Office Plans:

Cost Effectiveness

With open office plans, space is utilized to its fullest, especially where small businesses are concerned. This cuts the costs of electricity and heating with more efficient space use. An Open Space Office means less lighting use that covers more employees.

Improved Employee Communication

Communication between employees and colleagues improve when everyone is not holed up in their own little cubicle world. Everybody in the same room brings everyone together and on the same page.

Open Space Offices open up professional relationships on a personal level that standard cubicles cannot. Morale improves with tighter working relationships as doe’s team working abilities, doing away with isolationism.

Departments Merge Together

Companies with Open Space Office Plans have different departments collaborating and delegating daily business together all in one general area. Business runs smoother and tasks get done quicker than when everyone is separated.

The Disadvantages of Open Office Spaces:

Noise, Noise, Noise!

The main complaint of some employees about Open Office Spaces is the noise that putting everyone in one large open room naturally induces. This breaks worker concentration, thus interrupting their thought processes.

The close proximity of workers on the phone to clients and other companies causes overlapping separate conversations. This can really hamper productivity, forcing those who can, to search around for a quite spot with phone access, those who can’t like the receptionists are stuck where they are, and clients on the other side of the line hear clatter rather than what the worker is trying to convey.

When different teams on different projects are working in the same open space, one rowdy team can severely impact the concentration and productivity of another stuck in the same working environment, even if they are across the room from each other.

Solutions:

Strategically place acoustic barriers.
Creating “Zones” or “Neighborhoods” with separate areas for teams for collaboration, and separate desktop and phone areas, plus quite zones with power and wireless connect ability for single workers.
Build “Closed Areas” for workers who need the old cubicle in order to work efficiently – people have different personalities and working needs, providing them to employees enhances productivity.

The Benefits of Standard Cubicle Offices:

Personal Employee Space

Some workers just do better alone in their own personal space. Some people even deem it cruel to force employees into open areas that they are not comfortable with. Numerous studies point out the fact that for some productivity and morale both drop for some employees who cannot adjust to Open Space Offices.

Permanent Desk, Computer, Phones, Storage Shelves

All the things that workers have to search for or call dibs on just to do their work in an Open Office Space environment are all waiting every morning in the same spot for employees who prefer a Cubicle working space, allowing them to get right to work.

Personal Wall Space

Some workers complain about the dehumanizing effect of not having a permanent place to hang pictures of loved ones, post reminders on the walls, or pin up important worksheets, documents and etcetera.

Distraction Free Zone

All those annoying co-workers are barred from interrupting someone in their private cubicle. Noisy workers and those rowdy teams are buffered by the sanctuary of the surrounding walls of the somewhat misunderstood cubicle. This promotes better concentration and uninterrupted thought and inspiration, which in turn boosts
employee productivity.

The Disadvantages of the Dreaded Cubicle:

The Cubicle Rat Maze
Some people who work in standard Cubicle Offices feel like rats stuck in a maze for eight hours a day, starting from the minute they walk off the elevator and are confronted with the endless rows of cubicles to navigate around before finding theirs like a piece of cheese.
The Creativity Killer

Many studies also find that workers in general are less creative and inspired than workers in an Open Office Space environment. This is one of those things that are based solely on human nature and individual personality traits.

The Bland and Uninspiring

Where as Open Space Offices are usually awash with color, views to the outside world or even inside atriums, all designed to inspire the employee and stimulate their minds, Cubicle Office Spaces are not even close to any of these inspirational things; they are frankly bland and to some, soul crushing.

The Isolation Zone

What some workers find comforting about having their own private Cubicle space that is isolated from the rest of the crowd in the office, others find demeaning and isolated to the point of being mind-numbing. These employees are the ones that are more productive in an Open Space Office layout.

Solutions:

Provide open area break rooms to help counteract the claustrophobia of eight hours in an Office Cubicle.
Provide group lunch areas where employees can collaborate and intermingle at during their lunch break.
Provide collaboration rooms for employees, teams, and peers to be able to meet in during work times, outside of the Cubicle box.

Conclusion:

Different things work for different people. This is why the debate about whether Open Office Plans Vs Cubicles, Which is Better, will continue to rage on in the office world and studies will continue to show conflicting data on the subject.

The truth is that they are both right, and both wrong in their own ways. Walking the middle ground by designing both Open Office Spaces and Cubicles in the workplace is the best course of action for keeping both factions of Open Space or Cubicle loving employees happy and productive; reaping in the benefits of both worlds and avoiding the pitfalls of both as well.
Office Design by Gefeoz WikiMedia Commons

5 Reasons You Should Invest in Privacy Panels

19 April 2016Mark Canavarroprivacy screens No comment

Privacy Blue Marker

Your workspace is where you will spend the majority of your career, and its ability to inspire motivation and creativity is crucial to your success. So it stands to reason that your office should possess the perfect elements that encourage and aid your unique work ethic while still allowing you to interact with your co-workers.

This balance between collaboration and individualism is delicate to maintain. For many, focusing can be difficult with the multitude of distractions surrounding them in an office, impeding their ability to produce the greatest quality work possible. However, complete privacy is not possible, as you must be able to pool your collective productivity with your fellow employees to benefit the entire company.

So how does one reconcile these issues?

The answer is privacy panels. Privacy panels are usually made of clear glass or thin material, offering a superficial wall between desks that allows you to work in relative seclusion while still not preventing communication between you and your coworkers. Below are five of the main benefits of these panels, and why you should invest in them.

1. They block visual distractions.

People are visual creatures, and wherever our eyes are drawn, our mind usually follows. This is a detrimental trait when working in an office, as they are constantly full of activity. Whether it is co-workers wandering to and from the fax machine, arranging their desks, conducting phone calls, or a multitude of other things, an office never rests. For you, this can pose a problem as the constant movement is a distraction. Even with intense concentration, the movement in your peripheral vision keeps from you fully focusing and building up the necessary productive momentum.

With a privacy panel, this superficial wall will create a barrier between you and the rest of your office, subconsciously separating you from the activity. Although the visual block may only be a thin piece of fogged glass, it will block the immediate movement, as well as making the rest of the office a second priority in your mind. However, you can still stand to look over the barrier, communicating with those around you.

2.They give a sense of privacy.

Sharing space with several other people can become unnerving. For some, the feeling of being watched or having others look over their shoulder can be a constant distraction, even if they have nothing to hide. Whether you are truly under inspection or not, the feeling may linger in your mind and draw your attention away from your projects.

A privacy panel, no matter how superficial a barrier, gives the sense of seclusion that eliminates this ever-present thought. Additionally, the impression of privacy is given to your co-workers as well as you. Without a panel, your workspace seems open and inviting, encouraging others to speak with you during work when you desire seclusion. With a panel, however, your workspace seems reserved and personal, discouraging others from entering uninvited. This allows you to focus on your own work without several interruptions and without the sense of being watched. However, your workspace is still easily accessible and allows your co-workers to visit you without trouble.

3. They block distracting noise.

Along with the constant visual activity, an office is a noisy place. This noise can range from co-workers talking beside the water cooler, phones ringing and co-workers speaking to clients, noisy machinery such as a fax machine, or perhaps a waiting room nearby with customers chatting. All of this is normal and to be expected of an office, but is incredibly distracting, especially if your work requires intense care to detail or if you experience trouble focusing already. With a privacy panel, although too thin to literally block out the noise, the barrier will create a subconscious separation from the rest of the room, allowing your mind to block out the noise in a way you cannot do when open to the entire room.

4. They help prevent sickness.

During the flu season, an office can be a hotspot for sickness which spreads rapidly between employees. Workers touch the same surfaces, use the same facilities, breathe the same air, and communicate in close proximity, making it ideal for spreading germs. With a privacy panel, you are creating a real obstacle between yourself and your co-workers, blocking airborne sicknesses to a noticeable extent. With this, the odds of catching a sickness are greatly reduced, while still allowing you the necessary connection between workers.

5. They give you a sense of ownership

A workplace should inspire creativity and the motivation to work towards your greatest potential. A privacy panel is low in cost and easy to assemble, creating a secluded and intimate workspace that cultivates all those positive emotions. With this addition, you are adding your own personal touch to your office space, creating a sense of customization and ownership. This will make you feel more comfortable and authoritative, encouraging a sense of prospect and ability. With this newly endowed sense of control, you will have the enthusiasm to take on your work.

Conclusion:

An office is a place to create and develop, no matter what your chosen field. If you wish to work to your maximum potential, producing the service necessary to rocket you forward in success, you must feel comfortable in your workspace. With the help of a privacy panel, you can cultivate that ideal workspace in a simple but efficient way.

Tack Boards

5 April 2016Mark Canavarrooffice design No comment

obex tack In our business, we see space as an entity where productivity takes place.

Everything we design and create is meant to meet your needs and, at the same time, create an efficient workspace where people are motivated to produce quality outcomes.

As you probably know, desks, dividers and office chairs steal the show in the typical office set-up. But there are small touches that can add a significant amount of value to your workspace and meeting rooms. Tack boards are one of those details.

Why Tack Boards?

Imagine the typical meeting in your office, or any office for that matter. What typically happens is your colleagues and you take your seats, flip open your laptop or notebook and start taking notes and suggesting ideas at the appropriate time.

Opens Up Another Avenue of Communication

This traditional scene, in a certain sense, creates collaboration. Ideas are thrown around, topics are debated and decisions are made. But remember, this type of meeting only caters to extroverts and those with enough confidence to speak up. Other team members might have great ideas but never voice them because more aggressive personalities take over.

Tack boards allow this discussion process to take a more democratic turn. Ideas can be written down and tacked up on the wall for all to see. This method of idea generation gets results – everyone is writing down ideas – while allowing for more introverted employees to share their perspectives through writing.

Ideas are Up for Everyone to See

Another aspect here that benefits perceived productivity is that the ideas your team creates are visible. You can see them pinned up on tack boards. This has a couple of benefits.

We just mentioned that the sense of productivity goes up, which is important. Even if your meeting is making slow progress, ideas and initiatives fixed to tack boards give visual markers that communicate something is happening.

Aside from that, tack boards can save people who have to step out of a meeting for a phone call or become distracted. Once their call is over or they conclude their mind wander, they simply look to the tack board to understand what was discussed.

An Element of Visual Vitality

Let’s add another dimension to the visual nature of tack boards: style. Meeting rooms, as you’ve probably noticed, don’t put a premium on looks. Most likely you’ve got a decent table, several chairs and a conference-call station somewhere in the room. And that’s it.

From the outside, your conference room looks like a bland, Spartan space. “Bland” rarely inspires the kind of creativity and critical thinking you need out of your meetings.

When you add tack boards to the mix, you open up dozens of design possibilities. Just take a look at our tack board page.

We aren’t the only ones in the office business offering tack boards, but we definitely take pride in the options you have for color, shapes and sizes. You won’t be limited to bland, square tack boards that only come in uninspiring brown hues.

OBEX lets you choose between 20 different colors and 10 different shapes. To get an idea of what kinds of shape and color combinations are possible for your meeting room, click here to download our tack board brochure. It features six different examples and includes all 20 colors and 10 shapes.

What Others Are Saying About Tack Boards

We did a little research to find out how other companies are using/talking about tack boards. The HT Group, a human capital company based in Austin, Texas, ran a great article about the importance of creating office spaces optimized for getting things done.

Among their suggestions is implementing tack boards along with high-top tables and write-on surfaces in order to spur productive planning and brainstorming sessions. We think this is a great insight based on what we know about today’s office trends.

The new workforce desires an open, collaborative space where interactions happen easily. Tack boards play a part in fostering a collaborative environment.

We also read an Inc. article about improving company break rooms. There are plenty of good suggestions in here, one of which is boosting the break room’s decorations. Vibrant, visual spaces promote conversation and creativity. Part of that equation includes tack boards, which serve the dual purpose of adding flare to otherwise monotonous walls and providing a surface for the expression of ideas.

Questions About Tack Boards?

Remember how we said tack boards are part of the new movement toward a collaborative work space? That’s an important point, because it means adding them to your meeting room or break room takes on a new meaning that may not have been around 10 or 20 years ago.

So take a second to rejuvenate your preconceptions about tack boards. Stop by the page we created for them and try and visualize what they’d look like in your workspace. Then, contact us and we will help you put your vision into practice.

4 Reasons Why Privacy is Important in Any Office

8 March 2016Mark Canavarroworkplace privacy No comment

Privacy is a very important factor in everybody’s life. Mothers with young children crave it like water in a desert. Writers need it to focus their thoughts. Lovers search it out to bask in its blissful solitude together. All human beings need privacy, just as much as they need public interaction.

Why do Human Beings need Privacy?

People, no matter what race or what part of the World they are from need privacy in some form or another to properly function. The lack of personal privacy inhibits personal development and self-expression, and can disrupt a person’s thought processes.

Why Privacy is so important at the Office:

The lack of privacy in an employee’s workspace can hinder a working person’s sense of autonomy, giving them less control over their working environment, and causing their productivity to suffer. In worst case scenarios, it can also be an affront to an employee’s dignity that causes their morale to plummet also.

Below are four major reasons why privacy in an office setting is so important for productive employees to work properly.

#1 – Workplace Information Protections

Businesses small and large have to deal with the workplace security of the information they are working on, or holding. Whether it is a retail outlet with customer credit card or personal information, or a major corporation dealing with sensitive business information or government contract secrets – They all need a safe, secure, and private area in which to handle that information.

With identity theft becoming such an issue these days, employees that are put in charge of handling sensitive information need to have secure and private areas in which to do their jobs, regardless if it is a client’s social security number, or the company’s new plans for the next multi-million dollar widget to hit the market.

Open office areas do not provide these kinds of protections for sensitive business information. Just like you would not use a computer in this day and age without virus protection, employees with access to any type of sensitive information need privacy and security to do their jobs properly.

#2 – Concentration

Constant interruptions, distractions, and background noise can severely hinder an employee’s ability to work. Without privacy and clear train of thought, concentration wanders to everything else except what an employee is supposed to be working on.

According to Teresa Lesiuk, assistant professor at the University of Miami, music can break a worker out of a narrow train of thought, and open their minds to more than just one certain way of thinking.

When an employee is surrounded by cubicles full of fellow employees yammering on phones or to other coworkers, quiet music has been found to be able to give the office worker a sense of personal privacy in their office and enhance concentration in a noisy environment.

No matter what tricks an employee uses in order to drown out the clatter of a busy office, it is a widely accepted fact that privacy is the number one means of ensuring proper concentration on the task at hand in an office setting.

#3 – Personal Space

Definition of Personal Space: The physical space immediately surrounding someone, into which any encroachment feels threatening to or uncomfortable for them.

Everyone has heard of the unseen 4 feet of personal space that people need when interacting with the rest of society. In an office building full of busy coworkers this rule of human nature prevails as well.

Workers in the office or out of it need their own personal space around them in order to feel comfortable. If an employee does not feel comfortable, then they will not be in the proper mindset to work.

This is why privacy is so vital to provide employees with if one wants happy, efficient employees who get the job done on time and get along with their fellow coworkers.
Offices with open spaces need to provide quiet zones and some form of privacy for their employees.

Cubicle workers need enough separated space between other worker’s cubicles as well in order to also feel that they have some designated personal area in-between them, in order to feel that they have an adequate amount of privacy to do their work in.

#4 – Productivity

Privacy for some workers is detrimental to their productivity. These are the workers who absolutely abhor open space office environments. They collaborate when they need to with fellow coworkers and then go back to the sanctity of their cubicle or office in order to finish their work unhindered by needless interruptions.

Increased productivity with an appropriate amount of given effort on the employee’s part, is of course the goal of all businesses worldwide. Regardless of whether the working environment is open spaced or cubicles employees will still need a certain amount of privacy in order to accomplish their working goals also.

The IOSR Journal of Business and Management stated that visibility, accessibility, and informal interaction are all keys to workplace productivity. But without the privacy to sit down alone unhindered, those three important factors to better employee’s productivity are rendered impotent.

Conclusion:

There are many different variables that make up a successful working office environment. Businesses that do not calculate worker privacy into their office equation will most likely suffer for it in the form of lost productivity, which will then equal out to lost profit margins and the inability to properly compete with more efficient competitors.

Providing workers with the proper privacy they need in order to do their jobs is a small price to pay for a successful, happy working office that can still be interactive and collaborative.

Privacy does not mean isolationism. Employers can walk the balance between both worlds in order to create a working environment that is reliably capable of producing desired results without wasting materials, time, or energy, and that is just good business at its best.

How to Boost Office Productivity with These 5 Tips

27 January 2016Mark Canavarroworkplace culture, workplace distractions, workplace privacy No comment

Every office is looking to boost productivity. While there are a whole host of tips and tricks for kicking the afternoon lull, boosting morale and energy, and throwing employee out-put into high gear, sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective.

Here are five tips that can boost your office productivity – and do it immediately.

Set Break Times in Stone

As the first tip, this one seems the most contradictory – taking breaks means time away from projects, cutting into productivity, right? The exact opposite is actually true. The human mind wasn’t designed to operate like a machine, especially not in our early days as a species, so when it finds itself stuck with routine tasks or a huge flow of work, it begins to regress into shut-down mode. This saves energy for that surprise tiger you might see when you go out hunting and gathering later. So the shorter breaks are and the more they’re skipped, the more employees’ minds will start powering down and losing focus on their projects, in fact cutting into productivity.

Cut the Fluff

The greatest key to productivity is focus: an employee’s ability to focus on a project, and management’s ability to focus the tasks they’re assigning to their workers. Often times businesses are strict on work hours, meetings, and the freedom an employee has on a project – with the aim to make all progress clear and tracked. However, to truly encourage productivity, being flexible is the key. This means avoiding meetings when a simple email would suffice to get the information across, being less strict with an employee’s working hours and their ability to work from home, and especially changing the level of creativity allowed within the working force. It’s important to evaluate even the longest of working traditions and think to yourself “does this cut into productivity?” Even if that weekly meeting has been set in stone for years, it may be time to put it away in favor of a more flexible and focused approach.

Make it Personal

When the word “productivity” comes around, it’s usually associated with a bunch of numbers and graphs, as if workers are Terminator-style robots with all the programmable features and none of the awesome superpowers. However, that’s just not the case. People work harder and produce better results when they’re personally motivated to see something accomplished, and by feeding this personalized drive, you’ll find employees willing to go the extra mile and focusing harder during work hours. Make them a part of the project, and give them a reason to actually care.

Get Collaborative

They say two heads are better than one, and after working on something for a long time, it’s easy to get tunnel vision on the entire project. Either the final result won’t be as great as you hoped, or you’ll end up lagging behind while trying to rethink the entire process. By encouraging employees to reach out, you can cut through the fog and get tasks handled much more efficiently, not just boosting productivity, but improving the quality you deliver.

Actually Work Together

Four hands are also better than two – by working with others on big tasks and on small, work can be divided and conquered faster than before. Even better than that, by having several people on the job, you’re benefitting from several different specialties and strengths. When you find yourself loathing a certain part of a project, you can pass this off to someone who thrives in that area, allowing you to concentrate on something you’re good at – and most importantly, something that doesn’t make you want to stab your eye out. This boosts your mood and allows you to work with more focus.

Keep Things Organized

It may seem obvious that keeping things organized leads to productivity, but most people look past the real value it has to offer. If you’re a more creative but scatterbrained kind of worker, you’ll be lost and confused in the clutter of your desk or schedule, not only missing vital deadlines, but even focusing on the wrong projects. For more on-point workers, your drive to get things organized last minute can lead to valuable time being wasted, bleeding into your productivity levels.

Get a To-Do List.

We all have a list of things we want to accomplish, but the means of actually doing so can quickly escape us when the internet and all its sweet, understanding cat videos call to us. To turn this tip into an actual game plan, you have to chart out your daily tasks in detail. Organize them based on importance, so that if you miss any, at least the important things are covered. Organize them based on time, because the more brain-intensive tasks might feel like waterboarding during the afternoon lull. And finally, base them on your level of interest – if you absolutely hate a project, handle it first, and then reward yourself with some email-writing; or on the flipside, try the email-writing first to build up the courage to keep going.

Keep Your Workspace Tidy.

They say geniuses have the messiest desks – however, their skill lies not with their mind but with their ability to not get distracted by the clutter. The rest of us aren’t so lucky; a messy desk will make it difficult to find the tools and objects you need to take on work, and the few minutes spent hunting them down will quickly find you lagging behind in productivity. In addition to this, while most wars are fought and won in the situation room, your battle of getting-things-done is mostly fought in your mind. A cluttered workspace will make you feel cluttered and bogged down, while a tidy area boosts motivation to get stuff accomplished.

By including these tips and tricks in the way you approach the office, you can create a working environment that is focused on just that – working at its full potential.

3 Ways Cubicle Panel Extenders Save You Money

13 January 2016Mark Canavarrocubicle extenders, workplace culture, workplace distractions, workplace privacy No comment

With the modern age making entrepreneurship in fashion and greater profits for existing businesses more attainable, a problem quickly arises: office space. Privacy can lead to focus for employees, which can lead to greater productivity and finally greater results, and that calls for a cubicle that helps this concentration. However, investing in so many cubicles can quickly feel like shooting yourself in the foot – saving money and making profits is the name of the game, right?

With cubicle panel extenders, you can get the best of both worlds: a customized cubicle that fits your needs and size – and more importantly – one that fits your price tag. Here are three ways that these panel extenders can actually save you money in the long-run and in the short-run, making them the best choice for a new business or an already roaring company:

Save Money By Saving Time

Every business knows that saving money isn’t just about cutting on prices and finding deals – it’s about conserving the time and effort your employees are spending on tasks. This applies to ensuring productivity is kept up and small delays don’t lead to a missed deadline. Cubicle panel extenders offer this same advantage by offering privacy and focus to your employees, allowing them to focus on their work and not the distraction of a water-cooler conversation or nearby clients conversing on a separate project. The savings don’t just stop there – the very way they’re built is designed to save time, and inherently, save you money.

Less Time Spent on Installation

Whether you’re a handyman who can install the most difficult of objects in a matter of seconds, or you’re the less crafty type who struggles with installing a light bulb, the cubicle panel extenders are designed with ease and efficiency in mind. If you’re remodeling your office space and find privacy as a key to success, you can find yourself in a jam for time with traditional cubicles that can take as much as a day to put in place. However, the extenders are as simple as a few moments of your time, an Allen wrench, and a handful of screws, allowing you to transform your office without cutting into your deadlines.

Less Time Spent Readjusting

Success is about innovation, and that may mean redesigning your office space again in the near future. With normal cubicles, you’d find yourself in the same bind all over again, with the need to disassemble, move, and reassemble the spaces over the course of a day – if not many days. These extenders offer the same speed the first time as they do in the last, and readjusting the angle or moving them entirely can be done in a matter of minutes, saving you valuable time and money with it.

Save Money By Saving Space

When success comes knocking at your door, it comes with a handful of problems to join it. As your business expands, this means hiring more employees and purchasing more equipment to handle the workload, and while your company may be growing, it doesn’t mean your office building is. To avoid tight workspaces that result in more headaches and frustration than productivity, arranging cubicles in the most economical and efficiency way is the answer. The more people you can fit in a room, the less rent you’ll pay on a larger building, and the more productivity you can achieve through collaboration. Cubicle panel extenders it all in one.

More Compact and Flexible

Traditional cubicles keep to a very strict size and level of flexibility, making your dreams of a pillow-fort style office space hard to come by. Cubicle panel extenders, on the flipside, offer a level of flexibility and creativity, allowing you to extend them as far as you’d like or angle them in certain directions to keep from irritating your co-workers in tight spaces. With their compact size making it easy to match up several to achieve a certain angle or only reach so far, you can create the cubicle space you want in a shape that suits the greater good of the office.

Save Money By Spending Less

Of course the greatest money-saving advantage is the simplest – cubicle panel extenders can literally save you money. This is accomplished not only by their more reasonable price range and compact size, making it possible to buy fewer to suit your needs, but in greater ways.

They Come with Everything You Need

Some cubicle walls require an array of different tools and pieces to come together, with special adjusters, drills, and even unique screws stacking on the price tag in addition to its expected cost. Cubicle panel extenders are made for the future, with efficiency and ease in mind, and they accomplish this by coming entirely self-contained. Each features an Allen wrench with the packaging, all the screws needed, and no specialized parts that you have to search out last minute, making it possible for you to account the cost and then trust it.

No Need to Invest in New Cubicles

As your business grows and more space is needed, maybe you decide to go the simpler route and upgrade to a larger office building – but the costs don’t end there. Now you’re in dire need of more cubicles to accommodate new employees and collaborative projects. How can you manage all of it without racking up the price tag? Cubicle panel extenders allow you to use the traditional cubicles you already have and make them larger, at a significantly lesser cost. Now you can create that awesome hacker-style desk space with a wrapping panel making your area larger, all without the price tag you’d have to hack a bank to afford.

The simple concepts are often the best, and when your office space is looking for a change, it’s time to focus on what works at the right price tag. In the end, these extenders can do more than make office life easier: they can save you mo

4 Industries Where Office Privacy is Vital

16 December 2015Mark Canavarronoisy office, open office design, privacy screens, workplace aesthetics, workplace culture, workplace distractions, workplace privacy No comment

More and more offices are making the switch from traditional cubicles to a more open-spaced layout, designed to create a space that encourages energy, productivity, and especially the sharing of information for the best collaboration. However, this advantage also comes with a disadvantage – a huge loss in privacy. For some industries, office privacy is not that great a concern, yet there are still many industries that rely on discretion as their bread and butter, not only for completing their work but retaining their credibility as businesses that can be trusted.

Here are four industries where office privacy is still incredibly vital.

1. The Health Industry

Anyone who’s gone to the hospital and been forced to wear one of those nightgowns with the open back understands that privacy in the health care arena is hard to come by. However, jokes aside, when the technical aspect comes into play within the offices of the doctors themselves, the technicians, the scientists, and so on, privacy between offices and between cubicles is absolutely key, considering the information they have on hand and the amount of people who could suffer if it was wrongly unveiled.

Identity theft.

The health care industry has more information on us than our own mothers, with access to not only our immediate contact information, names, ages, and so forth, but in some cases more sensitive legal information that could result in a horrible case of identity theft if revealed. Privacy within the office through privacy panels, personal offices, specialized computers meant to combat those “over the shoulder readers,” and other tactics ensure that only those with explicit permission and clearances can review the information, preventing a new employee, an intern, or even a long-time worker having a bad day from doing something unwise with the information.

Embarrassment and loss of trust.

While your name and mother’s maiden name is certainly personal information, what can be more personal than your health records themselves? In the health care industry, patients trust a certain level of confidentiality which allows them to be open about the state of their health. If you knew you were risking a few new interns joking about your rather embarrassing disease that night at the bar, you would be far less likely to trust the medical profession in the future. This logic is why office privacy is crucial in the health industry, as privacy for personal reasons is just as important as for legal reasons.

2. The Financial Industry

A title with no short limitation, the financial industry such as banking, stock brokerage, and even online retail stores are under no small amount of pressure to keep that private information private. While an office does allow for greater collaboration, ensuring that the working space is kept enclosed and private is a top priority, with the aim to ensure that the vital and even personally dangerous information they have access to doesn’t result in ruin.

Identify theft or financial ruin.

Just as with the health industry, the loss of personal information can lead to others taking your identity and running from the hills, sparing only the time to land some serious blows against your credibility, your financial stability, and more. Entrusting your personal information and especially your cash to an industry requires a certain amount of trust, with the confidence that such a relationship results in profits rather than financial ruin. By accidentally sharing a few numbers, a few names, or even allowing a passing employee without clearance to glance at a screen, people could be at risk of losing their entire livelihood. With this in mind, many of the businesses within this industry have taken great pains to ensure that privacy panels, enclosed cubical, personal offices, and more are set in place to ensure they can benefit others rather than stand as a massive risk.

3. Law Enforcement

Anyone who’s watched a daytime soap opera is familiar with what happens if a member of the law enforcement, or the government for that matter, leaks a vital piece of information. Not only does it weaken their evidence, but it discredits the individuals themselves and can result in slanderous claims against innocent people. This extends far beyond catching criminals and into all elements of law enforcement, where they are privy to vital information about several people that they themselves, and especially those they’re close to, may not know. With this in mind, office privacy can be the difference between a system that works for the benefit of others, and one that leads to huge lawsuits, a loss in reputation, and damaged lives.

4. Cloud Storage

You may think that the cloud is the exact opposite of an industry in need of office privacy, since the purpose of the cloud is to share information and make it readily accessible by others. On the contrary, cloud computing and storage is home to more information than any of the previous industries combined. In fact, many of those industries turn to cloud’s online sharing and storage as a means for managing their business. This makes it clear that the cloud’s ability to give access only to the right people, and to dodge potential information leaks, is vital.

There are many facets to cloud computing, each requiring a team of experts to manage it. However, cyber terrorism is on the rise and there is nothing a few hackers would like better than to stumble upon a random office conversation, finding a few key words that lead them to unlock that sensitive information. With that in mind, cloud storage, and both the businesses and the techs who manage it, are in true need of office privacy at its best.

Collaboration and sharing truly is what makes the world go round, but when it comes to the sensitive information we’d rather keep to ourselves, and the industries we trust to keep it for us, implementing a certain degree of office privacy is the only thing standing between disaster and a well-working machine.

Noisy Coworkers? 3 Tips to Help You Be More Productive

2 December 2015Mark Canavarrocubicle extenders, desk-mounted panels, noisy office, workplace aesthetics, workplace culture, workplace distractions, workplace privacy No comment

noisy-coworkers-195x300 Everyone works differently. Each person will approach a task with a diverse and unusual array of tools, techniques, requirements, downfalls, and advantages to see it completed. With that in mind, working collaboratively can be a burden rather than a help.

An open office is made to encourage communication and interaction, all with the aim to boost productivity, but for some, the sound and activity can actually do the opposite. This gets turned up to eleven when general activity isn’t the only enemy – a particularly noisy coworker is. You know, the kind who likes to read aloud, take their calls on speaker, or even approaches conversations with a voice of utter thunder.

You can’t let this problem harm your productivity, but there are better ways to avoid the distraction besides hoping for a change in their personality or even a transfer. Do you have a noisy coworker? Here are three tips for getting past this obstacle and staying productive.

1. Listen to Other Things For many, the issue is not sound, but noise.

You may be able to ignore the intense sound of a storm outside your window, but the noisy conversation of two nearby coworkers can completely distract you, preventing your concentration on the work at hand. The simple answer is to substitute the distracting noise with something your mind can more easily ignore.

– Music.

Studies have proven that music in fact helps people concentrate; it allows your brain to limit the number of distractions in the environment to a single sound, and then manage that distraction. With this in affect, more brain power can be devoted to what actually matters. Instrumental music is especially favorable, as our minds do not interpret soft piano or violin in the same way it does voices – a sound that is made to draw our attention and keep our attention. In this way, Mozart becomes a much better working companion than the employee next to you, because at least he knows how to stay objective.

– Rain sounds and white noise.

In the same way music helps limit our distractions and fill our ears with something easily ignored, white noise provides a healthy substitute to voices. White noise is specifically sounds such as running water, rain, wind, and so on, which are so normal that they’reeasily dismissed. This can also apply to a simple desk fan or an air purifier that will supply dull noise, but a pair of headphones can be even more efficient. Some rain
sounds can help to not only block outside noises, but also create a more tranquil mood that allows you to focus and complete your task.

2. Get Out of Dodge

Sometimes the best approach is the most direct approach, and if you are one of those people who find music and white noise as distracting as the noisy coworker, you may need to take the situation by the reins and find a more obvious solution.

– Ask your manager to move you to a different space. Your productivity level benefits or harms the entire business, so if you’re suffering from distractions and are unable to deliver the necessary work, your manager is suffering too. By approaching your boss and letting them know that a noisy coworker– who may or may not be named – is making it difficult to work, they can move you to another area, eliminating the problem with advantages for not only you but the entire company.

– Get to work early or stay late.

Midday is known as the most prime hours for work, as the sun is high, the sleepiness of the morning has faded, and the afternoon lull has yet to set in. Because of this, you might find your noisy coworker is a lot less active and a lot less loud in the mornings while everyone is still easing into the day. This makes it an ideal time for you to begin your projects, allowing you to complete vital tasks that require concentration before the distracting person arrives. Additionally, while no one likes staying late, if you continue to work after your coworker has gone home, you’ll have a quiet office that allows you to keep your priorities in order, leaving the noisy midday for less important tasks or even some web-surfing.

3. Take Action

If these more docile solutions have not earned a result, or perhaps they simply aren’t your style, you can always resort to the fastest, most direct, and – nine times out of time – most effective solution.

– Ask them to quiet down. While there are certainly people who must have a patent on being obnoxious, many others are unaware they’re being so noisy. Perhaps they have an unusually loud voice, think that communicating on speaker boosts productivity, or that everyone works in a loud environment as well as they do. In these cases, they are simply trying to do their job well and do not realize they are preventing you from doing the same. By simply mentioning the problem to them and asking them to lower their loud activities, the entire situation can be resolved.

– Ask a manager to speak with them. If you find confrontation as appealing as walking on hot coals, or your coworker does indeed have a patent on being obnoxious, the next best step is to bring the issue to the attention of your manager. At this point, your manager can speak with the employ with a certain degree of authority, resolving the problem that may have caused derision or confrontation between two employees of equal status.

Noisy co-workers are as helpful for productivity as a one-man-band in your living room is helpful for sleeping, but there’s no reason to accept an inability to focus. By applying a few of these three tips, you can see the problem resolved, your productivity boosted, and perhaps a better workplace environment – since everyone else can also enjoy a reprieve from the noise. If the noise is still unbearable, you may want to look into cubicle extenders or panels. OBEX Office Panel Extenders offers a large variety of office panel extenders to fit any cubicle or desk.

How Office Furniture Color Can Affect the Tone of Your Work Place

18 November 2015Mark Canavarroworkplace aesthetics, workplace culture, workplace privacy No comment

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What is Color Really?

Colors are different frequencies of light whose spectrums run from the lowest, which are in the red to orange. The middle spectrum is yellow to green. The highest is the blue to violet frequencies. The human eye is a remarkable natural phenomenon of nature. It sees 10 million distinct colors.

Many businesses and corporations believe in, and swear by the emotional value that colors hold for industries like: Interior design, marketing, businesses and their offices, and even in the prison system to influence and control prisoners adverse behaviors.

The Psychological Effects of Colors

Blue Tones: If one is trying to achieve a cooling, calming effect in a stressful environment, whether in work or in numerous business situations, blue tones are the way to go. Blue tones are soothing and are good for high tension and crowded areas, which makes them great for places with standing lines of customers like banks and movie theatres. Blue is also the number one choice when people are asked what their favorite color is.

Relaxing Greens: Greens are also similar to blues. Greens give an air of reassurance, and of course nature. Green is relaxing and is said to refresh one’s mood and mental stamina. Dark green instills concentration. Add some other colors in as well with the furniture scheme, or the mood could get muddled from too much browns in the room.

Red Tones: The fiery energy of red tones in furniture is great for motivation and productivity. Red is a power color, good for an office of authority. Reds are also emotional as we all know, celebrated as the symbol of the heart, which will add an air of caring to a business or organization. Red is an aggressive color, though, so make sure you don’t go overboard.

White: A clean color, hygienic, and hospital like. White is a no distractions color. White is definitely better when suited to a doctor’s office, rather than a business office. White can come off to customers or clients as being too cold and unimaginative. White also gets dirty far too quickly when it comes to the office.

Black is Black: This color is better for the ceilings of warehouses. It is great for a men’s suit or at funerals, but not for furniture in a business, unless it’s a nice leather couch, but black instead of brown with leather still either gives that dark biker look in an office, or a mortuary waiting room. Black can be great for going to sleep, but it can also be a negative influence to some psychologically in a deeply depressing way.

Dismal gray: This color is perceived as totally neutral. This is why there are no proven psychological attributes of gray that are known. It is a lack of any color in its form – And therefore nothing. Gray can be depressing as anyone from Seattle can contest to. Gray is dull and listless and not appropriate in office furniture unless in small amounts.

The Purple Peace Train: Purple is a peaceful color, and a favorite for kids, just look at Sesame Street and the use of purple to instill non-threatening laughter for small children. Purple is a fun color that tells people that you are a young vibrant company that really knows the times and what other young people want. This is a great Tech color for up and comings. Fun, vibrant, new, just don’t try to pull off purple in a serious environment. It is hard to keep a straight face with purple office furniture. Purple is also attributed to reflection and contemplation, making it a meditative color, perfect for a break room at a contemporary office environment.

Vibrant Orange: Just as Home Depot gets your attention with a loud orange color logo, transmitting home value, knowing how color affects your customers is not just good decorating skills, it is good business! It can be a matter of boosting workplace productivity up to 20% if implemented in the right optimum working environment. Orange instills low cost, regular folks, good values. Orange is also festive and can brighten up a room when needed. If one needs cheerful in an office setting, orange is your color.

Everyone has a deep personal love of color and cultural associations that affect their experiences and perceptions of life. Believing in a subconscious connection with color is not that far-fetched. Influencing your office with color also influences how people see and instantly perceive your company. You normally only have one chance to impress in business. Make sure to give yourself a well prepared psychological advantage. Yellows oranges, reds, and several other popular colors play more of a part in our everyday lives than we sometimes even realize. But in the subliminal world of marketing, that’s a good thing for you and your business office.

3 Reasons Why Office Noise Can Reduce Productivity

4 November 2015Mark Canavarronoisy office, workplace culture, workplace distractions, workplace privacy No comment

Noisy, talky, and Mr. inconsiderate! Know these three coworkers? Some people at work seem to have no consideration when it comes to other people in the office trying to work. Noisy people top the main complaints from office employees, about the distractions at work that reduce their productivity rates.

An article in the Journal of Applied Psychology on, Stress and Open-office Noise, concluded what many of us already knew from experience – “Noisy coworkers can make it impossible to work.” The study of forty office workers found that workers in noisy open space type office settings, had reduced motivation factors; in other words, low productivity! Open space office formats, are notorious for being noisy but interactive workplaces. But even if you’re trapped in your own personal box in a standard cubical farm office layout, noise is still a factor in distracting and reducing productivity when excessive noise travels across the office room. Here are three reasons why office noise can reduce your productivity.

1. Lost Concentration

A 2015, BBC News Business article, quoted Professor Gloria Mark of the Department of Informatics at the University of California as saying that. “Email, social media, notifications, and countless other digital distractions are eroding our ability to concentrate on individual tasks in the 21st Century.” I think all of us can agree that our well-meaning social media electronics get in the way with what could be productive work lives, especially when we get too attached to them – OR IN WORSE CASE SCENARIOS, WAY TOO OBSESSED!

There is a time for social media and it isn’t in the workplace. Social Media is best enjoyed at home relaxing after work or on the weekend. The only internet action that should be going on at work, is either accessing something for a client or researching something for your work, not playing Candy Crush, or posting something on Facebook like: “Hey Kickin it at Work bro!, I’m Sooooooh Booooored.” Shut it down and remove the temptation to social media.

Cellphones are just as bad. Unless it’s a work phone, turn it off! If it is a work phone, keep personal phone calls off of it. Many of us have kids in the workplace, but the one’s that do, also know of all the needless “Can’t Wait!,” supposed emergencies that kids call into your work for on your cellphone, just because they want to go to their new friends’ house for movie night. Don’t think your boss doesn’t notice it too, or that it doesn’t influence him on your quarterly or yearly work review.

2. Hindered Communication

The second most irritating concentration and customer service breaker is not being able to hear what either your coworkers are saying, or more importantly, what your clients or customers are trying to ask you over the phone. Technically, if an office needs a quiet zone or a phone room, there’s an excessive amount of noise going on in that workplace.

This is why it is better to at least insist on upholding some sort of moderate noise level. No one expects total silence in a busy office, but there should be some standard of expectations on your part, if expected by your employer to work to your fullest productivity level. It is only fair that you have some say in your working environment. This is why it is best to quietly try to solve any noise problems yourself before resorting to going to management.

Pull the offending excessive noise making worker aside first, so as not to create any opposite sides between other coworkers. Talk it out low keyed and rationally. If that doesn’t work, then in extreme measures, strength in numbers may be required in order to bring the problem up with management. Keeping calm is always the best policy when trying to communicate with others in the workplace. It is always important to get along, both for productivity, and the entire office morale.

3. Divided Community

The workplace is like a miniature community, even if it is a large corporation. Work sections are normally put together in specialized groups, and those groups divided into teams. When excessive noise becomes a negative argumentative issue between two individuals or group, infighting becomes more prevalent in the workplace, and then productivity goes out the window.

Music is a wonderful thing, and it is tempting at work to kick up the tunes and get your work on. But the truth is music is a matter of taste. The feud between Rock and Rap has been going on since before some coworkers have even been born. The last thing a workplace needs is a running competition between two workplace factions who face off over Jamming vs. Bumping. Unfortunately, music can be very divisive. It can also be a major distraction and a productivity killer for other workers as well.

Excessive loud talking is also a persistent productivity drain at work. There are always those one or two people at work, that just don’t seem to get it that they can have a conversation without shouting it across the room while everyone else is trying to concentrate. These people are not hard of hearing, just hard headed. They just can’t seem to respect anybody else’s right to be able to focus on their work in peace. No one can possibly keep up with their productivity level with two bozos’ loudly talking about their antics over the weekend.

No one ever wants to get into a confrontation at work with another employee, but your job relies on your ability to produce, so it is unwise to just let it go while your production suffers. Stand up for yourself, but do it in a way that highlights your problem solving skills to your coworkers and employers, rather than get caught up in a problem at work over noisy coworkers continuing to ruin your productivity and peace of mind.

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