Companies are experiencing an epidemic of wasted space. According to research conducted by Herman Miller, only 3 or 4 out of 12 conference room chairs are occupied at a given time. And it’s not only larger conference rooms that have become ghost towns. With more and more people seeking alternative working arrangements, traditional work spaces are dormant far too often. 77% of the time, private offices are unoccupied, while work stations are unoccupied 66% of the time.
There are a few subtle tricks that will make your conferencing and collaboration spaces a bit more hospitable. First, pay close attention to the room’s temperature. Studies have found that productivity peaks when the temperature sits at 71.6 degrees. And quality of light makes a huge difference. Artificial lighting might be necessary for some rooms, but in rooms that have plenty of windows, don’t hesitate to throw those curtains open, as natural sunlight increases alertness.
You might also want to rethink your color scheme. White and beige tend to dominate office aesthetics--probably because those colors are cheap and unobtrusive--but such drab colors don’t do a lot to trigger inspiration. Consider adding some subtle shades of green, yellow and blue, as these colors can increase efficiency, innovation and feelings of stability, respectively. You might be dubious about the science behind this, but just close your eyes for a second and imagine yourself spending a few hours in a white room. Now mentally paint that room a light blue. Better, right?
But we aren’t a paint store. And we can’t control your lighting situation. Where do we come in, then? Well, rooms with technology are used five times more often than rooms without technology. So if you want your staff to start using what we can only imagine is rather expensive real estate, you’ll need to meet them halfway and provide them with tools they want to use.
The lynchpin of your re-design strategy will be the huddle room. With so many offices and work stations unoccupied, you should consider transitioning these moribund spaces into small hubs of collaboration that will supplement the sort of large scale gatherings that go down in proper conference rooms.
Huddle rooms give people time away from their desks while allowing them to continue to collaborate and innovate in small groups. To make this a reality, though, the room must be outfitted with unobtrusive video and audio conferencing/collaboration solutions.
It doesn't take much to get a huddle room up and running. A small table and a few chairs, along with a basic video conferencing set-up, is all you need. A more modest video solution like Polycom Group Convene is ideal for such a room--the screen won't dominate the space, but you still get great sound and impeccable image quality.
So don't let your rooms gather dust. Put them to use. You're paying for them, after all.
Explore our best solutions for huddle rooms and please contact us with any questions. We will have one of our experts contact you shortly.
