You’ll always need a conference room for larger meetings and more formal gatherings, but the huddle room is on the rise in the business world. A small space intended for intimate and informal collaboration sessions and meetings, the huddle room is the ideal place to bring a brainstorming session to the next level or to find some peace and quiet for some heavy problem-solving. Here are six great reasons to consider adding one of these versatile, streamlined spaces to your floorplan.
Cut Costs
A huddle room should be furnished with a table and chairs and equipped with a basic video conferencing solution with sharing capabilities. So yes, a huddle room is an investment, but the modest size of the room (and the informal nature of the work that will be done in it) means you won’t have to break the bank outfitting it with world class speaker arrays or multi-screen video banks. Keeping it simple means keeping costs down.
Increase Flexibility
A workplace with multiple huddle rooms gives employees a distinct advantage: with collaborative, connected spaces on hand whenever the need arises, team members can quickly cohere into a brainstorming superpower. An uncluttered huddle room equipped with a table, chairs and simple display technology is an ideal location for employees to gather and hash out a new idea or connect with remote colleagues at a moment’s notice.
Welcome Your Remote Workers
Employees who spend most of their time working remotely probably won’t have their own dedicated workspace at the office. That would be an incredible waste of resources. But remote workers should have a place to work when they do visit the office. A comfortable, inviting and adaptable space--so no broom closets or basements, okay? Huddle rooms work great as a temporary staging ground for workers who aren’t often in the office.
Get Away From the Open Workspace
Many businesses are opting for open-plan workspace designs, which is all well and good, but this sort of arrangement makes it difficult to have a private or more intimate exchange. Who knows what will come up. Maybe you need to record a conversation and can’t have any background noise. Or maybe you need to make a personal call. Whatever the case may be, a huddle room provides a temporary refuge from the bustle of an open office.
Free Up the Conference Room
Without huddle rooms, smaller groups often convene in conference rooms, which isn’t the most efficient use of space. And an overbooked conference room can create scheduling headaches and logistical complications. Keep your worlds separate: let small groups use the huddle rooms and keep the conference room free for larger and/or more formal gatherings.
Increase Productivity With Intimacy
Big meetings can give participants far too many opportunities to disengage. A manager’s interminable speech, an incessant barrage of barely germane digressions, crosstalking colleagues picking at a technicality--such dispiriting conference fouls are very good excuses for bored employees to let their minds drift to more pleasant and far less productive thoughts. The intimacy engendered by a huddle room keeps everyone present, and with that presence comes expectation: that everyone will stick to the task at hand, that everyone will be heard, that everyone will be listen.
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