The modular phone booth has grown in popularity the last few years, due to the increasing awareness that purely open-concept desk arrangements are detrimental to privacy in the office. Nonetheless, there still remain some skeptics who believe that introducing suitable spaces for privacy results in decreased work efficiency and interpersonal communication by encouraging workers to skive. This could not be further from the truth.
Let’s dive into the top three reasons why privacy is integral for the continued productivity and health of office workers everywhere.
Safeguarding sensitive data
Confidentiality is the cornerstone of any business arrangement between companies and their external partners or vendors. Afterall, one needs to be able to trust that you are able to keep top secret information of projects under wraps and away from prying eyes.
However, this is difficult to do in a purely open concept office where privacy is hard to come by, and even harder to maintain when it comes to sensitive data. This is where elements such as the modular phone booth and mini office pods will come in handy, by providing a bubble of privacy for its users to conduct conference calls or work on sensitive information that the rest of the office is not privy to. Having such elements in the office will not only safeguard confidential documents and data, but also reassure potential business partners that their information is in safe hands.
Protecting the physical and emotional health of its users
Research has shown that individuals who work in a purely open-plan office actually suffer from decreased physical and emotional health, as well as less-than-ideal work performance. Illnesses grew to be more frequent, resulting in greater employee absences due to illnesses. As you can imagine, this is undoubtedly detrimental to both employee welfare and workplace efficiency.
It is therefore even more critical to reduce the negative stress employees are exposed to by adding furniture such as mini office pods or office desk pods. This creates an oasis of privacy and peace for its users to retreat to when in need of relief from office chatter or interpersonal interaction. Furthermore, incorporating modern phone booths would also reduce the negative stress of employees who need to take urgent personal phone calls, but fear exposing sensitive details of their personal lives to curious co-workers.
Maintaining workplace collaboration and boosting efficiency
It has been found that open-plan offices lead to a 70% decrease in face-to-face communication. Naturally, this leads to decreased workplace efficiency. Other factors that contribute to decreased workplace efficiency is the effect of noise that disrupts concentration on certain tasks requiring high focus.
Integrating modular phone booths or office desk pods in the office would guard against these perils of decreased collaboration and workplace efficiency in purely open-plan offices. Taking a call in a modular phone booth for instance not only reduces unnecessary noise for other employees, it would also reduce the stress of having the whole office listen into that personal call.
Office desk pods can also be a much-needed sanctuary when the office gets overwhelmingly busy. The office desk pod or mini office pod are extremely versatile to allow for both individual work and group collaboration, thereby boosting workplace efficiency whilst also reducing negative stress.
Little to no privacy in offices is increasingly recognised as detrimental to employee welfare, project management and workplace efficiency.
It is now time to actively integrate versatile spaces of privacy within all offices to guard against the perils of inadequate workplace privacy, and to ensure a conducive environment for its users to remain content, healthy, and productive.
Check out InstaPod’s huge range of pods, and feel free to contact us if you wish to buy or rent any pods or phone booths for the office or home. We will do our best to accommodate your specific needs!
