An often overlooked part of commercial interior design is creating an optimized acoustic environment for your office. Acoustics play an under-discussed role in fostering a productive and healthy environment, and how you furnish and lay out your space can significantly impact the employees who spend their days there.
A well-designed acoustic environment can dramatically boost employee well-being, foster collaboration and focus, and positively impact how they view their jobs. This can lead to higher retention rates and fewer resources spent on burnout and turnover.
No two companies are alike, however, so how you design your acoustical environment is determined by what aspects of the work environment you want to foster. Depending on your company culture and the work environment you want to foster, you may create a layout and furnishing mix that favors either a collaborative or focus-intensive design approach.
Designing For Collaboration Vs. Deep Focus
While many office managers choose office layouts that follow the latest trends, research shows that a more tailored approach that reflects the needs of your employees and matches the company culture will have a more positive impact on your workforce. An office design that facilitates open communication will not benefit employees who need a quiet, focused environment, and vice versa.
Acoustic environments that facilitate collaboration and communication usually utilize as few barriers between employees as possible. This usually involves using an open-concept office design, utilizing shared seating options in favor of offices and cubicles, and providing plenty of spaces for quick and informal meetings and conversations. Novel design concepts like break-out spaces where coworkers can have impromptu meetings can help contribute to a highly social, fast-paced environment.
On the other hand, spaces meant for deep focus will provide plenty of privacy for each employee to get their work done quietly and efficiently. Barriers provided by seating solutions such as cubicles are ideal, as they psychologically distance employees and provide shelter from both visual and acoustic distractions.
For larger companies with multiple departments housed in the same building, create a mixed environment with dedicated spaces for focused and collaborative employees. This will help prevent added stress for workers who depend on quiet while maintaining a fast-paced and social environment for the teams who require consistent communication to do their jobs.
Elements To Choose
Collaborative environments will utilize furniture elements that break down boundaries and facilitate ad hoc communications. For desking solutions, options like Verity Benching provide a streamlined and versatile workspace for two or more employees. Verity maintains customizability in color and material, and the system offers modular privacy screens that allow some privacy and focus for workers in a fast-paced environment.
Huddle and gathering tables provide flexible workspaces for break-out rooms and open meeting areas. These spaces are ideal for 2-3 workers to separate themselves from the group to collaborate on a single project, brainstorm new ideas, or just chat and plan for upcoming projects and tasks.
For acoustic environments that favor quiet and deep focus, barriers are essential to protect your employees from unwanted noise and visual distractions. Cubicle systems like the Interra Tile System are ideal for providing your workers the privacy and quiet they need to maintain a healthy and efficient workspace.
The Interra system also offers a significant amount of customization options for both functional and aesthetic purposes. Tiles of various materials are available to match your desired office aesthetic while giving workers the power and data connections they need to get the job done.
Planning Your Space
Openness is essential for acoustic environments that foster collaboration and communication. Ensure there are genuinely open areas with seating options arranged in parallel so workers can quickly move from one workstation to another when needed. Another arrangement that might provide some structure to the workspace is arranging seating so that semi-enclosed ‘zones’ or sections of related activity will allow teams or departments to collaborate while remaining separate from other teams to reduce distractions.
For quieter environments, arranging furniture in back-to-back or side-to-side configurations can help reduce the transmission of noise and visual distractions between workstations. Organize your workspace so that teams can be put together in squares or rectangles and provide easy access to meeting rooms that they can use when communication and collaboration arise.
Creating a customized acoustical environment that benefits each worker can be tricky, especially when you need to create a mixed environment with limited space. Specialists like Creative Office Design provide custom-made interior design services to suit any company’s unique needs and provide the optimal work environment for their employees. Call today!