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When Is It Time For Cubicles?

By
Services for Real Estate Pros with The Sundance Company

When setting up your new office space in the Boise Valley, deciding whether or not your office should go the cubicle route can be tricky.

On the positive side, cubicles do provide employees with barriers from noise and visual distractions in the office, allowing them to better concentrate on their work. Cubicles also offer a certain degree of privacy, along with the impression that each employee has his or her own dedicated workspace. Cubicles also offer more space for shelves and a convenient canvas for posting schedules and memos.

On the negative side, cubicles have been known to drastically decrease person-to-person communication in the office, leading to frequent complaints about isolation, depression, and low employee morale. Cubicles can also be rather ugly and uninspiring due to their generally bland color, and have been the subject of ridicule for quite some time now in comic strips and movies.

So when figuring out the best workspace configuration for your employees, the most important issue to consider might be, what do your employees actually do? If your employees spend the majority of their workday on the phone conversing with clients or the general public, going the cubicle route might make sense, as the enclosed space will provide them with the quiet they need to conduct a private conversation. If your employees spend the majority of their days typing away on computers and have little or no need to be on the telephone (or even talk amongst themselves), an open workspace plan might be a better approach.  Of course there are other factors to consider as well like aesthetics, company image, but this is just a little information to mull over when you are setting up or reconfiguring your Boise Valley office space.

Carol Andersen
Navarre Beach Agency - Navarre, FL
NW Floridanulls Real Estate Pro, TRC, ICREA

Interesting post Sundance.  I hated teh feel of cubicle offices, but loved the privacy they offered when necessary.  I installed a mixture of lower and higher sided cubicles to give some folks the privacy they needed and others the sense of community.  

Jan 04, 2011 08:25 AM
Bill Gillhespy
16 Sunview Blvd - Fort Myers Beach, FL
Fort Myers Beach Realtor, Fort Myers Beach Agent - Homes & Condos

Our new office went with cubicles.  Each has storage above and below, plenty of work surface and organized around a convenient traffic pattern.  Ours are approx 5 ft high so making eye contact or chatting is a little difficult.  I find that I get up and walk to the front office area to look out doors or at the weather.  My preference would be to have more natural light and the ability to see out a window.  Best of the 2011 to you !

Jan 04, 2011 08:28 AM