How Modular Pods Help Open Offices Maintain Flexibility And Privacy

To accommodate shifting workplace dynamics, including hybrid and remote work and distributed teams, office occupiers are opting for flexibility whenever possible, turning to modular meeting rooms and phone booths that can be assembled, disassembled and moved as needed.

Room, which manufactures Scandinavian-design-inspired soundproof office pods, has been leading the charge in this space. Managing Director Thierry Ondet has seen firsthand the growing need for flexibility in workspaces and the challenges companies have faced. 

“We had one client who, in the space of three years, changed their office layout four times,” he said. “They come to us because they want to avoid doing construction.”

Other Room clients seek out the company because they need to reshape their offices on dramatically short timelines, “as in next week,” Ondet said.

Landlords and tenants know that office interior build-outs can be expensive, messy and time-consuming. These projects are typically undertaken once every 10 or even 15 years for a given space.

Now, after a decade of seeing tenant improvement allowances surge, landlords are growing weary of handing over cash to entice occupiers to sign leases.

The ubiquity of open floor plans remains, however. Touted for their power to foster collaboration, employers aren’t abandoning these layouts, but they continue to grapple with the pressure to offer workspaces that also provide privacy, especially for employees who are used to working from home.

“Open floor plans are great, but they create the side problem of being noisy,” Ondet said. “Our simple solution, launched eight years ago, was the Room phone booth, which continues to be our best-selling product.” 

More than 8,000 companies use Room phone booths today, and the company has sold more than 35,000 units of the product globally.

New Product Line

Room’s clients range from tiny startups with teams as small as five employees to Fortune 500 companies, including Google, Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, Samsung and even NASA.

“With the growing demand for flexibility that our clients have communicated to us, our product range has evolved,” Ondet said. “One thing we realized is that people were staying in our phone booths much longer than the length of one phone call.”

To provide privacy and address the issue of insufficient meeting spaces, Room expanded its product offering beyond the phone booth to modular meeting rooms of varying sizes. 

The Room Collection is available in three sizes — small, medium and large — which can serve as meeting rooms, single-person private offices and more. The units can be configured in many ways.

“The Room Collection embraces the idea that workplaces are iterative,” Room Vice President of Product Engineering Justin Dollinger said in the press release announcing the launch. “Spaces should grow with teams and allow people to ebb and flow through different modes of work, without being locked into a static floor plan.”

The units come equipped with desks, lighting, power outlets, sound insulation and ventilation. Additionally, select Room Collections products are Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant to ensure adequate workspaces for all employees. 

Room products arrive flat-packed with simple tools included, and they can be installed very quickly, without specialized labor, Ondet said. 

“Our phone booths can be installed in less than 60 minutes, and Room Collection units can be installed in three hours,” he said. “Perhaps even more critically, units can be taken apart and reconfigured as a client’s office needs evolve.”

Ondet said Room is committed to sustainable practices, and the company’s flexible, easily installed products eliminate the need for traditional construction services and waste, which are responsible for a significant portion of the world’s carbon emissions.

New Market Opportunity

Room products also come in handy in unexpected places, beyond traditional offices.

Warehouses are optimized for logistics, not people. They can be cavernous, loud, fast-paced and ill-suited for private conversations or breaks.

“These are stressful environments,” Ondet said.

To retain hourly workers, employers have begun to look for ways to make these spaces more people-friendly.

“We’re seeing customers installing our products in distribution centers to create spaces where employees can take a call, have a one-on-one meeting or even just sit quietly for a few minutes to decompress,” Ondet said.

The units, which include powerful sound insulation, can also be used as offices for warehouse managers.

“Creating a sanctuary is easier to accomplish with a Room product than with construction,” Ondet said. “It’s an exciting new market opportunity for us.”

Universal Setup

Other surprising use cases for Room have emerged from specific workplace tensions.

In 2022, a fast-growing global cybersecurity software as a service company approached Room with a problem. Most of its employees were located in San Francisco and London, but the company had also opened satellite offices and hired employees across Europe and Asia.

While remote employees would join large meetings via individual video conference, the headquarters team would all join with video from a single conference room. The remote employees found they couldn’t hear or participate in side conversations.

“The remote workers felt at a disadvantage, sidelined and frustrated,” Ondet said.

Room worked with the company to create an office layout that allowed them to install enough phone booths so that every employee, even those at central locations, could join virtual meetings individually, Ondet said.

“It leveled the playing field, eliminating the issue of interruptions and the feeling of exclusion,” Ondet said. “The feedback was incredibly positive, and they are continuing to use this setup to this day.”

While the use cases for Room products vary, they all point back to the same theme: flexibility.

“With return-to-office policies continuing to ramp up in terms of number of days, the issue of noise isn’t going away,” Ondet said. “Modularity can help employers prioritize productivity and uphold morale.”

With their plug-and-play simplicity, Room products provide scalability and adaptability without the hassle, waste, cost and permanence of traditional construction.

“It’s a hedge against uncertainty without sacrificing functionality and aesthetics,” Ondet said.

This article was produced in collaboration between Room and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.