Blog > October 2026 >

What 3 Companies Did With the Space Where the Desks Used to Be Open

October 7, 2026 4 min read

Key takeaways

• UK offices reduced desk ratios from 79 to 56 per 100 employees, converting the recovered floor area into small enclosed rooms and flexible zones for collaborative work.
• Fixed in-office days create predictable attendance peaks, which cause 43% of workers to cancel meetings when they cannot find an available room.
• Door Tablet screens eliminate hallway confusion by displaying real-time availability, and the software captures accurate utilisation metrics that building-level badge counts miss.

UK offices now provide 56 desks for every 100 employees. In July 2022, the figure was 79.

That comes from AWA's Hybrid Working Index, and it is probably the most useful number in workplace design right now. Roughly a third of British desks have disappeared in four years. The floor space did not disappear with them.

So something took their place. This is about what.

Three companies have already done that work for you. Each completed a major redesign between 2023 and 2025, in different sectors and at very different budgets, and each solved a different part of the problem.

The floor got rebalanced, not emptied

The clearest way to see the shift is CBRE's occupancy data. Between 2021 and 2023, private space fell from 56% of office floor area to 45%. Collaborative space went from 14% to 20%.

Private space includes assigned desks and enclosed offices. Collaborative space includes meeting rooms, but also lounges, project areas and the sort of half-formal seating that has no good name yet. The office did not get smaller so much as it changed what it was mostly made of.

CBRE's 2026 occupancy report found that 68% of employees name collaborating with colleagues as their main reason for coming in. Focused work migrated home. What was left behind was the part that needs other people in the room, and rows of identical desks are a poor container for that.

JLL's 2026 occupancy benchmark shows where the space went in practice: private offices continuing to decline, with phone booths, focus rooms and small meeting rooms rising in their place. Not open plan. Small enclosed rooms, in quantity.

Three companies, three different designs

Lloyds Banking Group, 125 Colmore Row, Birmingham

Overbury's refurbishment of Lloyds' regional head office covers 151,000 sq ft across nine levels and took 72 weeks. It is the largest single-occupier office fit-out ever completed in the city.

The interesting number is the seat mix. The building supports over 1,750 people with more than 1,300 desks and over 600 alternative work settings, including booths and breakout areas. So desks are now roughly two-thirds of the seats rather than all of them. The number of meeting rooms was doubled.
Collaboration spaces on every floor, an events space sized for town halls, a broadcast studio for filming on site, a tech bar for walk-up IT support. Plus a gym, a music room and a contemplation space, all designed for wheelchair access.

What to take from it: the desk count is no longer the plan. It is one line in the plan. If you double the meeting rooms, the arithmetic of a smaller desk count starts to work.

NatWest Group, 250 Bishopsgate, London

You do not need to build a new office when you can refurbish the old one.

NatWest consolidated its London portfolio from six major buildings down to two, and 250 Bishopsgate became the head office. It is an 11-storey glass and steel block designed by EPR Architects in 1998, which is to say a thoroughly desk-centric building from the tail end of the cubicle era. LOM architecture and design retrofitted it in phases, during and after the pandemic, without closing it. Staff kept working while the work went on around them.

The specification was reuse first. Ceilings, storage, desks and chairs were repurposed rather than skipped. Recycled desktops, mobile furniture and moveable walls make up reconfigurable areas that LOM calls Flexi Zones, which can be rearranged for teamwork, quiet work or events. The old ground-floor dealer floor became a 300-seat conference centre. An old third-floor meeting centre became a co-working floor. A previously inaccessible ninth-floor roof terrace became a garden with fruit trees and herbs, and the basement car park became cycle storage with showers.

The result was around 1,000 sq m of additional usable space and a doubling of occupancy within the existing structure.

What to take from it: you can double the capacity of a 1990s floor plate without new furniture and without a new lease.

GAMA Healthcare, Hemel Hempstead

GAMA Healthcare successfully drew staff back to its 20,000-square-foot Hemel Hempstead office by replacing identical rows of desks with varied, task-based zones. The company designed this hybrid workspace to give different departments the specific facilities they need under one roof.

Instead of a traditional open plan, the layout centres around a bright breakout area featuring tiered seating and two treehouse meeting rooms. This core space connects directly to a large kitchen and games area for informal socialising. Throughout the rest of the floor plan, employees have access to flexible furniture, a dedicated training suite, and distinct workstations tailored to their daily tasks.

What to take from it: Replacing a standard sea of desks with diverse, task-based zones turns an empty office into a practical destination. You make the commute worthwhile by offering a mix of flexible workstations and social hubs that genuinely support how people actually work.

The bit that furniture cannot fix

Here is where the redesigns run into something a floor plan will not solve.

JLL's 2026 benchmark found that 62% of organisations now require fixed in-office days, up from 49% the year before, and 70% of employees attend three to five days a week. Fixed days mean predictable peaks. Everyone arrives on the same three days, which means the settings you carefully specified are oversubscribed on Tuesday and empty on Friday.

The Gensler survey shows exactly what that looks like from the floor. 65% of workers use meeting rooms for solo focused work. 64% take calls in hallways. 43% cancel meetings altogether when they cannot find a room.

JLL makes the same point from the estates side: building-level badge counts cannot tell you whether a particular space is working, and space-level utilisation data is what separates a redesign you can defend from one you merely hope about. If you are about to spend seven figures rebalancing a floor from desks to rooms, the least useful thing you can do afterwards is guess at whether the rooms get used.

Which is the argument for putting something on the door. Not because a screen is exciting, but because a room nobody can find is the same as a room you did not build.

Your office redesign created the right spaces. Door Tablet ensures your staff can actually find and use them.

A physical screen outside the room solves the immediate hallway confusion. When an employee stands outside a focus room on a busy Wednesday, a Door Tablet display shows exactly when that space is free. They do not need to check a phone or guess if the occupant is just finishing a call. The meeting room tablets provide an immediate, local answer with a clear visual indicator.

The software handles the predictable peaks. It integrates with your existing calendar system; Door Tablet lets staff secure rooms from their laptop. If a meeting ends early or someone does not tap in at the door, the system automatically releases the room back to the floor. The space becomes instantly available for other meetings.

You collect actual usage data from these physical interactions. Building-level badge counts cannot tell you whether a particular space is working. Door Tablet workspace analytics record exactly which small meeting rooms get booked, which booths sit empty, and when people actually check in for their reservations. This replaces hopeful guesswork with utilisation metrics.

Your office redesign created the right spaces. Door Tablet ensures your staff can actually find and use them. Book a demo today!

Blog > September 2026 >

The Most Important Meeting Room Metrics You Need to Track Open

September 30, 2026 3 min read

Key Takeaways

• Relying solely on calendar reservations obscures true office occupancy and wastes resources.
• Mandatory check-ins at interactive displays eliminate ghost meetings by automatically releasing unused rooms.
• Combining booking data with environmental sensors reveals the real reasons staff avoid specific workspaces.

Facility managers and office admins must track specific metrics to understand true meeting room utilisation and office occupancy. Walking into a building where the calendar is full but half the rooms sit empty is an expensive problem. Fixing this disconnect requires ignoring standard calendar reservations and measuring physical usage.

This guide acts as a glossary of the core metrics you need to evaluate your workspace. We cover what you should be measuring, from no-show rates to thermal comfort. Door Tablet hardware and software capture these metrics.
Moving to smart platforms like Door Tablet allows you to see exactly what is happening in your building.

1. The No-Show Rate (Booked vs. Actual Occupancy)

Ghost meetings drain office efficiency. Recurring meetings remain on calendars long after attendees stop showing up in person. The room appears booked, yet it sits vacant.

Door Tablet’s system explicitly counts meetings that were scheduled but never checked into. These would be the ones Door Tablet cancelled automatically for no-show or that were otherwise marked as not happening. You could rank rooms by no-show count or see how no-shows as a percentage of bookings change over time (perhaps after implementing new policies).

Door Tablet solves the ghost-meeting problem through mandatory check-ins at interactive displays. The process is straightforward. Attendees must tap the screen outside the room to claim their booking. If nobody checks in within a set timeframe, the software automatically releases the room back into the system. This immediate release reclaims valuable space and prevents unnecessary real estate expansion.

It is worth noting that check-in is an optional feature. However, when enabled, attendees are required to check in, which allows Door Tablet to capture accurate no-show data and reporting.

You can’t manage what you don’t measure.

2. Workspace Utilisation Rate (Capacity vs. Attendance)

A twenty-person boardroom occupied by two colleagues wastes premium real estate. Room capacity means little without understanding actual attendance.

Analysing usage patterns through Door Tablet analytics helps businesses identify these spatial mismatches. You can see exactly how often large rooms are booked for tiny gatherings. Facility managers can use this data to carve up massive, under-utilised rooms into smaller, highly sought-after collaboration pods.
Matching room size to actual meeting sizes optimises the entire floor plan.

3. Ad-Hoc Booking Ratio (Spontaneous vs. Scheduled Usage)

Staff often interact with the office on the fly, so they need spontaneous spaces for quick catch-ups.

Comparing bookings to walk-up reservations provides vital insight into the true rhythm of your workforce. Door Tablet touch displays let staff grab a free room instantly right at the door. Tracking this ad-hoc booking ratio shows whether your current space allocation supports spontaneous collaboration or forces employees into rigid schedules.

Learn more about Door Tablet Embedded Analytics

4. CO2 and Air Quality Levels

Air quality serves as an invisible proxy for occupancy. High CO2 levels clearly indicate a room was recently bustling with people.

Door Tablet integrates directly with environmental sensors to connect air quality data with booking data. This combination shows not just if a room was booked, but if it was safely and comfortably ventilated during use. Monitoring CO2 ensures your busy meeting spaces remain productive environments rather than stuffy boxes that cause fatigue.

5. Thermal Comfort Index

When a well-equipped room is consistently ignored by staff, the booking system is rarely the culprit. The space might simply feel like a sauna. In fact, temperature and air quality are consistently among the top workplace complaints – surveys have found that temperature is the number one office complaint employees raise, often surpassing noise.

Temperature and humidity dictate comfort. Door Tablet smart sensors allow you to correlate room abandonment rates with thermal data. If a specific room shows a high rate of early check-outs, reviewing the temperature data often pinpoints HVAC failures or identifies sun-trap rooms.

Turning Metrics into Confident Estate Decisions

Raw data provides no value unless it drives action. Tracking no-shows, utilisation, and environmental factors gives facility managers a complete picture of office health.

Door Tablet analytics allow businesses to confidently resize their real estate footprint based on facts. You can lower energy bills by shutting down unused zones, repurpose dead space, and build an office that employees like to be in. The right metrics turn guesswork into a precise facility strategy. Book a demo today with us!

Blog > September 2026 >

How to Tell If Your Office Redesign Actually Worked Open

September 23, 2026 5 min read

Key Takeaways

• Most organisations measure cost per desk and occupancy after a refit, which tells you the space is full but not that it is working.
• No platform measures collaboration directly. Six behavioural signals give you a reading that holds up to scrutiny.
• Behaviour takes about a quarter to settle. Measure at four weeks, and you are measuring novelty.

What is a post occupancy evaluation?

A post occupancy evaluation is a structured review of how a workspace performs once people are actually using it, carried out some months after the fit-out is complete. It came out of architecture, where the usual version is a paid engagement involving building surveys, environmental readings and staff interviews.

The full version is thorough and expensive. The version most facilities and IT teams need is narrower: did the change we made produce the behaviour we wanted, and can we show it? Answering that means watching what people do with the space rather than counting how many of them are in it.

Why do most redesign reviews measure the wrong thing?

Most reviews report utilisation, occupancy rates and cost per square metre, because those numbers are easy to pull and easy to present. They answer whether the space is full. They say nothing about whether people can do their jobs in it.

This is where open plan reviews go wrong. A floor at 90% occupancy with every person wearing headphones is a high utilisation failure, and the headline figure will not show it. Research by Bernstein and Turban found that moving to an open layout was followed by a 70% drop in face-to-face interaction, with employees shifting to email and messaging instead. The desks were occupied. The collaboration the redesign was meant to create went the other way.

Gensler's workplace survey puts the concentration problem alongside it, with only 41% of workers saying they can focus effectively. Neither of those findings would appear in a standard utilisation report.

Read Battle of Offices: Closed Office vs Open Office Space

How do you measure whether an office redesign worked?

You measure it in four steps: decide what your comparison point is, choose behavioural signals rather than trying to measure collaboration directly, run a ninety-day observation window, and check the findings against a short staff survey.

1. Decide on your comparison point. The cleanest version compares behaviour before and after the change. If nobody was tracking how space was used beforehand, and often nobody was, the section further down covers what to do instead.
2. Choose your signals. Pick three for collaboration and three for privacy. The sections that follow set out which ones are worth tracking. Six is the practical limit before the exercise becomes a project in itself.
3. Run ninety days. Ignore the first four to six weeks entirely. New space produces novelty behaviour, and people book things because they are curious rather than because they need them.
4. Triangulate. Behavioural data tells you what people did. It cannot tell you why. A five-question pulse survey at the end of the window closes that gap, and disagreement between the two is itself a finding worth chasing.

Which signals show whether collaboration improved?

Three patterns in how people reserve and use shared space track collaborative behaviour closely enough to be useful.

Spontaneous versus planned use. Unplanned collaboration, the thing open plan is supposed to produce, shows up as same-day and walk-up use of small meeting spaces. If that ratio has not moved since the redesign, the spontaneity is not happening, whatever the floor plan looks like.

Group size against room capacity. Compare the number of people in a meeting with the capacity of the space they took. A rise in two-person meetings held in eight-person rooms usually means people are hunting for enclosure rather than gathering to work.

Cross-team patterns. Look at whether the same groups keep meeting together or whether the mix is changing. A redesign meant to break down silos should show new combinations of people in shared spaces. If the same five teams use the same five rooms as before, the walls came down, but the boundaries did not.

What data shows employees have lost privacy?

Privacy loss is easier to measure than collaboration gain, which is convenient, because it is the failure mode nobody plans for. Three signals give it away.

Contention for small and single-occupancy spaces. Track how quickly focus rooms, pods and one-person spaces fill, and how often somebody looks for one and finds nothing free. Rising competition for enclosed space is the clearest evidence that the open floor is not providing what people need.

Meeting rooms taken for solo calls. A meeting room occupied by one person, for thirty or sixty minutes, is almost always a video call that could not be taken at a desk. Volume here is a direct measure of acoustic privacy shortfall. It is also expensive, because a four-person room is being used as a phone booth.

Short, last-minute use. A pattern of fifteen- and thirty-minute reservations made moments before they start suggests people are escaping rather than planning. Ideally, look at whether these cluster in particular parts of the floor.

The pattern behind all three is the same. When an open plan does not provide enough enclosure, the demand does not disappear. It shows up as competition for the enclosed space that does exist, which makes it visible to anyone recording how rooms are claimed and used.

Read Smart Office Layouts that Work for Every Employee Style

How long after a redesign should you measure?

Wait ninety days after the space opens, and discard the first four to six weeks of that period. New environments produce curiosity behaviour that settles once the novelty fades.

Longer-term dissatisfaction, if it exists, tends to persist rather than resolve. A study published in Environment and Behaviour followed 21 employees moved from traditional offices into an open plan. Four weeks in, they reported worse stress levels, worse colleague relationships and worse perceived performance. Six months in, the position had not recovered, and team relations had deteriorated further. If your ninety-day reading is poor, waiting for it to improve on its own is not a strategy.

What can each data source actually tell you?

The combination that does most work for least cost is a record of how rooms are claimed, paired with a short survey. Sensors add the layer that records cannot reach, which is whether reserved space is genuinely used.

What if you have no data from before the redesign?

Most people asking this question have already done the redesign, and many were not measuring anything beforehand. There are three ways round it.

Use a comparable floor or site as a control, if one exists that has not been changed. Differences between the two will not be clean, but the direction of travel is usually clear enough to act on.

Failing that, build a rolling internal comparison. Take the first stable month after the settling period as your zero point and measure movement from there. This will not tell you whether the redesign helped, but it will tell you whether the space is drifting toward or away from the behaviour you wanted.

The third option is the most common and the most useful. Accept a directional read, act on the privacy signals, which are meaningful in isolation, and put measurement in place before the next change. The organisations that find this exercise straightforward are the ones that started recording how space was claimed and used before they needed the answer. Anyone who tells you they can reconstruct a before picture from data that was never collected is selling something.

Read Work Meetings in Numbers: Latest Meeting Statistics

What do you do if the answer is no?

A poor result is usually a space mix problem rather than a layout problem, and space mix is far cheaper to fix than layout.

CBRE's occupancy research points the same way, showing a 25% year-on-year reduction in private "me" space globally as organisations rebalance their portfolios, alongside a common deficit in genuine collaboration space. The organisations getting this right are not choosing between open and enclosed. They are working out the ratio.

In practice, the fixes that follow a bad ninety-day reading are modest. Add bookable focus rooms and phone booths in proportion to the shortage you measured. Right-size the meeting rooms you have, because two-person meetings in large rooms tell you the inventory is wrong. Make the enclosed space visible and easy to claim, since space nobody can find might as well not exist. Then measure again in another quarter.

Bottom Line: Measure Behaviour, Not Occupancy

The question worth answering after a redesign is not how full the floor is. It is whether people can get the right kind of space for the task in front of them, without negotiating for it. Occupancy figures cannot answer that. How people claim and use rooms comes far closer.

Start with the privacy signals, because they move first and they are the ones nobody is watching. If focus space is constantly taken and meeting rooms are filling up with solo calls, you have your answer before the survey results come back.

The catch is that behaviour has to be recorded to be read. Door Tablet captures how rooms and desks are claimed and used across a building, and its analytics turn that history into the kind of evidence a post-occupancy review needs. Put it in place before the next change, and the question stops being difficult to answer.

Blog > August 2026 >

The Ultimate Guide to Activity-Based Working Technology Open

August 12, 2026 3 min read

Activity-based working relies on smart workspace management technology to prevent office chaos and capture accurate space utilisation analytics. Giving your team the freedom to choose different zones for specific tasks demands a system that maps out real-time availability across the entire floor plan. Your hybrid workplace strategy falls apart if people cannot easily locate and reserve the exact spaces they need.

Key Takeaways

Task-specific zones increase efficiency: Replacing assigned seating with dedicated work areas reduces the total office space needed per employee.

Disconnected tech creates friction: Flexible offices struggle without unified booking systems, causing wasted time and unused room reservations.

Data drives floor plans: Linking booking tablets and sensors provides real-time occupancy metrics to help you adjust layouts accurately.

What is Activity-Based Working (ABW)?

This model moves away from the traditional concept of assigning one desk to one person. It provides a variety of purpose-built spaces tailored to specific tasks instead. An employee might start their morning in a quiet focus pod, move to an open collaborative zone for a team brainstorm, and take an afternoon client call in a soundproof phone booth.

The Proven Benefits of ABW

ABW environments, to a greater extent than traditional offices, satisfy employees' needs and preferences, as well as their autonomy, thereby stimulating creativity by allowing individuals to use various work environments and manage their time in ways that enhance their creative process (Heerwagen & Kinzie, 2007). It can also contribute to more efficient resource utilisation (Jung et al., 2020). Research confirms that by implementing shared collaborative areas and flexible workstations, organisations can reduce office space and the overall amount of square footage needed per employee (Maina et al., 2019).

Employees are 2.5× more likely to say their workplace supports both individual and team productivity when they have access to diverse, task-based spaces, especially ones built for collaboration.

- Gensler’s 2023 Global Workplace Survey

Why ABW Fails Without Workspace Management Tech

Transitioning to an activity-based working office means shifting from assigned desks to a flexible, task-driven environment. The core hurdle is overcoming resistance to change while optimising space and technology. Moving to this model presents several specific obstacles:

• The "My Desk" Mentality: Employees often feel a loss of ownership or territoriality when they no longer have an assigned workspace.
• Space Mismanagement: Poor zoning can lead to a lack of quiet zones or overcrowding in collaborative areas.
• Distractions: Activity zones require acoustic shielding. Noise levels can disrupt focused work.
• Tech Disconnects: Equipping different zones with mismatched hardware and booking tools creates immediate frustration when those separate systems cannot communicate with one another.

Relying on a manual or poorly integrated booking system for these spaces creates immediate friction. Employees waste valuable time wandering the floor looking for the right place to work, whether they need a hot desk, a focus pod, an open collaborative space, or a quiet area.

Abandoned bookings present another massive roadblock. This happens when a space is reserved on the calendar, but no one actually shows up. These unused reservations lock others out of usable spaces and frustrate teams who just need a place to sit down and work. With effective workspace management solutions, you can eliminate these challenges for good.

The Essential Tech Stack for Activity-Based Working

Eliminating Friction with Conference Room Displays

Placing a conference room display in key areas solves the visibility problem instantly. Employees can see real-time availability as they walk past. These tablets are highly versatile and allow your team to book different spaces across the office, regardless if it is an enclosed meeting room, a hot desk, or an open collaboration area. If a space is free, staff can book it directly on the screen. If it is occupied, they can use the interface to find and reserve alternative areas nearby.

Tracking True Usage with Meeting Room Sensors

Meeting room sensors track actual occupancy data within your spaces. When someone books an area but fails to show up, the hardware detects zero motion. The system then automatically releases the reservation back to the calendar. This prevents unused bookings from tying up valuable real estate and ensures your scheduling system always reflects reality.

Wayfinding Displays

Wayfinding displays show exactly what is happening across the entire office floorplan. If an employee books a room or a desk, they can look at the main screen and get clear directions to their reserved space. This prevents the daily confusion of navigating a flexible office layout.

How Sensors and Displays Work Together to Optimise Space

These tools work best as a connected ecosystem. Sensors provide the raw occupancy data, the software processes this information, and the displays communicate it to employees instantly.

Facilities managers can then review the resulting data to understand which zones are popular and which remain underutilised. You can adjust your floor plan based on hard facts rather than assumptions.

Build a Smarter Workspace Today

Managing an activity-based working environment successfully requires the right hardware and software. Deploying meeting room sensors with conference room displays gives your team the tools they need to navigate the office without frustration. You also gain the occupancy data required to continually refine your spaces.

Ready to improve your office experience?

Book a demo with Door Tablet today!

FAQs

How do meeting room sensors improve activity-based working?
They track actual human presence instead of relying on calendar data. If a scheduled meeting does not happen, the sensor detects the space and frees it up for other employees to use.

Do I need a conference room display for every meeting space?
It depends on your space; placing a screen near enclosed meeting areas and open zones provides immediate clarity. It prevents interruptions, shows schedule availability, and allows staff to secure any space instantly.

What is the difference between hot desking and activity-based working?
Hot desking simply means employees do not have assigned seats and grab any available desk. Activity-based working is a broader strategy providing distinct, specialised areas designed for specific task types.

Blog > July 2026 >

Elevating Office Aesthetics: Customising Your Conference Room Displays Open

July 29, 2026 3 min read

A standard conference room display interface often looks clunky, but Door Tablet software allows you to build fully custom-branded scheduling panels to match your corporate brand identity. Generic booking applications with rigid layouts compromise your workspace aesthetics. You need a user interface that looks intentional and reflects your brand.

Key Takeaways

• Consistent visual branding on meeting room screens builds immediate trust with visiting clients.
• Customise your interface using pre-built templates, built-in design tools, or our bespoke design service.
• No internal design resources are required to deploy a professional and on-brand user interface.

Why Aesthetics Matter for Your Conference Room Display

Consistent visual branding across your digital touchpoints serves a specific psychological purpose. When visiting clients see intentional UI design choices on your meeting room screens, it builds immediate trust. Your employees also benefit from a thoughtful workplace experience where the software blends naturally into the physical environment.



Want to see different templates? Interact with our LIVE Door Tablet demo system.

Custom-Branded Scheduling Panels: Templates vs. Bespoke Design

Door Tablet is easy to use out of the box with zero learning curve. For organisations that want full visual control, we provide three clear paths for customising your software interface.

• Templates: Fast and professional. These pre-built digital signage templates are perfect for IT managers who need a great look quickly without relying on an in-house design team.
• Customise Your Own UI: Customise your UI with CSS files to align with your organisation’s brand guidelines. Add your logo and apply your organisation’s colours, backgrounds, and fonts to create a consistent look and feel across your room displays.
• Customise Terminology: Tailor the language used across your room displays to match your organisation’s preferred terminology. Create custom translation sets to replace standard labels and wording with terms that are familiar to your teams and workplace culture.
• Bespoke Design Service: If you want a fully personalised UI without having to do the work yourself, our team can design it for you. We build a bespoke interface that matches your corporate brand guidelines exactly.

Conclusion

Your physical office is a direct reflection of your business, and the software running on your walls must match. Upgrading your conference room display interface removes visual clutter and strengthens your brand presence. Ready to improve your office aesthetics? Let us show you what you can do with Door Tablet for your office.

FAQs

Can we put our company logo on our conference room display?
Yes. Door Tablet allows you to easily add your company logo, choose backgrounds, and apply exact brand colours directly to the user interface. This guarantees the software matches your corporate identity.

Do we need a designer to create custom-branded scheduling panels?
No. Door Tablet features an excellent user experience by default with no learning curve. Facility teams can deploy our templates, use CSS files to build their own UI, or rely on our bespoke design service. If you want a custom-made UI for your tablets, we can help you with this.

Blog > June 2026 >

Battle of Offices: Closed Office vs Open Office Space Open

June 24, 2026 4 min read

Key Takeaways

The Collaboration Paradox: Moving to an open layout can trigger a 70% drop in face-to-face interaction as employees retreat into digital silos to find privacy.

The Productivity Tax: Constant interruptions in open environments lead to a loss of up to seven hours of productive work per week for every employee.

A Shift in Strategy: Modern planning is moving away from the "all-or-nothing" battle, with a 25% year-over-year reduction in global "me" space to better balance private focus with community areas.

What is the difference between an open office and a closed office?

An open office is a workspace characterised by a lack of interior walls, where desks are placed in large, shared areas to encourage visibility. A closed office uses physical partitions and doors to create private or semi-private environments for individuals and teams.

Architecturally, both environments can support health through natural lighting and modern ventilation systems. The real differentiator is the office UX, as open layouts prioritise a communicative atmosphere, whereas closed offices are built for precision and minimal sensory distraction. While open plans dominate, housing 49% of UK employees, they often lack the acoustic boundaries required for sustained cognitive performance.

Are closed offices better than open offices?

The effectiveness of an office layout depends entirely on the specific work activities and the company's organisational goals. Closed offices are superior for strategic discussion and high privacy, while open offices excel at supporting fast, spontaneous communication.

Choosing the better option requires looking at the data, which shows that face-to-face interactions can actually drop by 70% in open layouts as employees retreat into digital silos to find a sense of privacy. Conversely, closed offices can lead to social dissatisfaction due to physical barriers that limit organic team bonding.

Compare productivity in private offices vs open office space

Private offices typically support higher productivity for individual tasks because they eliminate the 86 minutes of daily work lost to distractions in open environments. Open offices offer efficiency for quick team coordination but often impose a productivity tax, with only 41% of workers feeling they can concentrate effectively.

The cognitive load is significantly higher in open spaces due to an increase in exposure to stimuli from the absence of physical boundaries. When employees lose focus due to audio or visual interruptions, it takes time to recover their momentum, leading to a loss of up to seven hours of productivity per week.

Are open-plan offices better?

Open-plan offices are better for reducing real estate costs and providing a flexible, dynamic atmosphere for teams that require constant interaction. They are not better for employee well-being, as workers in these environments take 62% more sick days due to elevated stress levels and easier transmission of illness.

For many managers, the financial appeal of fitting more desks into less space is offset by the fact that a third of their staff may feel the need to leave the office entirely to get meaningful work done. The goal is to move toward Activity-Based Working (ABW), where 53% of companies now provide a mix of settings, including quiet zones and breakout rooms, rather than a single, open room.

What are the main advantages of closed offices over open office spaces?

The primary advantages of closed offices are superior acoustic control, the protection of confidentiality, and the ability for employees to regulate their own environment. These spaces provide the quiet needed for deep work and the professional atmosphere required for hosting clients.

Enclosed spaces also mitigate environmental dissatisfaction by providing the psychological safety needed for sensitive tasks.

What are the disadvantages of a closed office or an open plan office?

The main disadvantage of a closed office is the limitation of spontaneous social interaction, which can make an organisation feel fragmented or siloed. Open offices suffer from a lack of visual and auditory privacy, leading to the highest levels of employee dissatisfaction regarding concentration levels.

In open plans, the lack of boundaries often forces employees to use headphones as digital walls, which ironically decreases the very collaboration the layout was meant to foster. A study in Environment and Behaviour followed 21 employees who were relocated from traditional offices to open offices. Four weeks after the move, employees were not happy with their environment, stress levels, coworker relations and perceived job performance. Six months after the move, they were still unhappy, and team relations broke down further.

In closed offices, the lack of flexibility can make the environment feel static and less adaptive to quick, high-energy group discussions that demand immediate coordination.

Read Is the Open Office Layout still relevant in 2026?

Are closed offices outdated?

Closed offices are not outdated but are being reimagined as focus hubs within a hybrid, flexible workspace concept. Modern design is shifting away from the all-or-nothing approach toward a mixed layout that combines open lounges with enclosed meeting pods and quiet rooms.

How Modern Planning Rebalances "Me" and "We" Space

Research by CBRE indicates that workplaces require new planning concepts informed by employee needs and actual space utilisation patterns. These concepts rebalance the allocation of private "me" space and community "we" space to improve flexibility and equitable collaboration for employees working both remotely and face-to-face. When comparing existing portfolios with these new models, there is often a noted deficit of collaboration space and an excess of support space.

Read Smart Office Layouts that Work for Every Employee Style

A 25% year-over-year reduction in global "me" space indicates that more organisations are making material progress in rebalancing their portfolios to better support hybrid work. This shift represents a move away from the binary choice of a purely open or purely closed office. Instead, it suggests a strategic distribution where private offices are not eliminated but are right-sized to ensure they serve as functional "me" spaces, while "we" spaces are expanded to facilitate the teamwork that open plans often fail to support.

Bottom Line: Designing for Choice, Not Compromise

The open-plan office was a bold experiment, but the data confirms it often misses the mark on productivity and employee satisfaction. Modern office design needs to move away from the obsession with fitting the most desks into the smallest space. Instead, the real goal is to align your physical environment with how people actually work by offering a deliberate choice between collaborative zones and quiet rooms.

A mixed layout featuring open lounges, enclosed pods, and quiet spaces allows people to move between different types of work without losing their focus. When an office is designed with a clear purpose, it becomes a genuine asset where deep work is protected and coming in feels worthwhile.

Flexible booking systems like Door Tablet help organisations build a responsive workplace that actually makes sense. Teams need spaces where they can make their own choices based on the task at hand, ensuring they never feel like they are making a compromise between working together and getting things done.

Blog > February 2026 >

2026 Workplace Tech Trends Open

February 4, 2026 7 min read

Last year, the focus was on getting people back to the office. This year, the focus is on making the office actually worth the trip.

We are moving past the mandates of 2025 and into a year of practical upgrades. From AI agents that handle your scheduling to new office layouts designed for real hybrid connection, we’ve crunched the numbers on where tech and office design trends are headed. Here is what the reality of 2026 looks like.

1. AI in the workplace

In 2025, we used AI to summarise meetings or write emails. In 2026, AI is becoming "agentic," meaning it has the autonomy to execute tasks within our workflows without our constant input.

Gartner predicts that by 2026, 40% of enterprise applications will feature embedded AI agents, up from less than 5% in 2025. In the context of meeting rooms, this means software that doesn't just show availability but actively manages it.

Instead of an employee spending twenty minutes cross-referencing five colleagues' calendars to find a slot, an AI agent connected to the room booking system executes the task.

It parses a request like, "Book a 2-hour workshop next week with the Marketing leads," analyses attendee availability, locates a room with the right capacity and AV gear, and sends the invites. If a conflict arises later, the agent autonomously negotiates a new time or locates an alternative space, handling the logistics instantly and invisibly.

2. Is Return to Office still relevant in 2026?

Throughout 2025, business news was dominated by high-profile "Return to Office" (RTO) mandates. Major players in tech and finance issued strict five-day in-office requirements, leading many commentators to declare that the hybrid era was ending.

However, the data tells a different story. While RTO headlines grabbed attention, the actual operating reality for the majority of organisations remained steadily hybrid.

According to Gallup, 52% of remote-capable employees in the U.S. continue to work in a hybrid arrangement, a figure that has stabilised rather than declined.

Owl Labs reports that despite the noise, 73% of employers have not actually changed their remote or hybrid policies in the past year. The mandates were often outliers, not the norm.  

The reality for 2026 is that hybrid is not "done"; it is still a solid work mode for many companies. The return to the office full-time will still be a prominent topic in 2026. Meta has already announced that its Instagram division will return to the office full-time in February.

3. Occupancy Management & Space Optimisation

Relying on badge swipes or basic motion sensors provides insufficient data for effective space management. To ensure accuracy, the trend for 2026 is Precision Occupancy Tracking using advanced sensor hardware.

Data reveals that companies remain "seriously over-desked." Reports from 2025 indicate that 24.5% of individual workstations are never used, and another 19.4% are used for less than one hour per day.

However, this hunger for data has collided with new employee behaviours born from rigid Return-to-Office (RTO) mandates like Coffee Badging. 44% to 58% of hybrid workers admit to "coffee badging, showing up to the office, swiping a badge to register attendance, grabbing a coffee, and leaving shortly after.

This has led to a tense dynamic where tracking is used not just for space planning, but for enforcement. 73% of companies now use some form of monitoring tools to track employee activity and location.

There is a valid business case for tracking utilisation to save millions on unused square footage. However, this data can be weaponised to police "coffee badgers" or track individuals.

56% of employees report feeling anxious or stressed when they know they are being digitally monitored. This surveillance approach destroys the psychological safety required for high performance. It turns the office into a place of compliance rather than connection.

The most successful organisations in 2026 will use this data solely for macro optimisation (e.g., "We need fewer desks on the 4th floor") rather than micro management (e.g., "Why was Sarah away from her desk for 45 minutes?").

4. Dynamic Zoning and the "Neighbourhood" Concept

The physical architecture of the workplace is adapting to support the "hybrid rhythm." The traditional "sea of desks" model is being replaced by the "Office Neighbourhood" concept, facilitated by dynamic zoning technology.

From Assigned Seating to "Purposeful Abundance"

Data suggests that 73% of companies expect people-to-desk ratios to exceed 1.5:1 by 2026 in the US. This density requires a shift from ownership (assigned desks) to access (bookable zones).  

Organisations are dividing floorplates into "neighbourhoods" assigned to specific departments (e.g., "Engineering Neighbourhood," "Sales Neighbourhood"). Within these zones, seating is unassigned but restricted to that team. This fosters a sense of belonging while maintaining the efficiency of hot-desking.  

Neuro-Inclusive Tech and Sensory Control

Workplace design in 2026 increasingly prioritises neuro-inclusion, acknowledging that 15-20% of the workforce has neurodivergent traits that make standard open-plan offices difficult to navigate.  

• Sensory Mapping: Digital signage and workplace apps now feature "sensory maps" that indicate the real-time environmental conditions of different zones. Employees can view which areas are currently "Quiet/Dim" versus "Active/Bright" and choose their workspace based on their sensory needs.  

• Personalised Control: Apps allow for hyper-localised control of environmental factors. Employees can adjust the brightness of overhead lights or the temperature of their specific "thermal zone" directly from their smartphone, granting agency over their immediate physical environment.  

Right-Sizing & Meeting Equity

The era of the cavernous boardroom is ending. CBRE’s 2024-2025 Global Workplace Insights report confirms a massive shift in spatial allocation, noting that while individual workstation footprints have shrunk by 11%, "collaboration ratios" (the number of meeting seats per employee) have risen significantly across all sectors.

• The "Campfire" Layout: To solve the "presence disparity" where remote workers feel like observers rather than participants, 2026 meeting rooms are adopting circular "campfire" layouts. Instead of a long rectangular table facing a single screen, furniture is arranged in a semi-circle.

• Center-of-Table Technology: These rooms utilise 360-degree, center-of-table AI cameras. Unlike front-of-room cameras that capture side profiles, these devices give remote participants a direct, face-to-face view of every speaker.

• The "Huddle-First" Shift: Despite this demand for small spaces, most offices remain over-indexed on large rooms. Worklytics highlights this inefficiency, reporting that while large conference rooms (16+ seats) average just 30% utilisation, phone booths and huddle spaces (3-4 seats) are seeing utilisation rates upwards of 80-90%.

Companies are physically restructuring meeting spaces. They are abandoning hierarchical layouts for circular "campfire" designs and adopting center-of-table cameras to ensure remote participants are treated as active contributors rather than passive observers.

5. E-Paper: The Sustainable Digital Signage

The visual language of the smart office is shifting from glowing LCD screens to E-Paper (Electronic Paper Displays). E-paper technology utilises electrophoretic microcapsules to display images. Crucially, it is bistable, meaning it consumes zero power to hold a static image and only requires energy when the content changes. 

Market forecasts for 2025–2026 indicate a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 30% for the e-paper sector. A key catalyst for this surge is the arrival of multi-color e-paper (ACeP).

This technology is ideal for room booking panels, wayfinding signage, and neighbourhood status boards. It eliminates the "light pollution" and blue light of traditional screens, blending seamlessly into architectural materials like wood or concrete.

6. The "Super-App" Consolidation

For years, employees have been forced to navigate a "scavenger hunt" of apps: one for desk booking, another for visitor registration, a third for submitting maintenance tickets, and a fourth for ordering catering. This friction discourages employees from using office resources effectively.

The trend for 2026 is App Consolidation. Organisations are demanding unified platforms that integrate these disparate functions into a single interface, often accessible directly through the tools employees already use, such as Microsoft Teams or Google Workspace.

52% of organisations feel they are using too many tools, leading to lost productivity and "app fatigue." The winning technologies in 2026 are those that offer a seamless "single pane of glass" experience. An employee should be able to book a desk, pre-register a guest, and request a specific room setup in one workflow. This integration is essential for making the in-office experience smoother than the home office experience.

The Building as a Service

In 2026, the office isn't a place you have to go; it's a tool you want to use.

The office is changing its shape. It is becoming quieter for the neurodivergent, faster for the busy, and softer for the stressed.  The trends confirm that employees do not need a place to sit; they need a place that actively supports specific tasks, from deep focus to hybrid collaboration, without the friction of previous years.

Blog > December 2025 >

Cubicles Are Back: But What Does That Say About How We Work? Open

December 23, 2025 6 min read

Office design trends tend to swing like a pendulum. A few generations ago, many white-collar workers toiled in private offices or high-walled cubicles, only to see those walls torn down in favour of airy open-plan spaces in the 2000s. Tech companies championed open offices as egalitarian and collaborative, packing employees into “cool” loft-like spaces without partitions. By 2020, roughly two-thirds of U.S. knowledge workers sat in open layouts. But then came the hybrid-work era and a reassessment of what the office is for.

Many find themselves nostalgic for the cubicle – craving the privacy and focus it once afforded. This raises a timely question: are cubicles a relic of the past, or could they be a key tool for today’s workplace? Put differently: can modern, semi-enclosed workstations deliver the focus people want without dragging us back to grey mazes and “Do Not Disturb” signs?

A Brief History of the Cubicle

The cubicle wasn’t created to be soulless or dull; it was born of utopian intentions. In the early 20th century, modernist architects like Frank Lloyd Wright railed against “confines of boxes,” promoting open-plan offices as liberating alternatives to rigid private rooms. Companies adopted open layouts, largely to accommodate more clerks in “white-collar assembly lines” of desks.

By the 1960s, this efficiency drive had drained offices of privacy and personality. Enter the Action Office: a 1964 innovation by Herman Miller (and designer Robert Propst) that introduced modular workstations with partitions, varying desk heights, and larger surfaces. These early cubicles aimed to humanize the office, breaking up endless desk rows into flexible clusters (the German Bürolandschaft, or office landscape) that offered workers a bit of enclosure and personal spaces.



However, the cubicle’s idealistic origins were soon undermined. By 1968, Herman Miller was selling modular cubicle components, which some cost-conscious firms abused – cherry-picking the space-saving aspects (tiny, uniform panels) and discarding the humanising touches. As more companies shifted all ranks of employees (not just clerks) into cubicles, Propst himself regretted the outcome, decrying the “monolithic insanity” he had inadvertently spawned.

In the 1980s and ’90s, the cubicle became ubiquitous and unloved. Pop culture of the late ’90s (from Office Space to Dilbert) immortalised the cube farm as a symbol of corporate drudgery.

Why Did Cubicles Go Away?

The answer lies in a mix of management ideology, economics, and aesthetics. Around the turn of the millennium, a new generation of leaders inspired by Silicon Valley startups viewed cubicles as antithetical to innovation.

The open-plan office promised to break down silos, foster spontaneous collaboration, and equalise the workplace by putting the CEO and intern at identical desks. Google’s widely emulated 2005 headquarters design epitomised this shift. Workers were rebranded as “teams,” managers became “leaders,” and collaborative buzz was seen as the key to creativity. Enclosed workstations felt outdated in this new narrative of transparency and interaction.

Cost was another driving force. In high-rent markets like New York and London, giving everyone a roomy cubicle (let alone a private office) was simply too expensive. Densifying into bench-style desks or tables without partitions allowed companies to lease less space per employee – a tempting proposition for the bottom line.

Indeed, the late 1990s and 2000s saw cubicles rapidly disappear, replaced by seas of shared desks. As one furniture design executive noted, “putting everyone in a cubicle or office was too much, so the open-floor plan became very popular” during that era.

Do Cubicle Offices Still Exist?

Even at the height of the open-office craze, cubicles never disappeared entirely. Some organisations retained some partitioned work areas, especially in industries where noise control or confidentiality is paramount. Government agencies, insurance companies, call centres and other operations handling sensitive data often stuck with low-walled cubicles well into the 2010s. In fact, a sizable global market for office partitions persisted.

Back in  2023, global demand for cubicles and panels was valued at around $6.3 billion and projected to grow to $8+ billion in the next five years. This suggests that tens of millions of people worldwide still sit in semi-enclosed workspaces, even if tech giants and trendsetting startups grab more headlines with their lounge-like open floors.

To be fair, today’s cubicle installations don’t always resemble the classic 1980s cube farm. Many offices have employed a hybrid approach – e.g. clusters of low partitions within a mostly open layout, or high-walled focus booths sprinkled among open team tables. In some modern spaces, you’ll find “pods” or “neighbourhoods” that include a mix of open desks, standing-height counter space, and a few enclosed cubicle-like nooks for quiet work.



The terminology may have shifted (a few companies proudly announce “we installed cubicles!”), but the core concept of partially partitioned personal work areas is still very much alive. And as we’ll explore next, these semi-cubicles might be poised for a modest revival in the near future.

Are Cubicles Coming Back?

There are growing signs that the cubicle – or at least the idea of more enclosed individual space – is making a comeback in response to post-pandemic workplace needs. In late 2023, The New York Times reported a renewed interest in cubicles as companies seek to address noise and privacy complaints in open offices. With widespread hybrid work, employees now often come into the office specifically to do work they can’t easily do at home (e.g. access specialised equipment, meet with colleagues) – but they also expect the office to support concentration. Janet Pogue McLaurin, a workplace research leader at Gensler, noted that when workers returned after months at home, “quiet spaces became more important” because many offices had seen “a drop in effectiveness due to noise interruptions, disruptions and a general lack of privacy”.

In other words, the mass experiment of remote work taught employees what uninterrupted focus feels like, and they’re now less tolerant of the open-plan racket.

Orders for partitions and modular walls are rising (on track for ~30% growth this decade), and office furniture makers are rolling out new product lines that reinvent the cubicle for modern needs. Today’s designs are not your father’s gray fabric boxes: modern cubicles are more flexible and stylish. Some high-end models include sound masking systems or sliding doors. The goal is to create a “semi-private haven” within a busy office,  a place where an employee can take a video call or work on a focused task without being both visually and audibly exposed to the entire floor.

56% of organisations are adding private phone booths and focus rooms for privacy

It’s worth noting that the push for cubicles 2.0 isn’t solely driven by pandemic-related health concerns (though plexiglass shields did briefly pop up everywhere in 2020). Even before COVID, many companies had begun sprinkling phone booths and focus pods into open layouts. The pandemic accelerated this by highlighting airborne risks and the value of physical separation, but arguably the bigger driver now is productivity and preference.

In a mid-2025 occupancy planning survey, 56% of companies said they were adding private phone booths or focus rooms to meet employee needs for privacy, even as they also expand collaboration areas. After more than a decade of “open everything,” design strategies are shifting to reintroduce more enclosure for focused work while still enabling teamwork.

Do People Like Working in Cubicles?

Do people like cubicles? It depends on the proportion you have. Go all-in on cubicles and you risk a flat, isolating vibe; go all-in on open plan and you fuel noise, distractions, and headset culture. Most teams are unhappy at either extreme.

When the balance tilts too far open, focus drops fast: 63% of employees say they lack a quiet place to work, 75% admit they leave the office just to concentrate, and only 1% feel able to block out distractions. An open office layout helps some tasks, but not deep work.

You can swing the other way with wall-to-wall cubes and it can be just as problematic. Only 12% of U.S. office workers say they prefer a traditional cubicle layout (Gensler). High, uniform panels dull energy, reduce visibility, and make chance interactions less likely.

The sweet spot is a mix, not a monoculture. A clear majority (65%) prefer open areas for group work plus genuinely quiet, semi-enclosed spots for focus (Gensler). Where noise is controlled, employees report higher ability to work productively; private offices top acoustic satisfaction at 56%, while bench seating sits at 28%. In practice, that means just-enough walls where and when people need them, that’s privacy on demand without killing the vibe.

Cubicles as a Tool, Not a Doctrine

Reconsidering cubicles doesn’t mean swinging the pendulum all the way back to the era of identical boxes and maze-like layouts. It means acknowledging that the “one big room” open-office experiment has its shortcomings, and that a balanced workplace includes some places to tune out and focus. The cubicle, in its updated forms, is simply one tool among many to craft a high-performing office. Just as we have embraced agile, activity-based work and remote connectivity, we can also embrace a bit more physical delineation in the office when it helps people do their best work.

If there is one takeaway from this article, it is that no single office layout wins universally. A mix of open and enclosed, communal and private, assigned and flexible – tailored to an organisation’s unique needs – tends to yield the best outcomes. So rather than asking “open plan or cubicles, which is better?”, the forward-thinking question is “what is the right combination of spaces for our people and our work patterns?”

Cubicles still have a role, but not as a doctrine forced on everyone, but as a flexible tool deployed with purpose.

Blog > December 2025 >

Office Space 2030: The Future of Where and How We Will Work Open

December 9, 2025 6 min read

Over the past few decades, every shift in office design has reflected the pressures and priorities of its time. Cubicles, which became widespread in the 1980s and 1990s, were intended to provide focus but often turned into impersonal grids that prioritised efficiency over satisfaction. Open-plan layouts followed in the 2000s, mirroring the push for transparency and collaboration, even if they often created more distractions than teamwork. Activity-based working grew as knowledge workers demanded flexibility, offering a menu of spaces to match different tasks. And most recently, hybrid work has risen after 2020 not as a fad but as a practical solution to a workforce that values autonomy, mobility, and choice.

Each stage of this evolution has reshaped the culture of work. From cubicles to activity-based working, and now to hybrid setups powered by technology, the office has been in constant flux.

With so many rapid shifts, we can’t help but wonder: what’s the next big thing? If the last few decades have taught us anything, it’s that the office is a living experiment. Each wave of change reveals what employees value most: focus, flexibility, and seamless collaboration. As we look ahead to 2030, the question isn’t whether the office will change again, but how.

In the sections that follow, we’ll explore what the next era might look like: the evolution of office layouts, the rise of well-being and sustainability, the role of smart technology, and why these elements will define the future of work.

How will The Workplace Experience look like in 2030?

Hybrid & Flexible Layouts

The office is no longer a one-size-fits-all environment. Instead of rows of identical desks, companies are carving offices into choice-based zones. Need deep focus? Retreat to a silent library-style zone or acoustic pod. Need collaboration? Head to the café area or huddle space.

The numbers confirm the trend. Collaborative “we” spaces now take up 20% of office floor plans (up from 14% in 2021), while personal “me” spaces like assigned desks have shrunk. And the open office, once hailed as the future, is losing ground: workers in open-plan setups report 86 minutes of lost productivity per day and higher stress levels.

It is safe to say that employees thrive when they can choose how and where to work. Hybrid offices resolve the open-office vs. private-office debate not by picking one side, but by offering both.

Vertical Offices & Destination Villages

In dense cities, high-rises are evolving into vertical campuses. Instead of just stacked floors of desks, they feature sky gardens, rooftop running tracks, atriums, and lounges that create community within towers. Google’s London HQ, for example, includes a 300-meter rooftop garden with over 250 trees.

Beyond verticality, the “destination office” is emerging. Companies are designing workspaces as villages: places with wellness centres, stylish cafés, gyms, event spaces, and even childcare. The goal is to make the office a destination worth visiting, blending work with lifestyle. We already see this happening; employees need a reason to be in the office and to justify the commute.

This shift also leans on resimercial design, blending residential comfort with commercial function. Offices now include cosy couches, warm lighting, and hotel-like lobbies. Employees compare the office not to competitors, but to the comfort of home. If the workplace feels sterile, it loses.

Intergenerational & Inclusive Design

For the first time, five generations are working side by side. Gen Z expects mobility, Millennials want collaboration, Gen X values balance, Boomers often prefer structure, and workplaces need to cater to all.

Inclusive design means ergonomic chairs and sit-stand desks for comfort, plus informal zones for younger staff. It means quiet rooms, prayer and lactation spaces, and accessible navigation for employees of all abilities. With 15–20% of the workforce being neurodivergent, focus pods and sensory-friendly zones are becoming standard.

Inclusivity isn’t just physical. Policies and culture matter too: flexible hours for caregivers, anchor collaboration days for hybrid consistency, and technology that works for everyone.

People-Centric Office Spaces

Smart, Health-Driven Furniture & Materials

Smart desks and chairs auto-adjust to posture, remind users to move, and track usage patterns to encourage healthier routines. Lighting systems mimic natural daylight to support circadian rhythms, while antimicrobial surfaces and improved air filtration reduce health risks.

Offices are being reimagined not just as places to work, but as spaces that reinforce community and connection. Preventive healthcare can become a staple in the workplace: wearables and health apps can track stress, hydration, or heart rate, nudging employees toward healthier habits.

Biophilic Design, Climate, and Sustainability

Offices rich in greenery and daylight report 15% higher well-being and 20% fewer sick days. Plants, greenhouse-style spaces, and water features will be central to 2030 workplaces.

Yet sustainability now goes hand-in-hand with climate resilience. Rising global temperatures and extreme weather events will push companies to invest in green infrastructure, cooling strategies, and resilient buildings. Carbon tracking and circular design will be embedded in how offices operate, with governments moving from incentives to mandates. The workplace of 2030 will have to function as part of broader climate adaptation strategies.

Takeaway for workplace experience teams: Employees expect workplaces that safeguard both their personal health and the planet. Offices that respond to climate pressures while offering wellness-first environments will stand out as magnets for talent.

Technology & Smart Workspaces

When we think about the office of 2030, maybe the real question isn’t what new tools will appear, but how the way we work will end up defining both the walls around us and the technology inside them. In this section, we have more questions than answers because the future of the office has many variables.

Let’s look at a little bit of the demographic variable. Many economies will soon have more retirees than active workers. With fewer people commuting in, do offices shrink, becoming smaller, smarter spaces with modular layouts and more shared zones? Or does the opposite happen? If leaner teams have to cover more ground, will we end up spending more time in the office, maybe even six days a week, simply because there are fewer of us to do the work?

Then there’s AI. According to the World Economic Forum, 86% of employers expect AI and information-processing technologies to transform their businesses by 2030. Does that mean the classic five-day office week dissolves into four, because automation handles routine tasks and human effort is focused on higher-value, collaborative work? Or does AI amplify the need for training, peer-to-peer learning, and knowledge sharing, making the office even more of a hub than it is today?

There was this interesting article that argued that as AI takes over more technical tasks, companies will shift their recruitment focus away from hard skills and toward soft skills like adaptability. According to the World Economic Forum, 44% of today’s tech skills will be irrelevant by 2027, and IBM research shows that most technical skills lose half their value in just two years.

If adaptability becomes the new hiring priority, offices will need to support constant learning and reinvention. Instead of floor plans dominated by rows of desks, we may see layouts that emphasise training rooms, peer-to-peer learning hubs, and flexible project spaces where employees can continuously reskill. Cultural and social areas could play a bigger role too, helping teams build the trust and collaboration that adaptability demands.

Technology will play its part in redefining the layout. AR, VR, and telepresence robots could become part of everyday coordination with global teams. Can you imagine having your stand-up meeting via VR? This raises another question: will we need fewer meeting rooms if much of this happens in the metaverse? Or will we need different kinds of meeting rooms as immersive spaces that allow physical and virtual participants to connect seamlessly?

“Holding meetings in virtual reality, offices that people ‘visit’ by donning a stereo headset are a distinct possibility five years from now [...] Workers may remotely attend physical meetings by inhabiting a telepresence robot.”
- Christopher Barnatt, associate professor of computing and future studies at Nottingham University

With AI-assisted generative design, offices could adjust based on live data thanks to IoT solutions: natural light, foot traffic, and energy use. Imagine partitions that move, clusters that re-form, or HVAC systems that adapt in real time to how people are working.

Can Workplace Experience Be a Competitive Advantage?

What if the office itself becomes a company’s sharpest strategic tool? Not just a cost centre, but the place where talent decides whether to stay, grow, and give their best work. Studies suggest it already matters: engaged employees are 13% more productive, while organisations that prioritise experience see up to 4x higher profits.

It is encouraging to see that 74% of organisations have already implemented, or reported they would implement, employee experience platforms by 2025.

It shows that companies investing in employee experience are already seeing results, and it will be interesting to watch how these strategies evolve, not just in policies, but in the design of offices, the layouts we work in, and the perks that bring people together.

Our Predictions and Commitment

By 2030, the office won’t just be a building where work happens. It will be a hub of culture, resilience, and human connection in a world defined by uncertainty. Hybrid work will be the baseline, but what will truly set organisations apart is how intentionally they design spaces to foster belonging and adaptability.
We predict workplaces will feel more like communities: flexible layouts supporting collaboration, biophilic spaces protecting well-being, AI and automation smoothing logistics, and immersive technologies bridging distances.

At Door Tablet, we believe this is the future of work. Our meeting room tablets, hot-desking solutions, and wayfinding systems are designed to help organisations build workplaces that employees choose, not endure. The future of work with Door Tablet is about enabling offices that energise, connect, and inspire teams.

Blog > October 2025 >

How to Set Up a Downsized Office for Peak Performance Open

October 17, 2025 5 min read

Your company just gave up the 30,000-square-foot headquarters that once held rows of empty desks and echoing hallways. Now you’ve moved into a 12,000-square-foot space, closer to public transport and sized for a hybrid team. The move makes financial sense, but as boxes get unpacked and teams settle in, the question hits: how do you make this smaller office feel like an upgrade, not a downgrade?

This is where many companies find themselves in 2025. Downsizing is smart, but a tighter footprint demands smarter design. The goal is to make every square metre count, ensuring employees still have room to collaborate, focus, and even unwind. Below are five practical ways to set up a downsized office that feels bigger, more comfortable, and truly fit for your company’s work style.

1) Get the mix right: less “me” space, more “right-sized” we-space

Before you buy a single chair, decide what your office is for—by day, by team, by activity. The most effective workplaces are shifting from rows of assigned desks to a balanced, activity-driven mix of spaces. CBRE’s latest global workplace benchmarking shows seat-sharing is up, individual space has declined since 2021, and companies are deliberately growing collaborative and amenity space to match hybrid patterns. In 2024, 62% of organisations targeted ≥1.5 people per desk, and assigned seating fell from 83% to 55% of projects.

What that means for a smaller office:

• Plan for peaks, not averages. If Tue–Thu are busy, capacity-plan for those days, not the weekly mean. Use a sharing ratio (e.g., 1.6–2.0 people/seat) to right-size the desk count.
• Favour small rooms over big boardrooms. Convert one 12-person room into two 4-person rooms plus a phone booth; this aligns better with hybrid meeting patterns and cuts “one-person in a big room” waste. (Gensler’s 2023 survey shows people say they’d be more productive with the right variety of spaces, not necessarily more space.)
• Treat the office like a product. Baseline, release small changes, re-measure monthly. CBRE notes the shift to effectiveness metrics (not just density) and the importance of ongoing tuning.

2) Plan with real demand data and make availability obvious

Under- or over-building rooms is expensive. The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that 17 of 24 federal HQs were at 25% or less of capacity during sampled weeks in early 2023, which is an expensive mismatch of supply and demand.

What to do:

1. Instrument your patterns. Combine badge data, calendar bookings, and Wi-Fi presence to see who comes in, when, and for what. CBRE finds that organisations are increasingly using reservation and Wi-Fi data (and sensors selectively) to inform space decisions.
2. Surface availability at the door. Put booking displays outside rooms and on wayfinding screens so people can book on the spot. Door Tablet supports meeting room signage, hot-desk booking, and wayfinding with native calendar integrations (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, etc.), which is exactly the kind of visibility a compact office needs.

3) Make small feel big: sightlines, light, materials, and ceilings

A 2024 study in Frontiers in Psychology showed that view access, view content, materiality, and ceiling geometry all influence how roomy a space feels, validated with eye-tracking and VR. Another 2024 study in Building & Environment found that ceiling height significantly affects perceived spaciousness and arousal.

Design moves that punch above their weight in a downsized office:

• Open your sightlines. Keep tall storage on perimeters; use glass fronts on small rooms (with proper acoustic seals) to borrow light without adding noise.
• Lift the room visually. Lighten ceilings and upper walls; use continuous planes and uplighting to “raise” perceived height when you can’t move the structure.
• Pull people to the glass. Put touchdown seats and small rooms near windows; push storage/internal support spaces inside the floorplate. Studies consistently link window size and view quality with higher perceived spaciousness and psychological benefits.
• Use the right materials. Lighter palettes and low-visual-noise finishes expand perceived volume; layer texture where you want intimacy (library corners) rather than across the whole floor.

4) Protect brains first: air quality and acoustics in tight quarters

Air quality. A 2023 meta-analysis in Building & Environment found that even short-term indoor CO₂ exposure below 5000 ppm can impair complex cognition. A 2023 UCL intervention study showed that reducing PM2.5 in offices improved several memory-related tasks. UK HSE guidance is clear: employers must ensure adequate ventilation and should assess and improve poorly ventilated areas. Build IAQ targets into your operating routine, not just your design spec.

Acoustics. Across more than 600 office buildings, acoustics (people talking, speech privacy, phones) was the top source of dissatisfaction, and the problem intensifies when you shrink footage. Visual and acoustic privacy underpin perceived effectiveness in activity-based workplaces.

How to apply without blowing the budget:

• Ventilation & filtration. Meet or exceed outdoor-air setpoints, add portable HEPA units in enclosed rooms, and consider simple CO₂/PM displays where it nudges behaviour and maintenance. Use HSE’s plain-English guidance to assess and fix trouble spots.
• Tip: If you install CO₂/Air quality sensors in your office, you can use dedicated Door Tablet devices in highly public spaces to indicate the air quality in the room
• A ladder of privacy. Add phone booths, 2–4-person enclaves, and a few 6–8 rooms so one-person calls stop hijacking big rooms. Treat small rooms like little studios: door seals, absorptive panels, and mics that don’t pick up the corridor. Evidence from activity-based office research shows that privacy conditions strongly shape user perceptions.
• Set etiquette with tech. Meeting room and Desk Booking displays + clear room naming (e.g., “Call” rooms) + short time slots help route noisy work to the right spot without a policy manual.

5) Make the commute “worth it”: quality, amenities, and seamless tech

Employees don’t judge your office by square footage; they judge whether it helps them work. Gensler’s 2023 U.S. survey highlights a productivity gap between how often people are in the office vs. how often they want to be there to be productive—better mixes of space and amenities close that gap. Leesman’s 2024 hybrid analysis (305k+ respondents) shows 86% of employees now work in more than one location; offices that support both focus and collaboration win more frequent use.

Read this article to learn what the workforce expects from the office experience in 2025

What to invest in first:

• Hybrid-ready rooms. One-tap join, camera framing that suits small rooms, and decent acoustics, so in-office and remote colleagues feel equally included.
• Comfort layers that scale in small spaces. A few wellness nooks, real plants, and soft seating in the right spots do more than a giant café you no longer have room for. CBRE tracks a steady rise in amenity space since 2021.
• Clarity beats abundance. With a smaller footprint, knowing what’s free matters as much as having more. Door Tablet’s room and desk booking, wayfinding, and signage makes availability obvious and reduces ghost-room risk in peak windows.

The Bottom Line

An upgraded small office is one that sweats the details: it’s well-equipped, aesthetically pleasing, and tuned to employees’ needs. When people walk into a downsized office that has energetic collaborative zones, peaceful nooks, lots of light, and even a decent espresso machine in a cosy corner, it feels like an upgrade, not a step down. They might even forget the old 30,000-square-foot echo chamber entirely. After all, it’s not the size of the office that matters; it’s how you use it, and how it makes your people feel.

Blog > August 2025 >

The Best Meeting Room Layouts for Hybrid Teams Open

August 26, 2025 6 min read

Picture this: it’s 9:02 a.m. on hybrid-day and half your team is jockeying for seats around a table built for twelve while the other half blinks at you from a single laptop perched at the far end. Nobody can see the slides, voices overlap, and the first five minutes vanish into “Can you hear me now?” Sound familiar?

Gensler’s survey finds employees rate “spaces that match the task at hand” as the biggest drawback to the office, beating out snacks, socials, and even flexible hours.

Keep this in mind: bad layout = bad experience. Nail the fit between room size, furniture, and meeting purpose, and you cut start-up friction, boost engagement, and squeeze more value from every square foot of real estate.

This article breaks down four proven layouts: boardroom, U-shape, classroom, and hybrid-ready, plus space-saving hacks and meeting room tech essentials, so your meetings start on time and end with results, not headaches.

1. Boardroom Style (Conference Table Layout)

What it is: 

The classic boardroom layout features a single large table (often rectangular or oval) with chairs all around it. Everyone faces the centre, which encourages direct eye contact and discussion. It’s essentially an “all heads together” setup.

Best Use Cases:

Leadership huddles, client negotiations, project retrospectives.

Benefits & Tips to Optimise the Space:

• Equal voice, equal view. A single table keeps hierarchy low and body language visible. Optimise: choose a table that matches your average meeting size (4‑8 seats), not your maximum, so it always feels full and focused.
• Rapid decision‑making. Proximity speeds consensus. Optimise: add a wall-mounted display at one short end; now you can flip between face-to-face debate and a quick screen share without neck craning.
• Great acoustics by default. A smaller footprint means less echo. Optimise: add a tabletop mic or ceiling array so far‑end voices carry clearly in hybrid calls.
• The ideal meeting size. Research by Stanford professor Robert Sutton shows the most productive meetings include just five to eight people. Any more, and engagement starts to dip. That’s why a boardroom built for smaller groups,not 20-seat marathons,hits the sweet spot for real decision-making.
• Visual equity with dual screens. A second, mid‑table monitor keeps shared content within everyone’s sightline. Optimise: mount it on a swivel arm so it tucks away during pure discussion.
• Simple cues for time‑boxing. A discreet LED timer on the table keeps agendas tight. Optimise: pre-set 25-minute sprints to sustain focus and clear the room faster.

Watch out for: Boardroom layouts are not ideal for presentations to large groups. If one person needs to present or use a screen extensively, having people on all sides of the table can force some attendees to twist around to see a screen or speaker. It can also become cramped beyond a certain group size, more than 12–15 people, and you’ll have a hard time making eye contact or hearing softer voices at the far end.

2. U‑Shape (Horseshoe) Layout

What It Is:

This one is self-explanatory, isn’t it? Tables form a “U”; everyone faces inward with an open end for a facilitator or screen.

Best Use Cases:

Training sessions, design sprints, and hybrid meetings.

Benefits & Tips to Optimise the Space:

• Built‑in presenter zone. The open end spotlights the speaker while attendees keep eye contact with peers. Optimise: park your camera inside the U so remote teammates appear at eye level at the focal point.
• Hybrid‑ready sight‑lines. Participants naturally face the screen. Optimise: mount two small displays: one for slides, one for remote faces, so nobody gets relegated to a thumbnail.
• Space to work. Tables let people use laptops comfortably. Optimise: use modular, folding tables; shrink to a semicircle in tighter rooms.
• Interactive energy. Ideal for workshops: facilitators can step into the centre to shorten the distance and boost engagement.
• Shared sightline for physical collateral. A mobile flip chart at the open end stays visible to all. Optimise: wheel it aside when you switch to group breakout mode.
• Cable‑free tables. Cable‑free tables. Route power through floor boxes under the arms. Optimise: install under‑table USB‑C hubs so chargers stay off the surface, and embed a low‑profile speaker‑mic bar so remote teammates sound like they’re right there.

Watch out for: U-shape layouts are space-intensive. A U-shaped layout needs a larger room for table space and movement. In small spaces, it may create distance between participants, leading to unequal sightlines. While it sacrifices some seating, it can enhance interactivity. Setting it up takes more time, making it better for planned workshops than quick meetings.

3. Classroom (Lecture-Style) Layout

What it is:

A classroom layout mimics a traditional classroom or lecture hall: rows of chairs (and possibly tables) all facing the front of the room. In corporate meeting terms, this could mean multiple long tables with chairs behind them, or simply rows of chairs without tables, all directed toward a presenter’s area or screen at the front.

Best Use Cases:

Town halls, lunch‑and‑learns, and onboarding classes.

Benefits & Tips to Optimise the Space:

• Max headcount in small rooms. Rows fit ~30 % more people than a boardroom of the same size. Optimise: stagger seats theatre‑style so every head sees the screen.
• Presenter control. Focus stays on the front, great for broadcast messages. Optimise: break every 20 min for Q&A; research shows attention dips after the 10‑minute mark
• Easy conversion. Chairs stack; tables wheel away. Optimise: use lightweight furniture so the room flips to a boardroom or U‑shape in < 5 minutes.
• Accessible aisles. Keep a 1 m corridor for safe, easy movement. Optimise: designate a side aisle for the presenter to reach back‑row participants.
• Engagement tech at every seat. Attendees can scan a QR code to join live polls. Optimise: choose meeting apps with built‑in reactions or quizzes to keep energy high.

Watch out for: The obvious downside is limited interaction. By design, classroom layouts are not conducive to discussion among participants. Attendees are facing forward, not facing each other. This can make sessions feel impersonal or disengaging if overused. In a small room, cramming rows of chairs can make the space feel tight and impact comfort. Another drawback in a hybrid context: purely in-person oriented, so if remote participants are present, they may feel like flies on the wall unless you deliberately engage them.

4. Hybrid‑Friendly Layout Principles

(Think of these as a layer you overlay on any room.)

Principles & Optimisation

• Every face on camera. Arrange seats in a semi‑circle or on the table edge that faces the screen. Optimise: dedicate a second display solely to remote attendees so they keep presence when slides go up.
• Crystal‑clear audio. Good sound beats good video in perceived quality. Optimise: install a single all‑in‑one soundbar for small rooms; add ceiling mics in larger spaces.
• Equal content access. Digital whiteboards let everyone co‑create. Optimise: if you stick with analogue, point a camera at the board or transcribe in real time.
• Camera at eye level, not ceiling. Mount primary cameras at ~1.3 m for natural conversation. Optimise: pick auto‑framing models that zoom on whoever’s speaking.
• Ambient lighting. Soft, indirect LEDs around the monitor cut glare and flatter faces. Optimise: connect lights to occupancy sensors so they dim when the room is empty.

Layout examples:

• The “semi-circle” approach: Arrange chairs in a semi-circle (or around a half-table) facing a wall-mounted screen/camera. This is great for small team scrums with a few remote teammates.
• The “distributed pods” approach: In a larger room, you might have small clusters of tables (pods) for breakout discussions, each with its camera or a portable camera you move around when that group speaks. This is advanced, but some teams do it to mimic putting a remote person “at the table” with each group.

Key Insight: 63% of companies are actively modifying their office layouts to better support hybrid work models. (CBRE)

Making the Most of Small Meeting Rooms (Optimising Downsized Office Spaces)

When space is tight, every room has to work a little harder. And that’s not hypothetical; 75% of businesses plan to shrink their office footprint. Whether it’s a strategic real estate move or a post-hybrid rethink, small rooms are officially doing the heavy lifting. So how do you make the most of them?

• Choose flexible, modular furniture. In a small room, flexibility wins. Lightweight, movable tables and nesting chairs let you switch from boardroom to brainstorming fast. Mobile whiteboards and foldable surfaces make it easy to reset the space.
• Embrace the “huddle room” concept. Smaller rooms (2–6 seats) are better matched to how most teams meet today. Think quick check-ins, video calls, or 1:1s. Gensler found more companies are prioritising compact, tech-ready spaces over oversized boardrooms that sit empty.
• Optimise for privacy and focus. Small enclosed rooms are in high demand, especially post-hybrid. People want spaces where they can concentrate or have a private call. Add acoustic panels or white noise to buffer sound.
• Clever storage and minimal clutter. In tight spaces, clutter quickly becomes a barrier. Mount shelves to the wall, use slim under-desk drawers, and choose stackable chairs. Avoid bulky cabinets. Clear floors = clear minds and more flexibility to move things around.
• Leverage walls and vertical space. Save floor space by wall-mounting your screen. Turn an entire wall into a collaboration zone with whiteboard paint. Add bright, indirect lighting to open the room visually.
• Booking and utilisation hacks. Use meeting room booking and auto-release rules to avoid ghost meetings. Default to 25-minute sessions for better room churn.
• Creative multipurpose areas. If you’re short on rooms, rework shared spaces. Add curtains or partitions to carve out semi-private nooks. Use your café or lounge as a backup meeting space with temporary seating.

Smart Meeting Rooms ❤️ Smart WorkspaceTech

No matter the layout, the right technology is the backbone of a modern meeting room. Especially in hybrid workflows, tech tools ensure scheduling is smooth, everyone knows what’s happening, and remote collaboration is seamless.

Room scheduling displays

Wall-mounted displays outside rooms take the guesswork out of booking. They show real-time availability, upcoming meetings, and let people book on the spot. With clear green/red status lights visible from down the hall, employees don’t have to knock or squat in “maybe-free” rooms. The room booking displays from Door Tablet also feed usage data to workplace experience teams, so you can see what’s overbooked and what’s underused.

Tip: If you’ve downsized or flexed your office footprint, these displays are invaluable for keeping rooms moving. Door tablet’s booking software syncs with your calendar system.

Video conferencing equipment

Every meeting room needs solid video gear. At minimum: a screen, camera, and mic/speaker combo that’s easy to use. Small rooms might just need a plug-and-play soundbar with a built-in camera. Bigger rooms? Go for multiple mics and a dedicated device that supports one-touch join. Always place the camera at eye level and centre it so remote teammates see faces, not walls.

And please, test it regularly.  You don’t want to call IT in the middle of a client meeting, do you?

Interactive displays and whiteboards

Digital whiteboards help bridge in-room and remote collaboration. People can write, sketch, and share ideas in real time. Some even let remote users contribute. If that’s not in the budget, pair a regular whiteboard with a camera facing it. That way, nothing important is lost to the people on the call.

Bonus: Many interactive displays also work as standard screens, so you get more bang for your space.

Wireless screen sharing

Loose cables are meeting momentum killers. Wireless screen-sharing tools let people cast from their devices quickly without the awkward cable-passing.

Digital signage and integrations

Screens near entryways that show what’s booked and what’s available across the office reduce confusion. Think of it like airport departure boards, but for meeting rooms. Some systems also use lights above doors (green = open, red = busy) to give quick visual cues from a distance. This kind of visibility helps reduce accidental interruptions and gives staff a clearer sense of space availability, especially in fast-paced or shared environments.

Motion and environmental sensors

These sensors aren’t flashy, they should be invisible. Motion sensors can free up rooms when no one is there, while CO2 or temperature sensors help keep the environment comfortable. A spike in CO2 might signal stuffy air, automatically nudging HVAC or reminding someone to crack a window. You don’t need this in every room, but adding it to key spaces can boost comfort, save energy, and give facility teams useful data on how spaces are really used.

Conclusion: Tailor the Space to the Work

Designing the best meeting room layout really comes down to understanding your team’s work patterns and goals.

You might mix and match the layouts we mentioned across your office. A small company could have one formal boardroom, a couple of huddle rooms with U-shape or flexible furniture, and a larger common area that can switch to classroom style on demand. The key is flexibility.

As one Gartner finding suggests, hybrid teams succeed by adapting meeting formats to fit the outcome. Your spaces should empower them to do exactly that, easily shifting from brainstorming in the round to presentation mode and back again.

A well-laid-out meeting room might not guarantee the meeting itself is amazing, that still depends on us humans to have good agendas and communication, but it removes the barriers and irritations that often derail meetings.

Blog > July 2025 >

Smart Office Layouts That Work for Every Employee Style Open

July 24, 2025 5 min read

Not every employee thinks, works, or even focuses the same way, and your office space shouldn’t assume they do. If we’ve learned anything from the past few years, it’s this: a smart office layout needs to do more than just look sleek. It needs to work for everyone.

Let’s dive into a trend that appeared in recent months. If you’re not familiar with it, we’ll explain exactly what it is.  People are showing up, swiping their badge, grabbing a coffee, and heading right back out. That’s coffee badging, and it’s becoming the go-to move for employees trying to meet return-to-office mandates without actually spending the day in the office.

It’s not laziness. It’s a protest. A quiet, practical protest against the kind of office experience that leaves people feeling like they’re wasting time. When you’re commuting just to take Zoom calls in a noisy room or getting derailed by a dozen well-meaning interruptions, it’s hard not to wonder: what’s the point of being here?

Just 26% of workers strongly agree that their current workplace helps them do their best work, indicating that while presence has returned, performance has not. (Gensler’s 2025 Global Workplace Survey)

At home, people feel more in control. They can focus, take breaks on their own terms, and structure the day around getting real work done, not finding a room, dodging distractions, or pretending to be productive in a space that wasn’t designed with their needs in mind.

This isn’t about being anti-office. It’s about wanting the commute to feel worth it. That’s why the conversation is shifting from how much space we have to what kind of experience we’re creating with it. The best offices aren’t full of stuff; they’re full of purpose.

That’s the heart of space quality. And where design begins to merge with workplace strategy.

The Case for Mixed-Use Layouts

Static layouts belong in the past. Teams are more diverse than ever in how they approach the workday: focused analysts, collaborative designers, part-time office visitors, full-time desk regulars. A smart office layout recognises this diversity and plans for it.

Research backs this up. According to CBRE, companies that use activity-based layouts—zones designed for specific tasks, such as deep work or collaboration—experience higher productivity and satisfaction levels. Instead of overcrowding the area, you tailor the space to fit its intended purpose.

 “For too long now, our workplaces have been static instead of dynamic. We sit at one desk all day long with occasional meetings to break up the monotony. But we know that our workdays aren’t static. We’re constantly doing different tasks that require different environments.”

- Kasey Garcia, CBRE Workplace

Designing for Real People, Not Just Roles

Real impact comes when you stop designing for job titles and start designing for behaviours. For this article, we’re exploring five common work styles and the spaces that help them thrive. Let’s dive in: 

The Focused Worker

Whether they’re deep in code or crafting detailed reports, these employees need uninterrupted time. A study published in the journal ‘Environment and Behavior’ found that employees in open-plan offices experienced a 66% decrease in their ability to focus on deep work tasks compared to those in private offices.
What they need: Think quiet rooms, library zones, or soundproof pods. Simple, uncluttered design. Adjustable task lighting. Minimal distractions. Focused Workers crave *control * over noise, lighting, and interruptions. The more autonomy they have in shaping their environment, the more productive they’ll be.

The Collaborator

They’re the energy in the room—your creative leads, product squads, and team-first thinkers who work best when ideas are flowing out loud. Collaboration isn’t a meeting to them—it’s a rhythm. And space shapes that rhythm.

According to Gensler’s 2023 Global Workplace Survey, employees are 2.5× more likely to say their workplace supports both individual and team productivity when they have access to diverse, task-based spaces, especially ones built for collaboration.

What they need: Open project tables, movable seating, writable walls, and reliable AV setups that support both in-person and hybrid teams. These workers move fast, think visually, and pivot often, so their space should too. They thrive in zones that let them sketch, stand, shift, and spark off each other without booking a boardroom every time.

Let us give you a visual: remember the creative bullpen in Mad Men where Peggy and her team worked? That space had colour, energy, and all the supplies they needed—and while it wasn’t completely closed off, it had just enough separation to let ideas breathe without constant interruption. That’s what momentum looks like in physical form.

 “Great Spaces that provide access to private areas, flexible environments, and the ability to control lighting and noise levels are leading the way.”

- Gensler's 2025 Global Workplace Survey

The Connector

They bridge teams and fuel your culture. According to Gallup, employees with strong social ties are more likely to be engaged and stay long-term, but only 25% feel they have enough informal space for connection.



What they need: Open lounges with soft seating, tall tables, and spots that naturally invite conversation. These areas work best when placed along high-traffic paths—near kitchens or meeting rooms—so casual bump-ins feel effortless. Lighting should be warm, and a bit of greenery or texture makes it more inviting. Think café vibe, not corridor. Connectors thrive in spaces that feel social by design. They want to be seen, to connect, and to help others do the same.

The Floater

They’re the drop-ins: sales reps, consultants, or hybrid staff moving between home, office, and client sites. CBRE found that 87% of workers now expect to choose their work setting based on task, and Floaters embody that mindset.

What they need: Easy access to a spot to work, no fuss. Touchdown spaces near entrances. Bookable desks. Charging ports and good Wi-Fi. They value efficiency. Make it easy for them to land, plug in, and get going. Think desks equipped with a monitor, keyboard, mouse pad, desk supplies, and headphones. Don’t forget to add a touch of greenery to the desks.

The Quiet Achiever

They’re steady, thoughtful, and often overlooked. These are the introverts and behind-the-scenes stars. Gensler notes that individual work satisfaction is highest in environments that provide choice and privacy.



What they need: Low-traffic spaces with soft acoustics and visual privacy, like quiet corners with high-backed seating, small two-person meeting rooms, or semi-enclosed nooks. Materials should be soft and warm: think felt, fabric, wood accents. Lighting should be adjustable and indirect. These are the people who thrive in calm, focused environments where they can choose when and how to engage. Quiet Achievers value psychological safety, so their ideal space offers calm by default, not through isolation but through comfort and control.

Flexibility Is the New Fixed Asset

Your office shouldn’t freeze in place. When it’s designed for change, it can flex with your team’s needs. When you design for how people work, you get an office people want to return to.

It’s not about pleasing everyone. Some will always prefer remote or hybrid, and that’s okay. What matters is that the office supports the kind of work people can’t easily do at home. When it does, they’ll keep coming back because it helps, not hinders.

That’s the kind of office that earns its place in the future of work.

The place for Workplace Management Technology in a Smart Office

Door Tablet helps keep the office flowing, literally. Its real-time room and desk displays, one-tap booking, and meeting room usage insights help people move through the office without second-guessing where to go or whether a space is free.

It smooths out the booking bottlenecks that kill momentum, especially for teams who rely on spontaneity and quick decision-making. In a smart office, flow matters, and Door Tablet makes that flow effortless.

Curious how Door Tablet could help your team navigate the workplace with less friction and more flexibility? Explore more at door-tablet.com or get in touch for a personalised walkthrough.

Blog > July 2025 >

What a Great Workplace Experience Looks Like in 2025 Open

July 8, 2025 5 min read

Forget trends. Forget mandates. Forget whether people are coming in two days or four.

The real question we should be asking is: What do employees need from their workplace to feel supported, productive, and excited to do their best work?
Because that’s what great workplace experience is about. Not policy. Not compliance. Experience.

In 2025, employees are showing us what matters: spaces that give them control. Tech that doesn’t fight back. Layouts that reflect how people work, not how space used to be managed.

This article breaks down what employees say they want and what workplace experience teams can do to deliver it. We’re not here to talk about hybrid strategies or how many desks you need. We’re here to talk about people. And how to build places that work for them.

Let’s dig in.

1. Flexibility is non-negotiable

Let’s start with what everyone’s already feeling: rigid offices just don’t work anymore. A CBRE study found that 52% of employees want a workplace that gives them options—spaces where they can choose how and where they work based on the task at hand.



This means more than just throwing a few beanbags in the corner. We’re talking:

• Quiet rooms for deep focus
• Social zones for spontaneous convos
• Collaboration spaces for heads-together work
• Private call pods for, well, privacy

Over 65% of companies are already reducing desk density and shifting to activity-based layouts to reflect this reality. Employees want autonomy. The workplace has to support it.

2. People want their personal space

Yes, hot desking is here to stay. (*but only in specific use cases*, read this article about the use case of hot desking) But employees haven’t given up on having a space that feels like their own. 53% say their personal workspace is the most important part of the office.

Open plans? They’re not the productivity boosters we hoped for. Harvard research showed that face-to-face interaction dropped 70% when offices removed walls. That’s not exactly collaboration.

Still a believer in open office spaces? Check out this article about the state of the Open Office Layout

The best offices balance open and private. That might mean reservable desks, quiet pods, or just knowing you can count on a space being yours when you need it. Nearly 98% of employees still have an assigned spot, which tells you something about what they value.

 “Great workplaces are intentionally designed to evoke feelings in a space by overlaying experience factors with space function. The most important experience factors that promote workplaces from good to great include feeling that the space is beautiful, welcoming, and inspires new thinking.”

- Gensler Global Workplace Survey 2024

3. Amenities are a deal-maker

Office amenities are the little things that transform a regular workplace into an exceptional one. They are thoughtful extras that elevate working conditions beyond contractual job requirements.



You don’t need to turn your office into a wellness resort. But the basics have to be there. Think:

Natural light and LED lights (no one likes those fluorescent lights in the office)

• Comfortable seating
• Clean air
• Quiet Zones
• Fully stocked kitchens
• Multi-purpose spaces

According to JLL, 75% of companies now prioritise amenities like on-site gyms, cafés, and green spaces when selecting office space. And for good reason. These perks are signals. Signals that say: we care about your well-being, not just your output.

And yes, social spaces matter too. Gensler found that 80% of employees report that social zones enhance their satisfaction. A good office gives people room to connect. Sometimes the best ideas happen near the coffee machine or in the office lounge.

 “The best offices know how to be comfortable and convenient enough where it encourages employees to be in the office during the workday rather than wanting to be at home doing work”

- Max Fal, Fueled

4. Tech that does what it says it does

Employees won’t battle broken booking systems. They won’t fight for a desk, troubleshoot a touchscreen or a print machine. Over 40% of hybrid workers avoid the office because the tech experience is bad, according to Gartner.

Now that we’ve established their space needs, those spaces need to be linked with the right workplace tech for people to enjoy their time in the office.
Here’s how we’d pair the tech to the spaces employees value most:

• Quiet Zones – Spaces for deep work need minimal distractions and clear boundaries. Think noise-cancellation tech, sound masking systems, and ambient light controls to set the tone for focus. Install red/green status lights outside the zone to signal availability without anyone needing to knock. Pair that with desk-level indicators, devices that let others know when a workstation is taken. Add adjustable lighting and smart air quality monitors to keep comfort levels. Add in soft seating or height-adjustable desks to help employees drop into a state of flow without interruption.

• Collaborative Areas – These zones benefit from large whiteboards, wireless screen-sharing tools and real-time room booking displays from Door Tablet to signal who’s booked the space and for how long.

• Phone Booths – These should include motion sensors to detect occupancy, automated lighting, ventilation, and air quality sensors. These integrations keep booths fresh, comfortable, and energy efficient without extra overhead.

• Meeting Rooms – For both face-to-face and virtual meetings, tech should be seamless. The meeting prep starts before the actual meeting. It starts with booking a meeting room.  We've all had that moment—you thought you booked the room, but it turns out you didn’t. Someone else is already inside, and now you're scrambling five minutes before your meeting. What if the meeting room booking worked every time? Door Tablet’s meeting room displays, integrated with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, show real-time room status, support instant booking with a tap, and even auto-release rooms if no one checks in. That means no more double bookings, no calendar syncing issues, and no standing awkwardly outside an occupied room.

• Desks – Whether it’s hot desking or reserved seating, employees want their desk setup to feel smooth and personal. Door Tablet’s desk devices and desk booking software offer a real-time visual of which desks are booked and which are available, so finding a desk doesn’t feel like a scavenger hunt. Once there, the desk setup should just work: think dual monitors, ergonomic chairs, mechanical keyboard and mouse setups ready to go, plus clean desk policies that keep everything reset and tidy for the next user. Layer in adjustable lighting, accessories like wrist rests, a visual timer with an alarm or plants, and suddenly the desk becomes a workstation employees enjoy using.

According to IWG, 95% of CEOs have invested in new workplace technology over the past year to support hybrid work. Employees don’t want five apps to manage one task in the office, like booking a desk or a meeting room. They want one system that gets out of the way and lets them get on with it.

The best tech is there for your employees. It should remove friction, not add to it.

5. Culture you can feel

It’s hard to measure culture, but your office tells the story for you.

From the layout of your meeting rooms to the quality of your chairs, employees read between the lines. When culture is truly embedded in space, it doesn’t need a poster to explain it. It shows up in quiet zones that respect people’s focus. In collaboration spaces that spark fresh thinking. In every amenity that says, “your time matters here.”

In Gensler’s 2024 report, employees said the best workplaces felt "beautiful, welcoming, and inspired new thinking." That’s not aesthetic for aesthetic’s sake, that’s culture expressed through design.

When companies make thoughtful space choices like offering personal desks instead of forcing hot-desking, or making sure meeting room tech works, employees notice. Those choices say: “We see you. We trust you. We built this for you.”

McKinsey estimates a median-sized company could lose up to £280 million a year in disengagement and attrition. That’s what happens when people don’t feel connected.

So if you want your culture to feel real—not performative—it should be present in every centimetre of your workplace.

So what now?

If you're in HR, Culture, Ops, or Facilities, this is your moment to shape a workplace experience that reflects how people really work.

A thoughtful workplace supports different needs: quiet zones for deep focus, tools that don’t get in the way, and a layout that feels purposeful. Employees notice the details: the working tech, the lighting, the desk setup. These decisions send a message that their time and work matter.

When the space works, people do too. And when they feel supported, they’re more likely to stay, contribute, and be proud of the place they work in.

Blog > May 2025 >

Making the Office Spaces Worth the Commute Open

May 15, 2025 4 min read

Key Takeaways

• The office purpose gap is widening. Employees feel the 2025 return-to-office push is arbitrary because they are commuting simply to perform the same video calls and tasks they could complete at home.
• Space wastage remains a systemic issue. Pre-pandemic data from Microsoft showed that 20% of meeting rooms were reserved but never actually used. Without smart systems, these "ghost meetings" continue to waste valuable real estate.
• Autonomy is the primary driver of satisfaction. Studies indicate that comfort and a sense of choice over one's environment significantly boost performance and well-being.

The Need for a Compelling Return

2025 has been the year of full-time RTO requests from big companies like Amazon or JPMorgan. We continue to see more and more companies requesting employees to come back full-time to the office this year. But despite these announcements, many employers didn’t take into consideration that the office is still designed for another era. 

Employees now feel they’re being asked to commute just to sit at a desk and do the same work they could easily accomplish from home. It's not a compelling trade-off, and it’s not very encouraging if companies want to maintain long-term RTO success.

For many employees, the office no longer matches how they work best. The post-pandemic shift gave people a taste of autonomy, flexibility, and balance.

Jennifer Moss, workplace strategist and author of Why Are We Here?, notes that too many companies are trying to execute the office “in the same way that it used to be.”

“You’re still on Zoom, still doing the same work you did at home—but now with a commute,” she explains. Without meaningful changes to space and purpose, the return feels arbitrary, not inspiring.

Another layer that shakes these full-time RTOs policies is trust. John Frehse of Ankura warns that mandating office time without explaining the benefits signals a lack of trust. “You only trust me when I’m in the office?” That unspoken message undercuts employee morale.

And then there are the everyday office frustrations.

Before the pandemic, office life had its fair share of headaches. Employees dealt with open-plan spaces where it was nearly impossible to concentrate because every conversation became background noise. Meeting rooms got double-booked, while others struggled to find a space or even schedule one directly. Desks were either too limited or not personalised, and the layout made it hard to find a quiet corner or a collaborative space that supported productive individual time or team interaction.

People now expect environments that support both in-person connection and individual productivity, along with seamless integration of digital tools.

There is a deeper issue beyond outdated layouts and logistical frustrations: control.

When employees work from home, they’re in charge of their environment. They can choose how, when, and where they work best—whether that’s total silence, a standing desk, or a mid-afternoon break that recharges them. In contrast, many office spaces strip away that autonomy. You're tied to a fixed desk, have limited privacy, and have rigid routines.

This loss of control directly affects job satisfaction. This study shows that comfort and a sense of choice significantly boost performance and well-being. When people feel their environment is working with them, not against them, they're more engaged, more productive, and more likely to view the office as a valuable part of their working week. Without that, returning to the office starts to feel more like a burden than a benefit.

“Office-space preferences can push employees away from on-site working, influencing their hybrid-work preferences.”
- Lila Skountridaki

Giving employees the control they need, not just cubicles

So, what does a workplace look like when it supports control instead of removing it?

Employees want to decide how, where, and when they work best. That doesn’t mean a free-for-all; it means designing systems and spaces that enable flexibility without descending into chaos.

And this is where tech and culture meet.

Because when culture says, “we trust you”, and technology says, “we’ve got the tools to support you”, employee autonomy becomes possible. Not just over tasks, but over environments, schedules, and energy.

Tech can’t fix culture, but it can remove friction

That sense of control is what makes coming into the office feel worth it again. When people have ownership of their time and environment, it leads to better focus, stronger collaboration.

1. Smart meeting room booking

Say goodbye to calendar chaos. Intelligent room booking systems integrate with calendars, detect occupancy, and release unused spaces. This prevents bottlenecks and ghost meetings—an issue that used to plague large firms pre-pandemic.

Microsoft reported that 20% of meeting rooms were reserved but never used in pre-COVID offices. With hybrid now in play, automation can bring balance and fairness to space usage.

2. Desk booking & workplace wayfinding

Flexibility is only empowering when it’s organised. Desk booking apps let employees reserve their spot, see where their team is sitting, or find quiet zones based on mood or task. It also means that Facility Managers can track usage and adapt layouts dynamically.

3. Noise zoning & adaptive spaces

Open-plan designs aren't inherently bad, but they need structure. Sound masking tech, acoustic sensors, and smart zoning allow offices to flex between collaborative buzz and focused silence. Think of it as giving people a volume knob on their day.

4. Hybrid-ready AV and meeting equity

“Can you hear me?” shouldn’t be the soundtrack of a hybrid call. High-quality microphones, auto-framing cameras, and inclusive layouts ensure remote participants feel equally involved. Tools like Zoom Rooms and Microsoft Teams Rooms now support intelligent framing and transcription, making the office a place where hybrid meetings work.

5. Smart signage and spontaneous interaction

Use real-time digital signage to promote the community: highlight who's in today, upcoming events, or ad-hoc lunch-and-learns. Encourage spontaneous coffee chats, project brainstorms, or cross-team mixers that remote work can’t replicate.

Culture doesn’t live in code, but it does need space

Yes, culture is built by people. But it also needs the right conditions to thrive. Offices must be designed for belonging, mentoring, casual exchange, and moments of creativity that are hard to schedule but powerful to experience.

In other words, giving people a reason to show up.

“When we’re trying to get people back into the office, we still are executing the office in the same way that it used to be. We just can’t jam the toothpaste back in the tube.” - Jennifer Moss

This doesn’t require a full rebuild. Even small, intentional changes can go a long way:

• Curating zones for heads-down work, collaboration, and casual connection
• Using sensors and occupancy analytics to understand how spaces are used
• Making social spaces visible, inviting, and part of the workflow
• Protocols for shared spaces. For example: “Quiet hours in this zone from 10am–12pm.” Or “Headphones only for music or video.”

When people have the freedom to choose how and where they work within the office, engagement goes up, and resentment fades.

“Reduce the pace and give people that mental adjustment time that is needed genuinely, to take care of their lives before you change
[their lives].” - Sujay Saha

Takeaway: The Commute Must Pay Off

Employees aren’t just travelling to a building, they’re deciding if it’s worth it.

If they arrive only to spend the day on video calls or struggle to find a quiet spot, that choice feels like a burden, not a benefit. A workplace that also offers a professional, client-ready environment can make a real difference.

When employees know they have access to impressive spaces for both internal collaboration and hosting external meetings, the commute feels more worthwhile and productive.

But if the office is a place where real collaboration happens, where ideas spark and relationships grow, then the journey makes sense.

That’s what the best RTO strategies understand: people want to feel that their presence matters. That showing up adds value, not just for the company, but for them.

Door Tablet makes the commute worth it

The commute only makes sense when the destination works. Door Tablet bridges the gap between outdated office layouts and the modern need for autonomy with a seamless, professional booking ecosystem. Our tablets and software eliminate the friction of finding a space, allowing your team to focus on the collaboration and connection they can’t get at home. Transform your office into a high-performance environment that people actually want to show up for.

Book a demo with Door Tablet today.

Blog > April 2025 >

Is the Open Office Layout still relevant in 2026? Open

April 22, 2025 3 min read

Key Insights:

• Open offices reduce real collaboration and focus. Face-to-face interaction dropped by 70%, and employees lose up to 7 hours of productivity per week.


• Employees return when offices support how they work. Only 41% can concentrate in open plans, while over 53% of companies are moving to flexible, activity-based layouts.


• Mixed layouts outperform one-size-fits-all offices by supporting focus, collaboration, and client needs at the same time.

A decade ago, open-plan offices seemed like the future of work. Companies wanted to break down silos, boost collaboration, and reduce real estate costs. For a while, it worked—or at least, it looked like it did.

But by 2026, we will have enough data to call it: the open office layout isn't delivering on its promises.

It's hurting productivity, employee satisfaction, and even the motivation to come into the office.

Let’s start with productivity. A Harvard study found that when two major firms transitioned to an open layout, face-to-face interactions dropped by 70%, while digital communication spiked. The open space, instead of encouraging spontaneous collaboration, pushed employees to retreat into digital silos. This counterintuitive result is a red flag for anyone designing spaces meant to foster teamwork.

There is also a lack of privacy in these types of offices. Open-plan offices often lack designated quiet spaces for focused work. This can lead to employees feeling overstimulated and unable to concentrate on their work. A study by Oxford University found that employees in open-plan offices reported feeling a lack of control over their environment, which can further hinder focus and productivity.

It’s estimated that open environments lead to a loss of 86 minutes of productive work per day. That’s more than 7 hours a week, per employee.

The negative effects don’t stop at performance. According to Gensler, only 41% of workers in open offices feel they can concentrate effectively. And a third report needs to leave the office entirely to get meaningful work done. That can negatively influence job satisfaction and retention.

The chart  below indicates that individuals in open-plan setups experienced significantly more audio and visual distractions on-site, on average. This pushes them to choose to work from home.

Health and well-being are also at stake. Studies show that employees in open-plan offices take 62% more sick days, possibly due to easier transmission of illnesses and elevated stress levels.

The Link Between Office Design, Job Satisfaction, and Attendance

One of the clearest lessons from the pandemic-era shift to remote and hybrid work is this: employees are more willing to come into the office when it offers something they can't get at home.

That doesn't mean ping pong tables and free snacks. It means a space that supports their work and makes their day easier, not harder.

Activity-Based Working (ABW) is one model that meets this need. Unlike the open office, ABW provides a variety of work settings—quiet zones for deep work, breakout rooms for collaboration, and phone booths for private calls. Employees choose the space that fits their task. According to CBRE, over 53% of companies are adopting this model because it boosts both productivity and satisfaction.

ABW gives employees control, and that control increases their engagement. A study comparing office layouts found that satisfaction was highest in single offices, followed by ABW environments, with traditional open plans scoring lowest. It's not about eliminating collaboration; it's about offering choice.

Smart Layouts Meet Smart Tech

A shift away from open offices doesn’t mean designing in the dark. Sensors and analytics tools give facility managers real-time data on how space is used.

Motion sensors, for example, can show which meeting rooms are actually being used and which sit empty, helping teams manage bookings more efficiently. This data can be used to fine-tune layouts, move resources, and better allocate desks and rooms.

Testing and iterating with real data, organisations can develop a responsive, flexible office that encourages people to return, not because they have to, but because they want to.

Should We Ditch Open Layouts Entirely?

Open spaces still have a role to play, but that role needs to be clearly defined. In creative industries or innovation hubs, open layouts can support idea-rich environments. For short-term project teams, a shared, open workspace might foster camaraderie and quick communication. But these should be the exception, not the rule.

Most knowledge workers need both collaboration and concentration in their day-to-day work.

Open-plan layouts also fall short when it comes to hosting clients. They rarely offer the privacy, quiet, or professional atmosphere needed for external meetings. A well-designed office should support both internal collaboration and create an environment that’s impressive and functional for visitors. Spaces that can flex between focused work, team collaboration, and client-facing meetings are key to making the office a true asset, not just for employees, but for the business.

Read the article to explore why cubicles are making a comeback and what this shift says about how we work.

A mixed layout that includes open lounges, enclosed meeting pods, quiet rooms, and reservable desks allows people to flow between work modes without sacrificing comfort or focus.

In 2026, office design should no longer be about fitting the most desks into the least space. It should be about aligning physical environments with business goals, employee expectations, and data-backed insights. The open-plan layout was a bold experiment. Now, it’s time to take what we’ve learned and design spaces that truly work.

Final Thoughts: It’s Time to Rebalance the Office

We’re not saying open offices are evil. They had their place. But as the research and employee feedback roll in, it’s clear that open plans alone can’t support modern work. Offices need to be places of purpose: where collaboration is easy, deep work and privacy are protected, and coming in feels worthwhile.

The good news? We have the tools to make it happen. With data from sensors, feedback from employees, and flexible tech like desk booking systems, we can build better workplaces. And that starts with letting go of the idea that one big room fits all.