Modern breakout areas are taking the world by storm due to the vast benefits that they carry, improved well-being and increased productivity are firmly at the top of the list. Breakout areas don’t have to serve a specific purpose, and that’s the very joy of them. Designed to offer an experiential space that staff can either relax in or take part in informal meetings, they’re entirely flexible in nature.
Let’s look at 5 tips for creating a perfect breakout space within your workspace:
Choose a suitable space
A breakout area isn’t strictly for the larger office. It doesn’t matter what size your office is, your breakout area is based on the nature of your work and the goals you aim to achieve in. Do you want a space solely for chill-out and relaxation? Would you like to allow for collaboration and interaction? You can even incorporate the two, particularly if you opt for acoustic furniture and collaborative furniture that helps absorb some of the surrounding sound.
Once you’ve made this decision, you can begin to allocate the appropriate space.
Invest in flexible furniture
Based on your requirements, you should choose furniture that best facilitates the needs of your workforce. There’s one thing that’s a certainty; your aim is to promote comfort, so comfortable seating such as sofas and armchairs are an absolute must.
Office pods are a great option for a little piece of solitude. Due to their ‘office-within-an-office’ nature, in-built soundproof qualities allow for external noise to be kept to a minimum. With a flexible design, most pods can be configured to suit your personal requirements. There are numerous options for larger pods that can accommodate around six-ten people at a time. That aside, they’re also a great investment as your pod can travel should you choose to relocate to a larger premises at a future date.
Flexibility and movement
Flexible workspaces are super easy to design, and can be restructured with ease. Choosing flexible pieces like benches, tables and stools means that they can be easily manoeuvred when the need arises. No big refurbs. No construction work.
With a large focus being placed on healthy workspaces nowadays, the breakout area can be a great place to encourage movement. This could be in the form of a pool table or table-tennis table; larger spaces can benefit from mini-gyms which are growing in popularity.
A bit of movement does your workforce all the good in the world, particularly as the late afternoon slump takes effect. Encouraging them to take part in an activity is a positive way of re-energising, and feeding inner creativity.
Resimercial design
Resimercial design is all about creating the homely feel that workers are privy to with remote and hybrid working. It largely came to fruition as organisations sought inventive ways of luring their staff back to the office. Suffice to say, it’s been a massive hit, and employees are now relishing soothing environments with eye-catching décor, lavishly comfortable, flexible seating, and biophilia heaven! All with a view to offering that bit of home comfort that many of us became accustomed to when we were working from home.
Cutting edge spaces
If you have the space and you really want to go all out to create the most exciting workspace known to man, multi-level modules are the way to go! Put simply, it means creating different themes or environments under one roof.
You’ll be hard pushed to find a more inspiring and productivity-increasing workspace than a diverse one. Think phone booths, designated coffee shops and Underground tube carriage meeting rooms, just like this one! That’s not to say there’s no work being done, on the
contrary, fun environments are proven to improve the overall wellbeing of an employee.
Thinking of incorporating a breakout area?
Please get in touch with the team at Fluid to discuss how we can help you being your plans to fruition.