The office cubicle has been around for a long time — and for good reason. With so many advantages, it’s no surprise that office cubicles are still a modern office staple.
The early success behind the office cubicle was that it offered an economical and practical answer to the question of efficient, productive, and most importantly, private office organization for employees.
With such advantages, it makes sense that the compact and efficient layout option is still popular in modern office design.
If you want to enhance the work life of your employees, even within an open concept floor plan, choosing a suitable cubicle system could mean the difference between a satisfied and energetic worker and one that struggles with focus, concentration, and productivity.
When it comes to the best office design and furnishings for your business and team, consider the range of benefits an office cubicle system can have on your office environment and culture.
Privacy
A primary benefit of an office cubicle is the privacy it allows without compromising openness and a sense of space. Many roles demand confidentiality – phone calls and handling sensitive documents – making separation from the greater office space necessary. An office cubicle provides much-needed privacy, particularly when dealing with classified data.
It provides a much quieter workspace than most open-concept designs can provide, reducing disruptive distractions for workers needing to focus on the task at hand.
Employees who work in office cubicles, where they enjoy even a little privacy from the bustle of the larger office space, experience improved concentration and focus and, by extension, productivity at work.
Fosters community as office experience
An office cubicle layout helps remove some of the barriers inherent to an office hierarchy. With everyone stationed at cubicles rather than separate offices, employees feel a better sense of equity and community and feel that they, as well as their ideas and contributions, are more valued.
With an open yet personal workstation, employees can enjoy the best of both worlds – quiet and private time for concentrated tasks with easy access to the greater office and work culture. The sense of inclusion that an office cubicle system creates can help workers to feel more welcome to share their ideas and vision.
Additionally, a cubicle arrangement allows team leaders to easily follow and track every member of the team’s contributions, concerns, and progress.
Collaboration and team building
Cubicles, aligned with an enhanced sense of office community, help facilitate collaboration, brainstorming, and team building. When employees share side-by-side space, it allows them to more readily share ideas, concepts, and innovations with their neighboring colleagues.
With the combination of privacy for task focus and openness to encourage team collaboration, office cubicles promote creativity and teamwork between employees as well as management.
Ownership and autonomy
An office cubicle provides workers with individualized space for an increased sense of ownership and autonomy while at work.
Workers enjoy independence and agency over their space, no matter how small. The separating panels encourage employees to personalize their workstation with keepsakes, photos, and other items to help make their work cubicle their own.
Cubicle walls provide not only the space to customize but, depending on the style, convenient shelving to help keep workstations tidy and organized, with space for books, binders, filing, and other items.
When workers feel ownership of their space, it’s not unusual that they also feel more inspired to do better work.
Space-saving
Flexible and versatile, office cubicles are great space savers, particularly if you’re limited to a small office.
Recognized for making the most of any space, cubicles provide individual team members with their own separate workstations without constructing walls or trying to eke out the square footage for private offices.
You can fit more people, comfortably and productively, into one room.
Best bang for your buck — office cubicles are cost-effective
Not only does an office cubicle allow for a flexible and adaptable work environment, it’s also one of the most economical office layouts available.
Construction of walls to create separate offices is extremely costly, not to mention, permanent. A cubicle system effectively and economically offers separation between workstations for multiple employees in a way that’s attractive, practical, adaptable, and most importantly, budget-friendly.
