Rightly or wrongly we think we are qualified to comment on the general state of office environments in New Zealand.
Our main qualification is the fact that we find ourselves installing desks and locker systems into lots of different office environments. We get to experience the environment first hand.
So it may surprise you to hear what our impression is of what needs to be fixed first to make these office spaces habitable. (It's NOT new desks).
The biggest problem is the air (or lack thereof). The number of workplaces with incredibly poor air circulation is huge. Of course, there are often good reasons for this. Many office spaces are rearranged regularly to cope with organisational change and they find themselves quickly trying to accommodate more people than the space is designed for. New walls or partitions can destroy the flow of air and workers are often left with overheated and stale spaces.
The second major issue is sound. As offices make a transition from pure "open plan" offices to "activity based" offices there is often little thought put into allowing staff the freedom to work without hearing the rest of the office at work. Sound dampening partitions and cabinets (such as those shown above) are often essential to getting the mix right to create a collaborative yet private work space.
Check out this link for examples of how this can be handled using sound proofed storage cabinets and partitions.
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