9 Reasons Huddle Rooms Are in High Demand

AMX lays out some rock-solid reasons behind the workplace trend toward providing employees with collaborative huddle spaces.

CI Staff

Try to remember the first time you heard the term “huddle room,” referring to a small collaborative work space and an alternative to traditionally large conference rooms.

Odds are it wasn’t that long ago, but now you hear the term constantly. What factors led to the sudden and prolific emergence of huddle space demand?

Philip Loeper, AMX by Harman product marketing manager, recently laid out some factors contributing to the huddle space trend in a presentation, “AV for Anywhere.”

1.) Real estate costs $23.23 per square foot in the U.S., so every unused square foot of oversized conference room space is bleeding companies’ profits by exactly that much. Meanwhile, real estate is typically among the top expenses for a company which has led to an average drop of 60 square foot dedicated to each employee from 2000 to 2014. That’s a 27 percent decrease in space allocation per employee.

2.) Modern workers, particularly millennials, expect and demand access to anytime and anyplace collaboration.

Related: 5 Steps to Cheaper, Simpler Huddle Spaces

3.) Workplace design trends are shifting toward “open plan” and flex-use spaces, meaning employers need to maximize the utilization of space and that they’re often opting of “hot desking” or huddle spaces over dedicated office.

4.) There are a lot more remote and mobile employees in today’s workforce, which means that when they do work in the office they need a place to conduct business and collaborate.

5.) Open space or not, employees still need quiet places with which to conduct long calls, take notes while on speaker phone or talk to their kids’ school principal.

Related: Don’t Freak Out: Skype as an Affordable Collaboration Solution

6.) Conference rooms are in high demand. With increased collaboration among more types of employees, conference rooms are in higher demand, yet they’re not fully utilized. How often have you seen a meeting of three people in a large, gaping conference room?

7.) There is explosive demand for web conferencing and video conferencing, again, among more types of employees than in the past. It’s no picnic to conduct a video conferencing meeting in an open space cubicle.

8.) Modern workplace priorities such as virtualization, cloud-computing, cloud content sharing, BYOD and telepresence lend themselves well to huddle room environments.

9.) Collaborative work environments tend to have higher employee retention. Collaboration has an immense impact on team performances. Collaboration environments foster creativity. And much of that collaboration happens in huddle spaces.

Download 5 Steps to Cheaper, Simpler Huddle Spaces now.

If you enjoyed this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our digital newsletters!