Every organization has its own jargon that can be confusing to outsiders. The Financial Times is no different. Inside their London headquarters, it’s common to hear phrases like “See you in Nakfa at three” or “Why is it always so cold in Pataca?” or “Where is Ngultrum again?” These are actually the names of most of the building’s meeting rooms, which is a clever touch for a financial newspaper, though it may take some getting used to.
However, since the shift to hybrid working, I can’t help but think that it would be more fitting to have rooms named “Hen’s Teeth” or “Gold Dust” – words that signify something rare and hard to find. Tracking down an available meeting room was already difficult before the pandemic, but now, with more people coming to the office solely for meetings or Zoom calls, it has become nearly impossible.
This struggle for meeting rooms is not exclusive to the Financial Times. A man from a large global company described it as “brutal,” while an executive from another international firm said it was a “nightmare.” The competition for a private room was so intense at their respective offices that they had to come up with strategies to secure one. They found that claiming the need for privacy with sensitive information or for a Zoom call with a CEO was effective.
One executive even discovered a secluded room behind the IT team, which was perfect, except for a cheeky poster on the wall pointing to a dance floor. He usually hid it from view during video calls, but one day, while retrieving a dropped pen, he accidentally exposed the poster to a shocked CEO who demanded to know the location.
It’s likely that similar scenarios are happening worldwide, as indicated by a recent report from an Australian workplace sensor company called XY Sense. Their data from various countries, including the US, Hong Kong, and the UK, revealed that walled meeting rooms are the most heavily utilized office spaces. On average, people occupy these rooms 67% of the time, compared to just 13% for open breakout spaces.
Despite lower overall occupancy rates due to the pandemic, demand for meeting rooms has actually increased. One tech company HR executive quoted in the report expressed frustration that the mandate for more collaboration was not feasible on some days due to the lack of available spaces.
This is a significant issue because it’s wasteful to leave valuable office space unused. The XY Sense report showed that over a third of office desks are never used, even though workstations typically take up 80% of the floor space in a traditional office design.
I recently discovered that some prominent Silicon Valley companies are actively working to solve this problem. During a visit to the Financial Times, Brian Chesky, the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, mentioned that their “live and work anywhere” policy had reduced office usage, but they still faced a shortage of meeting rooms. Chesky observed the same pattern at the FT office, where most desks remained empty while meeting rooms were always occupied.
Chesky believes that current office design principles need to be completely reimagined. He plans to design a new concept for the office of the 21st century, or at least for this decade. While it may sound like typical Silicon Valley hubris, I genuinely hope he succeeds because our current office setup is far from ideal if we were to create it from scratch today.
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