Why collaboration starts with defining huddle rooms.

Over the past decades, the office space has drastically changed design. Trendy furniture, green accents and access to quality coffee are examples, just to name a few. In a quest to make the office environment a place to feel at home, interior decorators got a free hand in bringing along a wild variety of concepts, all covered under the umbrella ‘fostering productivity’.

Cabañas, phone booths and work pods occupied costly office estate and arguably boosted well being at work. The combination of open floor plans and small segregated work spaces hardly attributed to spontaneous collaboration and even worked contra- productive, as studies done by Fortune have shown.

Organisations floundered with retro looking sofas and tables and many employees refer to silly investments when discussing the attempts to make the office look modern. The real problem? Uncomfortable lounge-like environments could never address the real desires of modern workers.

Modern workers want to share their ideas, present a slide, discuss the highs and lows of the week, be part of a team and celebrate success. Modern workers could individually excel or contribute to a team’s collective success. Either way, there is an impending need to come together every once in a while. In these meetings, the accent is on the happening, on the strategy, on the quotation or on the sale, on the individual, or on the group.

The real answer? No matter if people work alone or constantly in groups, all workers have a need to come together in simple and informal meetings. When two or three people align their thoughts, they ideally come together in a huddle to discuss the plan of attack. Exactly like they do in rugby or football. This is where the word ‘huddle’ has its origins. It is not just another term to ignite a new hype, it is in fact a long existing concept that symbolically describes what really drives productivity.

DEKOM did not invent the huddle room, but gathered vast experience and is willing to share valuable information. Please consult DEKOM about a number of standardised huddle rooms for each situation.