We know we can’t win them all, but we also know how to collaborate.
Many large organizations with locations in the Southeast have national contracts with furniture distributors. Maintaining quality assurance during remote fulfillment can be difficult. Over the years, Office Furniture Works has built relationships with distributors by providing delivery, installation & other office furniture services. The relationships help close the loop on those national networks, saving resources for oversight and fulfillment for all parties. Through one of these relationships, the Office Furniture Works team recently had an opportunity to work with a Chattanooga facilities manager for a major telecommunications provider on a call center cubicle reconfiguration.
Objectives

The Space
The work space was previously outfitted with 65″ tall cubicle systems, which made team members’ accessibility less than optimal. The organization decided to try a different configuration to improve collaboration. Initially, employees at the call center tried to reconfigure the workspace themselves – and more power to them! However, their end result was an open layout they deemed too noisy. So, our team was brought in to reconfigure twelve pods of cubicle workstations.
The People
The facility houses hundreds of staff on any given day. Each pod of workstations houses a team of call center employees. The nature of a call center environment means employees spend most of their time at a workstation, which can lead to exhaustion and lower productivity. Many industries with call center-based operations strive to combat that by increasing team cohesion. To effectively promote collaboration, the open workspace needed fewer barriers while retaining provisions for acoustical privacy. They also needed to minimize the inherent downtime for each team during the project.
Our goal was to improve collaboration with a cubicle reconfiguration, creating a more open plan for team spaces.
Solutions

Phased Project Schedule
Phasing the call center cubicle reconfiguration over a series of weeks minimizes disruption. Although teams vacated their pods, completing the reconfiguration during working hours means keeping noise to a minimum and making considerations for routine foot traffic. Each team vacated their group of cubicles in the late afternoon. The pod was then reconfigured the following day. Many components are reusable, so old cubicles are removed and separated. Next, the space is cleaned, new cubicles are framed out after & have power run through them. Then, the workstations are finished and made ready for the I.T. provider. With the reconfiguration team moving on to the next pod, the team could be back in their space after minimal downtime.

Call Center Cubicle Reconfiguration
The dozen groups of cubicle workstations each house a team of workers. Tall cubicle panels between rows of bench workstations made it difficult to reach another team member without fully breaking focus. So, we reconfigured the call center cubicle systems into 4-pack desks with little or no partition between workspaces. In the new layout, collaboration spaces are still centrally located with no partitions higher than 36″. Configuring the existing workstations into an open floor plan removed that visual barrier and increased accessibility.

Results



Thanks for Reading!
At Office Furniture Works, we’re striving to be businesses’ one-stop shop for responding to the challenges posed by growth, change & relocation. Do you have a workspace that isn’t working as hard as you are?