A recent survey, conducted by Teknion, indicates employees are looking for more privacy at the office. This finding comes in light of the shift towards more collaborative, open environment workspaces in recent years.

“Collaboration is no doubt an extremely important business tool but its translation to the office plan may have been a little too extreme,” says Steve Delfino, Teknion’s vice-president for corporate marketing and product management. “A fine balance between privacy and the degree of openness is needed to be effective.”

While survey respondents identified lounge space, meeting rooms and quiet zones as the things most missing from their offices, Delfino says the need for employee privacy is growing in step with increased collaboration in open plan office environments.

“In fact, Gensler’s 2013 U.S. Workplace Survey determines that employees who can effectively focus are 57 per cent more able to collaborate, 88 per cent more able to learn and four per cent more able to socialize in their workplace than their peers who are unable to focus,” he notes. “Distracted employees are obviously not as productive as those with spaces designed for focus work. Our challenge is designing workplaces that effectively support the ability to focus and collaborate simultaneously.”

Teknion conducted its workplace survey at the recent ideacity conference in Toronto. Three-quarters of attendees are either owners/founders of their own businesses or senior managers/executives within an organization. The conference attracts people from a variety of professional backgrounds, including architecture and design, finance, investment, banking, technology, science, arts, film academia and the public and not-for-profit sectors.