businessinfomag.uk 14 magazine WORKPLACE Solving the problem To help resolve these challenges, 78% of those surveyed have brought personal items from home to create a more harmonious working environment, including their own personal earplugs or noise-cancelling headphones (cited by 31%) and their own room spray (25%). Areas respondents would like employers to invest in include ventilation devices that pump fresh air into the office (32%), more natural light (32%) and soundproof booths (31%). Why the office environment matters Creating the optimum working environment is not just a productivity issue, it also has implications for recruitment and retention. A significant minority of the hybrid and office workers surveyed by Logitech said they would decline a job offer or leave their current role because of poor air quality (26%), unsatisfactory office temperature (20%) or inadequate office lighting (18%). www.logitech.com climate and engagement and collaboration,” he said. Noisy neighbours Noisy working environments are an enduring problem with 85% of workers claiming that a loud office impacts their stress levels. Loud talking, cited by 43%, and loud typing (21%) are particular bugbears. Over two thirds (69%) of workers admit to having had a disagreement with a loud colleague and 51% have been forced to move seats or go home due to office chatter. Is it stuffy in here? Air quality, unpleasant odours and the contentious issue of air temperature can also hamper productivity and office harmony, with 65% of employees saying conflicts of opinion have led to clashes with co-workers. These issues are particularly acute in meeting rooms. Over three quarters (79%) of workers cite stuffy, unventilated meeting rooms as a productivity drain, to the extent that 10% have fallen asleep in a meeting and 61% have come close to doing so. UK office workers are losing up to 330 million hours of productive time every year due to unnecessary distractions in their working environment, claims Logitech, a manufacturer of workspace accessories and collaboration hardware. In a survey of 2,000 UK hybrid and full-time office workers carried out by Vitreous World in conjunction with Logitech and workplace solutions integrator Insight, 71% of workers said they were losing time to a ‘poor productivity climate’, with 25% losing as much as one hour a week. Common complaints include a noisy working environment, poor air quality, bad lighting and outdated tech – problems that David Houseman, Head of Workplace Experience at Logitech, says can be alleviated by investment in the right tools. “The modern office must reflect the evolving needs of the people it hosts and the work that goes on inside it. Only then will businesses reap the benefits. Strategic thought and investment in the right tools, layout, furnishings and amenities is vital to boosting the ideal productivity Logitech research highlights the high cost of everyday office distractions Quiet please! Look and learn Despite the obvious benefits of providing employees with a comfortable working environment (see main story), Logitech’s research shows that 27% of UK businesses have still not introduced data-driven methods of optimising air quality, noise levels, lighting and other aspects of the physical workspace. In other words, they are not making use of modern devices’ ability to monitor and measure what is going on around them. In the case of Logitech’s new Rally AI Camera and Rally AI Camera Pro – the company’s most intelligent conference cameras to date – this includes the ability to detect when, how many and how often people use rooms. Feeding this data into Logitech Sync gives workplace managers the ‘bird’s eye view’ they need to plan spaces better and cures room scheduling headaches by automatically booking and releasing rooms based on people detection, eliminating the problem of ghost meetings and wasted space. This is just one example of how the cameras’ built-in intelligence and automation features make life simpler for IT managers and facilities teams while improving the user experience. Others include intelligent focusing and framing, so that the cameras can automatically and in real time adjust to frame groups, individuals and speakers, and the ability to work in tandem with multiple cameras to capture every perspective in boardrooms, classrooms and town hall spaces available with Zoom Intelligent Director and Microsoft Teams Multiple Camera View. www.logitech.com/business
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