Survey: bigger staff kitchen or quiet focus rooms at the office

I think the company should make the bigger staff kitchen first. Right now our kitchen is too small for so many employees.

Every day at lunch time there is a long line for the microwave, sometimes I wait ten minutes only to heat my food. Also there is only one fridge and it is always full, so I can not put my lunch inside. There are not enough chairs, so many people eat at their desk. This is not healthy, we need a break from the computer.

A bigger kitchen with more seats will give us a good place to rest and talk with coworkers. I think when people eat together, they become more friendly and they work together more better. Also good coffee machine can make everybody happy in the morning!

The quiet rooms is a good idea for people who have many phone calls. But we can also use the meeting rooms for this. The kitchen problem is happening every day for everybody.

So I vote for the bigger kitchen.

I think the company should build the quiet focus rooms first. I work in customer support, and I spend a lot of my day talking with clients on the phone.

Our office is an open space, so it is often very noisy. When my coworkers are talking or having meetings near my desk, it is hard for me to hear the clients, and sometimes I have to ask them to repeat what they said. This is not very professional. At the same time, I know that my phone calls can also be distracting for my coworkers who are trying to concentrate on their work.

If we had focus rooms, people could book them for important calls or for work that needs a lot of concentration. I believe this would help everyone to do their job better.

A bigger kitchen would be nice to have, but our current kitchen is still usable, even if it is small. The noise problem effects our work every day, so I think it is more important.

For these reasons, I would choose the focus rooms.

Please prioritize the four soundproof focus rooms. I work in the office three days a week as a developer, beside a colleague who handles customer calls; our different tasks currently compete for the same acoustic space.

Yesterday, while tracing a bug, I lost my place during a detailed conversation at the next desk. Headphones cannot always separate speech from the concentration a difficult problem requires. A bookable room would let me finish that work without repeated restarts. Equally, my colleague could handle a call at a normal volume without feeling responsible of everyone else's concentration.

Four rooms would be a limited resource for about eighty employees. Short default bookings, a check-in requirement and prompt release of unused reservations could prevent them becoming permanent private offices. Staff feedback would help identify whether calls or concentrated work needed more capacity.

I bring lunch from home and would welcome a larger kitchen. However, better coffee and seating would not address the interruption illustrated by yesterday's work. Focus rooms solve a more immediate conflict between legitimate tasks, making them the stronger choice for the first renovation.