The office breakout area has become a phenomenon that has taken over workspaces across the UK. These areas with comfortable chairs matched with informal tables are a contemporary way to create a modern space that fulfils multiple requirements.
Although they’re becoming more popular, why should your company provide a comfortable, welcoming, breakout rest area for your staff? Here are 7 benefits worth considering:
Break the cycle of being at a desk for 8 hours a day. Standing up and walking away to a different space instantly makes you feel better before you have even taken your break. Very often, you will return to your desk with new ideas as the rest will have left you refreshed.
Brix-Up Meeting Pod
When not being used for lunches and breaks, the modern breakout furniture of today can provide valuable extra workspace for staff away from their desk utilising mobile working on tablets, laptops and smartphones. Comfortable sofas and armchairs and the latest office privacy pods are ideal for when you need a space to sit and think away from the office.
Likewise, breakout high tables are ideal for getting on with work away from the buzz of the office.
Box It Landscape
A great breakout area can become the hub of your business. Staff from different departments, who wouldn’t normally meet up, can meet, mingle, gossip, laugh, swap ideas and relax and refresh together. This improved interaction can encourage better cooperation between departments.
A breakout area can be the ideal space to meet up with visitors. The soft seating and easy access to drinks and refreshments gives a more relaxed vibe to any meeting or get together that you may have. Much more welcoming and friendly than using a meeting room.
Box-it high table
A great breakout area with comfortable seating, great looking tables and stylish soft seating can show staff that you care about their welfare, both at their desks and away from them. Going that extra mile with your breakout space can aid staff retention and help to attract new employees.
Huddle Cave
Use your breakout area for staff collaboration. Getting together over coffee and pastries for a team meeting can break the cycle of going into a meeting room. It’s also more friendly and relaxing, hopefully encouraging staff to share new ideas and insights.
Urban Sofa
This one is stating the obvious but your breakout area will be a relaxing space away from the office. After all, who wants to eat their lunch looking at a computer?
Urban Sofa
Whether you want your breakout space to be used for meetings, brainstorming, or just act as a space for staff to relax in, there is plenty of breakout furniture available to choose from. Chairs, stools, tables and even benches can be used to create a breakout space to suit the style and size of your office.
Take a look at our breakout furniture collection for offices here.
Mark Brown is an expert in office furniture and design and has spent over a decade offering organisations advice on setting up office spaces to enhance productivity. Mark is the owner of Lismark Office Products, a high-quality office furniture supplier.
We have had a brilliant summer for both weather and sales. Here are our 10 most popular office furniture products this summer:
Our Oblique bench desks have been our bestselling desk range over the past 3 months. Different clients have all opted for the all-white finish with its clean looks and simple cable management.
Getting our biggest order for Martin desks since they were launched, the client required Martin bench desk to aid collaboration between staff members. The managers had individual desks with a bespoke circular meeting end. Yet again, the client chose white matt-laminate tops but this time with Oak timber legs.
The largest desking order over the summer came for Visual desks in a special smoky grey colour with silver legs. Simple to specify and build, the Visual range desks are ideal for companies that are constantly growing and expanding.
Perfect for receptions and breakout spaces, the Nexus was a new addition to our portfolio this year. Utilising simple, clean lines, the different seating units come without arms, with a left or right hand arm or as an armchair. Suitable for any reception or breakout area where comfortable soft seating is required.
Customers looking for distinctive meeting tables went for our DNA meeting table range with its curved legs frames and wide range of sizes and shapes. Most popular were 1200 mm circular to seat 4 people and 3400 x 1400 mm boat shaped to seat up to 14 people. Again, white tops with white legs were the most popular choice.
A new trend we’ve seen is the use of occasional task chairs around meeting tables. Our Cube and Flux chairs are versatile, occasional task chairs, with a reduced footprint. This makes them very space efficient in any meeting space, allowing the maximum capacity of seating possible.
The older, bigger brother of the Nexus seating mentioned above, the Fusion is a larger, blockier, modular soft seating option. The Fusion consists of no arm units, left or right arm units, corner units and armchairs.
Buyers are opting for tambour units as opposed to two door units. What is the most popular colour? White carcass with white doors of course!
Our most popular Managers chair this summer was the Vibe Managers Chair . Buyers opted for the high back version fitted with height adjustable arms and a polished metal base. Blazer fabric was the choice of most buyers for the upholstery as it is made from 100% pure new wool for a luxurious feel.
Mark Brown is an expert in office furniture and design and has spent over a decade offering organisations advice on setting up office spaces to enhance productivity. Mark is the owner of Lismark Office Products, a high-quality office furniture supplier.
If you feel that your office needs a refresh to attract new staff and clients what’s out there to achieve your aims? I’ve come up with 10 options of modern office furniture that would improve the look of any work place. .
Our work places are changing so much. We don’t sit at a desk for 8 hours a day anymore, we have adapted a versatile, agile work practices that lead to better collaboration and communication between staff. The Martin Work Table was designed to encourage your staff to work better together across a variety of tasks. Its adaptability means that the Martin can be used as desks for solo working, as a table for collaborating with colleagues or even catching up over coffee and cake.
The thought behind the Martin is complemented by its finish. Tops in Oak or Walnut veneer or in a Matt White or Matt Black look effortlessly cool along with smart timber legs and slim chamfered edges. Cable access panels down the centre of the table may be upholstered in fabric or specified in black or white Perspex.
Our Icon mesh back task chair with a white frame stands out from the crowd. Complemented by a white base, and white accented height adjustable arms, you can choose to upholster the seat in any of our huge portfolio of fabrics to suit all tastes. With an mechanism that automatically adjusts to the user, the Icon is clever as well as smart.
The DNA meeting table is a design that will impress staff and clients alike. Sexy, curved leg frames in white, black, silver or chrome go alongside table tops in mfc, laminates and veneers. Choose from circular, rectangular and boat shaped tables to suit your meeting and conference spaces.
How can we make meetings more modern and forward-thinking, let alone more interesting? How about mixing things up with our Campus High Meeting Table? With a table top at a height of 1050 mm having a meeting is a new experience. More fun, more energy, friendlier, more and more people are opting for high meeting tables. See our blog for how delighted one of our customers is with her high meeting table.
Staff can sit on high stools or stand up. That also means that you can get more people round a table that you could if they were all sitting down. Meetings tend to be quicker at a high table because people aren’t settled in for the day.
An up and coming trend I’m sure most of you have heard about are sit-stand desks. Dynamic movements and varying posture throughout the working day are very important to our continuing health and employing a sit/stand desk can contribute to this. There no special science about it, you just go from sitting down to standing up whilst working when you feel like it. Our Oblique Adapt range has single desks and bench desks depending on your office requirements.
Instead of specifying meeting chairs around your meeting, boardroom or conference table, why not have a selection of Martin low benches and stools to give your meeting space a softer, more comfortable environment. You will soon see that staff and clients feel differently about meetings. Plus the Martin benches and stools are easy to move around your office space to provide impromptu seating when and where it is required.
The Foundry Shelving range is bang up to date with the Industrial look that more and more offices are adapting today. Cleverly designed and made from rebar, the reinforced steel bars commonly found in concrete, The Foundry Shelves can be used for storage, to display items, but also employed as room dividers whilst still letting light flood the whole room.
And to complement your Foundry Shelves how about the Foundry Giant Table? Available in the very large diameters of 1800 mm and 2100 mm, the Foundry Giant Table has an amazing concrete effect laminate top featuring a metal strip across the centre of the top housing a circular power module. The power module gives you convenient power for your laptops, tablets and other devices during meetings or even while browsing the internet nursing a coffee. Plus you can have the rebar base specified in your choice of a wide range of RAL colours.
Finally, how about a quiet workspace within your workplace? The Jensen Hut is the ultimate in acoustic meeting pods with an even greater degree of privacy. The Jensen Hut features two soft seating sofas with a high acoustic surround and the addition of an upholstered roof to create a fully upholstered seating/meeting pod booth for up to six people. Add lighting, tables and the ability to mount a monitor to the interior and you have the ultimate meeting, collaboration and presentation space. It also makes for a fantastic talking point that will catch the eye of colleagues and clients.
Mark Brown is an expert in office furniture and design and has spent over a decade offering organisations advice on setting up office spaces to enhance productivity. Mark is the owner of Lismark Office Products, a high-quality office furniture supplier.
A Worktable is more than just a glorified meeting table. It is designed to be multi-purpose, encompassing a wide variety of tasks to suit many different areas of your business. A good Worktable can become a real community hub in your workplace. Here are 10 reasons that you may find one useful:
The Verco Martin Worktable is perfect for hot desking. Park yourself anywhere around the Martin on any of the mixture of task chairs, upholstered bench seats or low stools. There is easy access to power and data which is housed in the easy to access cable tray in the middle of the Martin Worktable. Just lift up one of the cable access panels and plug in.
Of course the Martin Worktable is ideal for small or large meetings. Using low stools and benches gives you versatile seating options to get the most people around your table.
The Martin Worktable is a great place to get away from your desk when you really need to concentrate.
Working on a team project is easy on a Martin Worktable. Just get your colleagues away from their desks and all together around the Martin with plenty of space to work and lay out papers.
The Martin Worktable is great for lunch times, break times, in fact any time when you want to get away from the workplace to relax and refresh.
Put a monitor on the wall to enable to Martin Worktable to become part of your video conferencing suite.
Fancy a quick chat but no meeting rooms are free? Get around the Martin Worktable and start working out how to seize the day.
Why take a meeting room up to meet and greet visitors. Just stop by the coffee machine on the way to your Martin Worktable and sit yourselves down.
Using the variety of stools and benches gives meetings and get-togethers around the Martin Worktable a more relaxed vibe. Great for getting the best out of colleagues.
Where do you think I wrote this blog post then?
is for you to come up with your own ways to use Martin Worktable.
About the author
Mark Brown is an expert in office furniture and design and has spent over a decade offering organisations advice on setting up office spaces to enhance productivity. Mark is the owner of Lismark Office Products, a high-quality office furniture supplier.
Office privacy pods are becoming extremely popular among forward thinking workplaces. Often the main reasons for buying an office privacy pod are either for staff well-being or to use modern office furniture to freshen up the look and feel of a workplace. Whatever your great reason for looking into ordering office privacy pods, here are our top 10 ways to use make the best use of yours:
An Office Privacy Pod is a great alternative to a traditional meeting room. The comfortable upholstered seating gives the meeting a more relaxed vibe and the acoustic properties of the Office Privacy Pod mean that you and your colleagues won’t be overheard.
Use the Office Privacy Pod to catch up with colleagues over a cup of coffee and maybe a little snack? Choose an Office Privacy Pod for the ultimate convenience.
You knew when you just have to get away from your desk to concentrate on that special project, well the Office Privacy Pod is the perfect place. Its high sides mean that no-one can look over your shoulder to see what you are working on.
Gather colleagues for quick catch-up about a work project. No need to book a meeting room which are always full anyway.
Always good to spread the word about the latest office gossip. If anyone asks call it team building. Plus you won’t be overheard due to the Office Privacy Pod acoustics.
Some of our Office Privacy Pods have the option to mount a monitor on the inside. Just don’t cheer too loudly. C’mon England!!!
Rather than taking visitors on a long walk through your work place to the meeting room, which not place an Office Privacy Pod in your reception space so you can greet visitors more conveniently and chat with them in private.
Choose one of our Office Privacy Pods with the option to mount a monitor on the inside to enable video conferencing.
We often see colleagues wandering around the workplace with a phone clamped to their ear trying to find the perfect place to talk in private. Why not just pop into your Office Privacy Pod for the ultimate in comfort, privacy and convenience.
Cavern 4-seater meeting pod, beech exterior, blue interior & white table
Compiling a blog on your laptop, tablet or mobile -where do you think I wrote this blog post then?
If you are looking to update your work place with modern and contemporary office furniture give me, Mark Brown the Director of Lismark Office Furniture a call on 0116 251 7741 or email me mark@lismark.co.uk
Mark Brown, Director
Lismark Office Furniture
0116 251 7741
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