How many telephone booths are needed in an office in different situations?
There is no single ratio that suits all organisations. Two organisations, each with 50 staff, may have completely different needs depending on the extent to which their work involves customer calls, recruitment interviews and remote meetings.
When assessing the appropriate number, the key figure is not the total number of staff, but the number of office users on the busiest days of the week. If a company employs 100 people but the office usually has 35–50 users, the capacity of the telephone booths is designed primarily for this group of users.
However, the assessment must also take into account peaks in usage. If the majority of teams come into the office on the same days and take part in joint online meetings at the same times, the average attendance figure may result in capacity being set too low.
It is therefore not advisable to determine the number of telephone booths using a single formula. A better approach is to consider attendance, the nature of the work and the actual use of the premises together.
Start with the number of concurrent users
The first step is to work out how many people use the office at the same time. The period under review should cover normal working weeks and take into account the busiest days of the week in the office.
Next, we will assess what proportion of staff present require a private space during the working day. In sales, customer service, recruitment and consultancy roles, there may be several phone calls a day. In other roles, the need may be limited to occasional video meetings.
Make sure you map out at least:
- number of users on the busiest working day
- number of daily calls
- the usual duration of phone calls and remote meetings
- the proportion of confidential discussions
- times of peak usage
- other available meeting and work spaces.
Even a brief review can reveal whether the main problem is the total number of meeting rooms or the concentration of demand, for example, on morning meeting slots.
Call duration affects capacity
Ten short phone calls and ten hours’ worth of video meetings place very different demands on telephone booths.
A compact, soundproof telephone booth is best suited to short calls and remote meetings. If it is used continuously for meetings lasting an hour, other users will have to wait or find an alternative space.
For longer online meetings, it may also be appropriate to provide the following at the office: a soundproofed workspace for one person. POD 1 is designed for one person to work in, and its intended use goes beyond that of a telephone booth. It is therefore worth considering the space as a whole. Not all calls, focused work and one-to-one conversations need to be channelled into the same type of space.
Keep the telephone booth, workspace and meeting room separate from one another
A telephone booth in an office is usually intended for a single user and for relatively short periods of use. A single-person workspace is suitable for longer tasks that require a desk and an ergonomic working position. A small meeting room is suitable for discussions involving two or more people.
If these uses are confused, the utilisation rate of telephone booths may appear high, even though the real problem is a lack of other types of facilities.
For example, a conversation between two people should not require two separate telephone booths. Similarly, one person does not need a six-person meeting room for a standard video call.
INTO Concept’s acoustic work and meeting rooms These include single-person telephone booths, workspaces and multi-user meeting rooms. A combination of different room sizes helps to distribute demand more effectively.
Monitor the utilisation rate, but do not aim for constant capacity utilisation
A utilisation rate of almost 100 per cent for telephone booths is not a desirable situation. If a booth is always occupied, users cannot be sure of finding one available for a spontaneous call.
Good capacity allows for a degree of flexibility. There should be space available even without a long-term booking, particularly when a call comes in unexpectedly.
Usage can be monitored using a booking system, occupancy sensors, staff surveys or simple observation. Key questions include:
- How often are all the phone boxes in use at the same time?
- Is there a sense of anticipation outside the doors?
- Are calls being diverted to the corridors or workstations?
- Should large meeting rooms be booked for one-to-one calls?
- how long the operating cycles are
- Do a few people use the cubicles as makeshift offices?.
If the facilities are consistently busy, capacity can be increased or the range of facilities expanded. If the cubicles are empty, the problem may relate to location, user comfort or unclear procedures rather than the number of cubicles.
The placement of telephone boxes affects the number required
The positioning of telephone booths affects how effectively the available capacity serves staff. Three poorly positioned telephone booths may, in practice, be less effective than two that are positioned correctly.
Telephone booths should be located close enough to the teams that use them most. If all the booths are at the other end of the office, staff may end up making short calls at their own desks, even though a free telephone booth is, in principle, available.
In a large open-plan office, a decentralised layout often works better than a single centralised cluster of telephone booths. However, it is not advisable to place telephone cubicles right next to the quietest concentration areas, as people coming in and out can increase movement and disturbances.
A practical way to carry out a preliminary design
The approximate number of telephone booths can be estimated using a five-step process:
- Find out how many people use the office on the busiest day of the week.
- Estimate how many users make phone calls or take part in video conferences during the day.
- Examine the typical duration of calls and peak demand periods.
- List the other available single-person workspaces and small meeting rooms.
- Monitor actual usage and refine the quantity based on your observations.
For example, in an office with 40 staff, a single telephone booth can quickly become a bottleneck if several employees are taking part in long remote meetings. If calls are only made occasionally and the office has several small meeting rooms, the number required may be lower.
It is also worth looking at capacity planning on a team-by-team basis. A team that handles a large number of customer calls often needs more capacity than a team of the same size whose work involves only a few calls.
Avoid over- and under-sizing telephone booths
Under-provisioning quickly becomes apparent in the form of queues, calls being handled at workstations and the inappropriate use of meeting rooms. Over-provisioning, on the other hand, ties up floor space in areas that are not in active use.
The best solution is not necessarily to have as many telephone booths as possible, but rather a well-balanced combination of different spaces. Single-person telephone booths, soundproofed workspaces and small meeting rooms can, when used together, serve users better than a large number of booths of a single type.
The number of telephone booths should also be reassessed as staff numbers grow, hybrid working practices change or the office layout is reorganised.
The appropriate amount is based on actual usage
There is no single, universal answer to the question “how many telephone booths are needed in an office?”. The appropriate number can be determined by considering the number of simultaneous users, the nature of the work, the duration of usage periods, peak times and other available facilities.
It is advisable to carry out a preliminary assessment before making a purchase, but the final requirements will only become clear once the facilities are actually in use. Monitoring helps to identify whether more telephone booths are needed, or, for example, more single-person workspaces and small meeting rooms.
Take a look at a POD PHONE- and POD PHONE SMALL - into a telephone box.
