Smoking areas in the workplace must be closed! 4 useful conversion tips

The existing smoking areas in the office must close! 4 useful conversion tips
Rebuild your smoking area and make it suitable for hybrid working

Does your organization still have a smoking area in the work environment? Then you will have to close it! Indeed, all office smoking areas must be closed from 1 January 2022, so that everyone in the Netherlands has a smoke-free workplace.

Adapt your premises for hybrid working
Closing the smoking areas in your building immediately gives you a good chance and extra space to adapt your office building. Set up your office based on Activity Based Working: you create spaces that are tailored to the activities of your employees.

Depending on the space that is vacant, you can convert the smoking areas into:

1 — Call room
Turn your existing smoking area into a calling area. A calling room ensures that a caller can make a phone call in a quiet way without being bothered by ambient noise. It also ensures that the caller's colleagues can also continue working in peace and quiet. What's more, a phone call in a calling room gives you more privacy. Good option for smaller smoking areas. Of course, make sure to make the room acoustically comfortable because most smoking areas are made of hard surfaces.

2 — Meeting room
Make it a meeting room! Short meetings no longer have to take place in the middle of the open office garden. This way, you prevent others from getting out of concentration or being disturbed by your short consultation. In larger former smoking areas, you can create a fully-fledged meeting room. Great option for smaller, medium and large smoking areas. Here, too, adding acoustics is an important element in making the space suitable.

3 — Flexible workplaces
Create flex spaces in your smoking area. By creating 1 or more flex desks in the smoking area (s), your employees can choose a nice place to work themselves. Their fixed workplace is probably not the most ideal place for every task, because sometimes concentrated work is needed to get the job done. Also useful when a small team has to work intensively together on a project and has to communicate a lot without bothering the department. In short, a good option for medium and large smoking areas.

4 — Video call space
Convert the room into a video call room. We see that there are often far too few facilities for this, so many Teams or Zoom meetings still take place in the open office garden. Here, too, it is very important to get the acoustics in order.

Get to know Akoesta's effective approach
At Akoesta, we are convinced that the work environment contributes significantly to the health, productivity and happiness of employees. Happy spaces make for happy faces. That's why we're happy to advise you how the right acoustic solution can transform your smoking area into a place where employees, business contacts and, of course, you can stay acoustically comfortable. Some acoustic adjustments will certainly be necessary in the average smoking area.

It is important to provide different types of office workplaces for different tasks (activity-based) such as collaboration, consultation, meetings and concentration. This creates a well-balanced office design that has a suitable workplace for everyone. What's the situation in your office?

Every situation and space is different and requires a specific approach. The effective Akoesta's approach covers all aspects of acoustics such as acoustic measurements, acoustic advice, 3D visualizations and editing. Akoesta creates customized acoustic solutions and has a wide range of acoustic products for work environments.

Want to know more?
Do you also want to create a comfortable work environment by improving acoustics? Let us know. Or check out all our acoustic solutions customized.