Office employees are facing new challenges in hybrid-remote environments, and Meta Platforms is set to address them by improving the quality of privacy and noise.
Key Details
- To accommodate the changing hybrid-work environment, Facebook has begun implementing sound-canceling cubicles into its offices, slowly rolling them out in new offices over the coming months—what it calls The Cube.
- The company tasked 10 teams with experimenting with various arrangements and materials to find the most ideal and efficient method of giving employees noise-reductive spaces and privacy.
- The final product is a cocoon-like curved structure with three sides that fit against Meta’s existing desks. They do not have fixed dimensions, and a fourth wall can be adjusted as necessary. The walls are made of soft materials that absorb sound, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Why It’s News
Meta is currently facing several difficult transitions. Mass tech layoffs recently resulted in 11,000 eliminated positions within the company, part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s planned “year of efficiency.” However, as one employee tells Fox Business, nothing is getting done. “The year of efficiency is kicking off with a bunch of people getting paid to do nothing. It’s a mess.”
Unlike other companies that have attempted to crack down on remote work, Meta has embraced it in recent months, noting that underrepresented groups tend to be the first to leave when told they must return to the office. “Embracing remote work and being distributed-first has allowed Meta to become a more diverse company,” Meta VP Sandra Altiné tells Forbes.
As office employees return to the office in the months following the COVID-19 lockdowns, they find themselves in a complicated hybrid-work environment where their coworkers are either absent or frequently calling or video conferencing into the office. The Cube is one of several solutions Meta is working on to help improve office productivity, including attempts to create atmospheric audio to help reduce overall noise.
Notable Quote
“What we realized is that, as a result of the pandemic and people working from home, that folks needed an environment to Zoom, to video conference, and it’s very hard to do in an open office without interrupting other folks,” Meta VP John Tenanes told The Wall Street Journal.