Collaboration remains essential in today’s workplaces, but so too does the ability to focus. As offices continue to evolve around hybrid working, flexible layouts and employee wellbeing, one thing has become increasingly clear: open-plan design works best when balanced with privacy, comfort and effective acoustic control.

In practice, this means creating spaces where people can step away from background noise and chatter, hold private conversations, take video calls or simply concentrate without distraction.

We have highlighted this direction in earlier Interiors content, noting the continued demand for acoustic pods, adaptable furniture and improved privacy (without reverting to traditional cubicles). Read our previous article Prioritising Focus Without Cubicle-Style Solutions here.

CBRE’s 2025 European Office Occupier Sentiment Survey found that while organisations want to increase in-office attendance, one of their biggest challenges is creating a workplace environment that genuinely attracts people in.

This has clear implications for office design, particularly in the provision of spaces that support focused work, private calls and low-distraction tasks.

As a result, office reconfiguration has become common, with companies adapting layouts and existing furniture to meet these evolving needs.

At the same time, employee wellbeing continues to be a key consideration.

CIPD Ireland reports that more than a third of organisations say wellbeing has become more challenging over the past year, with workload, job design and burnout all impacting performance and mental health.

In this context, quiet, well-designed spaces are no longer a luxury, they are essential to a supportive and productive workplace. Read the full CIPD Ireland report here.

Why privacy and focus spaces are still needed

Open-plan offices bring clear benefits in terms of visibility, collaboration and energy. However, they can also introduce challenges, particularly around noise and distraction. Video calls, meetings and day-to-day activity can interrupt neighbouring workstations, making sustained concentration difficult.

The solution is not to move away from open-plan design, but to complement it with a more layered workplace strategy.

This increasingly includes acoustic pods for private calls, one-to-one meetings and deep-focus work, alongside semi-private furniture solutions that support concentration without fully removing employees from the wider workspace. The most effective offices now combine collaborative zones with areas designed for quiet thinking, private conversation and individual productivity, a balance many Irish organisations are actively working to achieve.

Acoustic pods as high-performance workspace tools

Acoustic pods are no longer viewed as optional additions. They are now high-performance workspace tools, designed to support focus, comfort and flexibility.

A strong example is Silen’s Space Gen 2 collection, which includes Space Call, Space Work and Space Meet 2. Rather than positioning pods as furniture, Silen approaches this range as a complete workspace platform, built around acoustics, airflow, lighting and long-term adaptability.

For focused individual work, Space Work is designed to support longer sessions, with refined acoustics, automatic ventilation, dimmable lighting and both fixed and height-adjustable desk options. For private meetings and one-to-one discussions, Space Meet 2 provides a calm, enclosed environment with strong acoustic performance and intuitive controls.

These details are critical, not just for privacy, but for creating a comfortable, usable and effective workspace experience.

You can view more information about Silen’s range of acoustic pods and privacy booths here.

Semi-private focus areas play an important role

Alongside enclosed pods, there is strong demand for semi-private focus areas within the open plan.

Furniture solutions such as the Dennis collection by JDD, the Four People Collection by Ocee Four and Link by Actiu respond directly to this need, offering quieter touchdown areas in shared spaces and circulation zones. These space-efficient solutions provide a degree of privacy that supports focused work and calls, without fully enclosing the user.

These small, compact booths help define and structure work areas, creating functional, acoustically improved zones that support concentration while maintaining connection to the wider office.

Designing offices with a coherent mix of ways of working

The most effective office environments are no longer built around a single way of working.

Instead, they support a range of activities across the day, from collaboration and connection to concentration and privacy.

Intentional zoning has become standard practice. Employees may begin their day in a shared project space, move to a semi-private booth for focused work and use an acoustic pod for video calls or confidential conversations.

Open-plan workstations, often with height-adjustable desks, are now typically arranged in team-based neighbourhoods to support collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Alongside this, workplace technology is playing an increasingly important role. Workplace experience applications such as Flowscape enable organisations to optimise how space is used, from desk and meeting room booking to occupancy analysis and visitor management. We highlight the importance and relevance of booking platforms in a previous article here.

Next steps

The office continues to evolve as a destination that supports multiple work styles in a cohesive and effective way. As a result, the need for privacy and focus is not diminishing, it is becoming more important.

Acoustic pods, semi-private dens and flexible acoustic solutions are now essential components of workplace design. Whether it is the engineered privacy of Silen Space Gen 2, the compact comfort of Dennis by JDD, or the adaptable zoning offered by Link by Actiu, these solutions help organisations create offices that are more balanced, efficient and better suited to modern work.