- Offices are increasingly adding designated "quiet rooms" for employees to recharge, WSJ reported.
- Companies like Adobe now have a craft room and private music rooms for staffers.
Gone are the days of the basic nap and meditation room. Now, workplaces are installing "quiet rooms" designed to help staffers cope with over-stimulation from open offices in today's post-pandemic workplaces.
In an effort to better prioritize the mental health of employees, a growing number of companies are creating places for employees to relax and recharge, the Wall Street Journal reported.
At Adobe, staffers can unwind in craft rooms or private music spaces, and the company also is developing quiet rooms where staffers can recharge if they feel overwhelmed at the office, Eric Kline, Adobe's head of global workplace experience, told the Journal.
"They will be a space where employees dealing with harder moments can go to be alone, be a place of reflection or help change the cycle of where their brain is at," Kline said.
The rooms appear to be the next nap and meditation room. Those became popular among big tech companies like Google, with a focus on readjusting to life after the social isolation of the pandemic.
The quiet rooms have evolved from basic concepts like private phone booths to spaces designed with soothing color palettes inspired by nature and in some cases, they have rules prohibiting technology, Joseph White, director of design strategy at MillerKnoll Inc., told WSJ.
And offices aren't the only places being redesigned to better suit modern American workplaces. Liz Toombs, an interior designer who specializes in sorority houses on college campuses, told Insider's Britney Nguyen that she's received more requests to convert rooms into designated mental health spaces.
Toombs often transforms closets or multipurpose rooms into places where residents can privately take a virtual therapy appointment or just have a moment to themselves.
"I'm just proud of them for asking for that, and also utilizing those spaces," Toombs said.