FAQs

No. Acoustic panels should be cleaned only with a dry or barely damp cloth, or low-pressure compressed air. Glass cleaners contain surfactants and solvents that can penetrate acoustic panel materials and alter their absorption and reflection properties over time. Use the appropriate tool for each surface type as outlined in the cleaning reference table.

Surface vent cleaning with a dry brush and vacuum should be performed monthly by the facilities team. Deep cleaning of internal duct surfaces — if accumulated dust has penetrated beyond the surface vent cover — is a quarterly assessment task. Under normal commercial use with weekly surface cleaning, internal duct accumulation is uncommon. If ventilation

Deploy certified acoustic focus and call pods in the highest-demand acoustic deficit areas of the open floor. This is the highest-impact, fastest-to-deploy physical improvement — operational within one working day of delivery — and it simultaneously improves focus quality, call privacy, and the acoustic quality of the open floor (by removing calls from the ambient

Four metrics: (1) Pod and meeting room utilisation rates (booking data or sensor data) — are spaces consistently oversubscribed, suggesting insufficient capacity, or underused, suggesting a size or location mismatch? (2) Employee survey on collaboration quality — specifically, whether employees feel they can access suitable space for both focused individual work and collaborative discussions. (3)

Yes. HIGHKA pods provide bidirectional ISO 23351-1 Class A acoustic isolation — incoming ambient noise from the open floor is reduced by 35 dB (to approximately 30 dB inside), while outgoing voice is simultaneously contained. For video calls, this means: the pod occupant’s outgoing audio is acoustically clean, uncontaminated by open-floor ambient noise; remote participants

HIGHKA’s microwave radar breathing sensor detects human presence through respiration, not movement. This means the pod environment — lighting, ventilation, all systems — remains stable throughout the entire occupancy session, including during stationary focused work or listening-intensive calls. PIR-based systems cut lighting and ventilation when the user is still, generating system-created interruptions that break focus

Utilisation data from Ronspot’s 2026 workplace benchmarks shows that 45–50% of meeting room usage is single or two-person occupancy. For most knowledge-intensive teams, the optimal proportion is roughly 30–40% enclosed space (individual pods, two-person pods, small group pods) and 60–70% open floor — but this should be calibrated to actual work-type data from your team,

No — and this is the most common misunderstanding in office design. Enclosed spaces do not prevent collaboration; they enable the individual focus and private communication that make collaboration more productive when it occurs. Stanford research found that employees open to collaborative working focus 64% longer — but this advantage requires the ability to transition

A conservative estimate: acoustic distraction cost (~$200,000 based on 5 daily interruptions at $80K average salary, 23-min recovery), turnover cost from two preventable departures ($60,000 at $30,000 average), productivity loss from disengagement (18% of salary for 6 disengaged employees: ~$86,400). Total conservative estimate: $346,400 per year in preventable costs — against a pod deployment investment

Partially. The quality and frequency of manager-employee conversations — the primary vehicle for recognition — is directly constrained by the availability of private space. A manager cannot deliver genuine, candid recognition in a crowded open-plan floor. The physical infrastructure that provides that private space (Model M or SL pods) is the enabler of the management