Do you have a meeting that requires a room but can't get one? It’s a pain, yeah? Well, that’s because everyone of us seem to be using them the wrong way. Sorry guys, but we’ll break it to you gently...

THE DETAILS

There are exactly 106 office meeting rooms and 116 huddle rooms at The Globe Tower (not including The Forum and Loft conference rooms, and the project rooms which have varied use). With people traffic in the building ranging from 3,500 to almost 5,000 maximum (including our own Ka-Globe, vendor partners, guests and service personnel), and assuming that one out of ten would be in a meeting, you have about 500 people that require the use of a room. Yes: 500! And we know that the ratio of demand is greater than 10%, yet, for some reason, here in Globe we still live and breathe meetings! Not that it's bad - it's a good collaborative exercise! But this explains why the demand for meeting rooms - despite the open office setup that encourages easier collaboration - is still at an all-time high.

BUT! This doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about it.

NEW RULES TO CURB MISUSE OF MEETING ROOMS

We got a hold of Raymond Aguilar (Director for Workplace Management), about the pains of actually trying to keep everyone happy and provide meeting rooms. And he confirms that because of recent misuse, wherein meeting rooms are booked from 8am-5pm using Google Calendar, they will now totally not allow this anymore, unless it gets a nod through them. The maximum time for a meeting room shall now be three (3) hours.

In essence, there are three new rules:

1. Meeting rooms booked for 8am-5pm would be deleted and would be contacted.

2. Meeting scheduled for more than three hours would need extra clearance.

3. Anyone could report misuse by emailing workplacetgtglobe[AT]globe[DOT]com[DOT]ph

Note: The current meeting room and huddle guidelines have already been communicated to the floor marshalls, but can also be accessed through this link

OUR CULTURAL WRONG: DO WE REALLY NEED A MEETING ROOM?

Did you ever stop and think if you indeed NEED a meeting room in the first place? Because you know what, Ka-Globe - that's one of the reasons why all our meeting rooms are packed - sometimes we really don't need a meeting room at all!

Here are quick guide questions to help you decide whether you need a meeting room or not:

1. Is the matter to be discussed confidential? (If it’s ‘Yes’, you need a meeting room)

2. Am I going to cascade this to my team members? (Consider not getting a room and tell it in a quick huddle, unless it goes against number 1.)

3. Do I need to present to people more than four? (If there’s only four of you, you could probably share a laptop, unless you answered ‘Yes’ to number 1)

ALSO: DO YOU EVEN NEED TO MEET AT ALL?

Check out this infographic from hbr.org:

The beauty about this open office layout we have in our offices is that it encourages openness and open collaboration - that means, supposedly - less use of meeting rooms. So if you’re getting a meeting room, do consider our guide questions and think: Maybe it’s cooler to stand in a corner and discuss? It’s even healthy ‘coz you steal minutes of precious time pumping blood to your heart that’s always in a “just hanging here” beat rate when you’re sitting down.