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Stuffed

November 27, 2009 By

You’ve eaten your turkey and pumpkin pie and are appropriately stuffed.  It’s less than a month until Christmas.  The holidays should be a time of thanksgiving, celebration, and joy.  Instead you are stressed, looking for ways to improve your bottom line in a tough economy.  You have fewer workers but the same- if not higher- expectations for a brighter new year.  It’s can feel daunting when you look to the future.

Interestingly, you’re not alone in your stress.  Besides the inevitable tension a declining economy ushers in, your employees are distracted and stressed in their distraction.  You probably already know that most workers are unfocused at times during the work day.  What you might not know is that:

  • the average worker is distracted more than 2 hours every day
  • most workers feel stress as a result of that distraction

In fact, disengaged workers:

  • are 18% less productive
  • have 27% higher rates of absenteeism
  • are 20-40% more likely to seek employment elsewhere
  • make 40% fewer attempts at problem-solving
  • experience more stress-related injuries as a result of not making ergonomic adjustments

Your company cannot afford loss of productivity, in addition to high rates of turn-over.  On the other hand, you can afford an ideal solution.  Sound masking is the addition of low-level background sound to reduce the impact of ambient noise.  Employees in treated areas feel less stress and are noticably more engaged and therefore more productive.  Tough times call for creative measures.  Give us a try.

 

Filed Under: Blog, office noise, Sound Masking Tagged With: , , ,

Back in the black

November 24, 2009 By

You can hardly drive down a street without seeing a "For Sale" sign posted…by owner no less.  Many companies are shutting down and few can find their way out of the red and into the black.  The economy has hit us all.  Yet, that same economy still expects the same productivity regardless of the inevitable loss of workers. 

You probably know that the average employee is unproductive more than 2 hours every day as a result of distractions.  Not only are distracted employees unproductive, but their loss of concentration ushers in unnecessary stress and stress-related injuries (such as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome).  Thus, each unfocused hour adds up to the $700 billion lost last year because of distractions.

How do you get the same reuslts with fewer resources?
 

The answer is to maximize what you already have by reducing distractions.  Endless noisy distractions may seem part and parcel to working in an office.  You can’t exactly tell your employees to quit making phone calls or to wear rubber-soled shoes.  But you can help your workers not to notice every sound.  Similar to white noise, sound masking adds a low-level background noise that covers irritating noise. 

In times like these, you just can’t afford not to take action.

Filed Under: Blog, office noise, Sound Masking Tagged With: , ,

Harry Potter in your office

November 18, 2009 By

A problem arises when the average employee is distracted more than 2 hours every day.

 

 

It’s not hard to imagine what distracting noises do to your employees.  In fact, businesses lost an estimated $600 billion just last year to distractions alone.  Conversational distractions were the main culprit.  This is no surprise since many offices are broken up by cubicles rather than walls.  It’s no wonder that your employees aren’t 100% focused on their work.

When Dumbledore can’t solve everything

If only your employees could apply that distracted creativity to their work.  Unfortunately, that’s not the case. So, if you’d like to reclaim all that lost time, it might be time to consider sound masking.  Sound masking is the corporate answer to office noise.  Similar to white noise, sound masking applies low-level sound to the background of your office.  Having the ability to tune out unnecessary distractions will enable your employees to focus on their work, thus improving your bottom line.

 

Filed Under: Blog

Free association with noise

November 16, 2009 By

Connotation

What do you think of when you hear the word noise?  Here are a few online definitions of "noise:"

Noise (noun): noiz

  • sound of any kind (especially unintelligible or dissonant sound); "he enjoyed the street noises"; "they heard indistinct noises of people talking …
  • the auditory experience of sound that lacks musical quality; sound that is a disagreeable auditory experience; "modern music is just noise to me"
  • electrical or acoustic activity that can disturb communication
  • a loud outcry of protest or complaint; "the announcement of the election recount caused a lot of noise"; "whatever it was he didn’t like it and he was going to let them know by making as loud a noise as he could"
  • incomprehensibility resulting from irrelevant information or meaningless facts or remarks; "all the noise in his speech concealed the fact that he didn’t have anything to say"
  • make noise: emit a noise
  • randomness: the quality of lacking any predictable order or plan
  • any unwanted sound and in both analog and digital electronics, noise is an unwanted random addition to a wanted signal. 

It’s interesting that noise actually is a neutral term- it really is just a sound of any kind.  Yet, the first connotation most people have when they think of noise is that of being irritated or distracted by it.  That’sbecause most people associate noise with not being able to relax or concentrate.  So, whether it’s trying to fall asleep or attempting to be productive at work, noise is not a friendly interruption.  In fact, the average worker finds herself distracted more than 2 hours a day.  In a tough economy 2 hours day per worker is not a welcome sacrifice for any business. 

Sound masking

Your company doesn’t have to lose productivity to distractions in the work place.  A simple and easy solution is sound masking.  You can’t rid your office of distracting noise, but you can cover it with a low-level background sound similar to white noise.  By camoflaging irritating and distracting noise, you and your employees can reclaim those lost hours of unprodictivity. 

Filed Under: Blog, office noise, Sound Masking Tagged With: , , ,

Cutting costs doesn’t mean cutting corners

November 10, 2009 By


Businesses have fewer resources but clients who demand better service.  Every manager is looking for ways to cut costs and somehow not cut corners.  How can you get more from less? 

Maximizing the resource you have

Let’s face it, in an open office sound carries.  As one Cornell study found, “as sound levels increase, the complexity of the task one can complete generally decreases.”  In addition, they found that high levels of noise generally lead to higher levels of fatigue and irritability.  So, you get less or at least worse work from tired and stressed employees. 

The same Cornell study also stated that the best way to contend with excessive noise is by using a sound-masking system.  Sound-masking provides a uniform and low-level background noise to cancel out unwanted distractions, thus enabling your workers to produce higher-quality work in less time.

Without hiring any new staff, you can increase your company’s productivity exponentially by reclaiming the time lost due to unnecessary distractions. Don’t you think it’s worth maximizing your workers’ time? 

Mardex, Justin. (2004) Auditory, visual, and physical distractions in the workplace.  Retrieved August 17, 2009 from http://www.scribd.com/doc/13038258/Auditory-visual-and-physical-distractions-in-the-workplace

 

Filed Under: Blog, Business, office noise, Sound Masking Tagged With: , , , ,

Everybody’s doing it

November 5, 2009 By

Distractions may not seem like a big problem.  Maybe your employees shoot off a few unnecessary texts or answer a couple personal calls.  Everybody does, right?  That’s the problem.  Everybody does, which means that the average worker loses more than two hours every day to distractions.  In fact, the work place, and open offices in general, have become so distracting that more than 70% of surveyed workers said that their productivity would be increased if their work place were less noisy.

How do you conduct business with less sound? 

While you can try to ban personal calls, you can’t keep people from making business calls, closing doors and flushing toilets.  That’s the cost of doing business.  But you can minimize the distraction level with sound masking.  Sound masking functions like white noise, cancelling out unwanted and distracting noise.  Unlike white noise, however, sound masking can be distributed uniformly and at the lowest volume necessary for maximum productivity.  That way, you’re not trading one problem for another. 

Contact us for more information on how to keep your employees focused on what really counts: work.

 

Malachowski, Dan.  Wasting Time at Work Costing Companies Billions.  Retrieved August 10, 2009, from http://www.davidsonstaffing.com/articles/salary/wasted-time/.

Mardex, Justin. (2004) Auditory, visual, and physical distractions in the workplace.  Retrieved August 17, 2009 from http://www.scribd.com/doc/13038258/Auditory-visual-and-physical-distractions-in-the-workplace

Filed Under: Blog, Business, office noise, Sound Masking Tagged With: , ,