In the 1950s, studies found that humans possess an “informational bottleneck”- basically the idea that the human mind can only take in so much information at a time under good conditions. Even less information is taken in and processed when distracted.
However, recent studies have shown that there are ways to “manage the effects of the informational bottleneck”. One of those ways is to “manage attention so that unwanted stimuli do not crowd the working memory.” The unwanted stimuli is distractions in general.
How does this apply to me?
You are probably thinking at this point, “What does all of this have to do with increasing my workers’ productivity?” Quite simply, it is relevant because further studies about this have found that “distraction during learning can be harmful, even if the distraction doesn’t seem to injure [the subjects'] immediate performance on their tasks.” They found that people stored the information in different parts of their brains based on whether they were learning it with or without distractions. When undistracted, the subjects showed “flexibility” with the information. They were “more likely to be able to draw analogies and extrapolate from it.” So not only were they remembering what they learned, but they were also taking that information and using it in new ways. It boils down to the fewer distractions a person is encountering, the better able they are able to take in information, remember it, and then use it.
Sadly, the average worker gets distracted more than 70 times a day, with the majority of these being conversational distractions. If you are able to minimize those distractions, that will help your workers to be able to take in the information they need and be able to use it effectively, such as remembering ideas and information better and (hopefully) synthesizing those in an effective way that perhaps no one has thought of before. That can only help your business.
Obviously you cannot control all the distractions in the work place. You can, however, help to mitigate the conversational distractions that your workers experience with sound masking. People working in environments with sound masking were 48% more focused on their work and 51% less distracted, which resulted in 10% fewer errors. (Perhaps because they were storing the information in their brain in such a way that allowed them to be able to use it effectively!) Sound masking is a way to help your workers not only work better and with less stress, but to be able to use the information they have gained to develop new and dynamic ways of doing things.