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How & Why Sound Masking Works

February 3, 2012 By

What is a sound masking system?

A  sound masking system provides coverage for all those nasty distractions the average worker faces every day at work.  In fact, each worker loses two hours of productive work each day as a result of distractions, and all those hours ends up costing businesses  about $600 billion a year.   As a result, it’s not really that surprising that managers and company owners are on the hunt for cost-effective ways to cut distraction in order to reclaim their portion of the loss.

As previously mentioned, a sound masking is a noise solution that uses another kind of noise to off-set distraction.  By using white noise as a low-level background noise to cover ambient noise, office noise, including conversational distraction, workers are able to tune out all the noise and focus on work.  Adding noise to cover noise is always seen as counter-intuitive.  It’s important to note that white noise is quite different than typical office noise.  It is is uniform and structured, and therefore not annoying or distracting.

Sound Masking for Confidentiality & Productivity

The main two reasons to use sound masking technology are to achieve speech privacy for the purpose of improving confidentiality and productivity.

  • Less distraction at work: By masking conversations and excess noise, the average worker can be up to 25% more productive with their work hours. Sound masking installed in the entire office space will benefit the entire office.
  • Improved privacy and confidentiality: Many office situations need confidentiality – human resources, government services, medical facilities, counseling, and many more. Sound masking significantly improves privacy and confidentiality throughout an entire office. It uses white noise to make human speech unintelligible to those beyond the immediate conversation.
  • Decreased stress for workers: Most of us are not aware of the stress we experience from trying to block excess noise around us. Think about trying to write an important email, or work through a complicated problem, all the while there is a noise, maybe a conversation or a horn honking, that is trying to gain your attention.  According to a study by the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), even a small acoustic treatment can reduce worker stress by more than 25%.

The appropriate use of white noise in a work place, even on an individual scale, can lower stress and increase concentration by masking background conversations and noise. Quality office-wide, sound masking provides effective privacy and confidentiality, while decreasing office distractions.

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Helping Your Employees Make the Most of Their Time

February 3, 2012 By

This time of year is not the most productive for many workers.  New year’s resolutions aside (which may or may not involve work goals), many people find themselves distracted or even depressed.  February is a tough time- the holidays are over, yet it’s still cold and not quite the invigorating spring we all anticipate.  Whether it’s lack of productivity or feelings of depression, there are two gifts you can your employees which will benefit them and you in the long run.

Dealing with Distraction

First, let’s deal with distraction.  The average worker is distracted 2 hours every day, which costs businesses about $600billion annually.  That’s because distraction leads to a lack of focus which invites mistakes and stress. Additionally, distracted workers are disengaged workers, and disengaged workers turn up for work less and turn over more frequently.  The cost of replacing these employees temporarily or permanently adds up quickly.

Interestingly, a lot of distraction is due to office noise, namely conversations.  An easy way to deal with conversational distraction is to install a sound masking system.  Systems like the VoiceArrest have speakers that go directly in the ceiling tiles and therefore cost relatively little and require no aesthetic changes.  The speakers emit very low-level white noise so that workers tune out it and the surrounding noise so they can get back to work.

Dealing with Depression

Next, let’s talk about depression.  Depression may not seem like an office issue, but Seasonal Affective Disorder affects millions of Americans.  It’s a form of depression that occurs in the winter months, and usually due to lack of sunlight.  Like sound masking, an equally simple solution is light therapy .  By adding a few “happy lights” to the office decor, you literally brighten up the office mood because the light replicates the rays of the sun.  It’s another low-cost means of dealing with common office problems.

If your workers struggle with distraction (and they do) or seasonal depression, try out sound masking system and/or light therapy for low-cost, easy to use solutions.

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Dear, Call Centers- Be Professional! Love, Your Future Customer

February 2, 2012 By

Dear Caller…

Who loves a good sales call right before (or even better, during) dinner?  You’re trying to get food on the table, kids’ homework done, the baby settled, all without punching the wall.  Throw in some difficult to decipher sales call from a call center and punching the wall becomes all but an inevitability.  To top it off, they usually ask for the wrong person, and when I say that person doesn’t live here, they try to talk to me instead.  Real professional, guys.  Calling for Mrs. Smith and settling for whoever answered the phone doesn’t exactly win you my time.  Plus, when I can’t understand you from all the background noise, it makes me realize, I really am just a number (I can’t say name because you don’t typically know it!), and I have no qualms about putting the phone back on the receiver.  I already screen my calls- if I can screen my mother, I can certainly start to screen your silly 1-800 number without feeling remorseful, too.

Try Sound Masking

I’m guessing this is not news to a call center manager.  However, it may feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle.  From having a 1-800 number on the caller ID to people being pretty impatient with unwelcome calls, you might feel there’s nothing you can do, save hope for a bored housewife.  My suggestion would be to try to up your professional game. If your product is worth buying or your cause worth investing in, take the time to make me feel safe and comfortable.  It is my opinion that the call center is responsible for providing a professional and personal call experience for their customers.  Think about the following:

  • Background sound, even other callers, can make a customer feel like a number instead of a person.
  • The same background noise can be quite distracting for both customer and caller.
  • When a potential customer hears all this, it only adds to the feeling that their personal information is up for grabs.

Noise Solutions for Call Centers

As a result, as you plan a call center or seek to resolve the common noise problems therein, here a few things you should consider:

  • Keep callers separated if possible so that they are not shoulder to shoulder as they make calls.
  • Partitions or sound-absorbing panels can lessen ambient sound.
  • Some companies offer headsets that help the callers focus on the customers and not the noise around them.
  • Finally, consider sound masking, which aides both the caller and the customer because both can hear the other person and not the craziness in the call center itself.

The goal of a call center is to get current or potential customers or donors to stay on the line, listen attentively, and be heard themselves.  This kind of interaction is only possible if the customer feels like an individual and that their personal and financial information can be given without fear of it being spread beyond the intended hearer.  If you consider these factors as you plan your call center, your chances for success are exponentially higher.

Thus, if background noise is a problem for your call center, consider sound masking for a reduction of distractions and increased speech privacy if you’d like to have a successful conversation with potential customers or donors.

 

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The Problem with Distracted, Disengaged Workers

February 1, 2012 By

Why Are Workers Distracted?

Workers are distracted.  There’s no denying it.  And we’re not talking about a few minutes here and a few minutes there- rather, studies consistently show that the average worker is distracted more than 2 hours every day.  Read that again- 2 hours every day!!  That really adds up when you multiply it by every worker in your office.  The obvious next question, then, is why are workers so distracted?  What is grabbing their attention for so long, and can you rid yourself of it, thus freeing up their time to work again?

Study after study and worker after worker will tell you that the main problem is office noise.  Any mother of a napping-aged child will tell you how devastating unwanted noise is.  We all know that unwanted noise is intrusive and usually interrupts our train of thought, thus proving quite distracting. The problem with distraction is that it leads to stress and mistakes.  Distracted workers feel frustrated because they lose so much time that they often end up either not meeting deadlines or working evenings and/or weekends to make up the time.  In addition, distracted workers make more mistakes than focused workers. Being stressed, error-prone, and weekend warriors leads us back to where we started: frustration.

Distracted Workers are Disengaged Workers

All of this contributes to what is called a disengaged worker, or a worker who has lost connection with his job.  The problem with disengaged workers is that they cost businesses billions of dollars a year due to

  • loss of productivity
  • errors
  • work-related stress/injuries
  • more sick days
  • frequent turn-over
And that is why disengaged workers are frustrated- they are stressed, losing time, and experiencing more illness and turn-over.  Unfortunately, even a new job doesn’t tune out distractions, so the same problems just keep repeating themselves.  The only real solution is sound masking, the use of white noise to provide a low-level background noise to cover ambient noise that causes so much distraction.  Sound masking is highly effective against office noise.
If distracted workers are problem for you, check out sound masking for more productive employees.
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Why Call Centers Need Sound Masking

January 25, 2012 By

Noise Problems for Call Centers

As a stay at home, work from home mother who plans all day how to get dinner on the table with all 4 members of my family present, there is little I like less than some sort of sales call.  As I am seating kids and dishing up and hoping the baby stays asleep, I’m not exactly hoping that someone calls to ask me to donate money either.  As good as the cause might be, it’s just a hard time of day.  I’m not a jerk about it, I’m just not that open to giving away money or my personal information at that time.  Now, throw in background noise that makes me strain to hear whoever is talking to me, as I am measuring if this is a legit call or not, and I’m pretty much going to hang up.  I don’t know of anyone who wants to volunteer credit card information or other personal details in such an unprofessional context.

I can only imagine this is not what the manager of a call center wants to hear.  However, it’s the very thing he or she needs to hear!  If your product if worth buying or your cause worth investing in, take the time to make me feel safe and comfortable.  It is my opinion that the call center is responsible for providing a professional and personal call experience for their customers.  Unfortunately, as seen above, call centers suffer from many sound problems that do not allow for successful business practices:

  • Background sound, even other callers, can make a customer feel like a number instead of a person.
  • The same background noise can be quite distracting for both customer and caller.
  • When a potential customer hears all this, it only adds to the feeling that their personal information is up for grabs.

Noise Solutions for Call Centers

As a result, as you plan a call center or seek to resolve the common noise problems therein, here a few things you should consider:

  • Keep callers separated if possible so that they are not shoulder to shoulder as they make calls.
  • Partitions or sound-absorbing panels can lessen ambient sound.
  • Some companies offer headsets that help the callers focus on the customers and not the noise around them.
  • Finally, consider sound masking, which aides both the caller and the customer because both can hear the other person and not the craziness in the call center itself.

The goal of a call center is to get current or potential customers or donors to stay on the line, listen attentively, and be heard themselves.  This kind of interaction is only possible if the customer feels like an individual and that their personal and financial information can be given without fear of it being spread beyond the intended hearer.  If you consider these factors as you plan your call center, your chances for success are exponentially higher.

Thus, if background noise is a problem for your call center, consider sound masking for a reduction of distractions and increased speech privacy if you’d like to have a successful conversation with potential customers or donors.

 

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Office Distractions You Can’t Ignore

January 23, 2012 By

8.1 Million Hours of Productivity Lost during March Madness

Back during March Madness last year, I read an interesting article about how much productivity was lost during that 3-week span itself.  The article reported that 80% of interviewed office workers admitted they probably bet on the games during work hours.  In addition, while difficult to measure, one firm estimated that about 8.7 million hours of work time would be lost as a result of the NCAA championship games.  What caught my attention was the later premise of the article:

“If people are getting their work done, and doing it well, don’t make a big deal about distractions,” she suggests, adding: “The last thing you should ever do is make a formal policy restricting non-work activities in the office. Those policies rarely fix anything. They just make people grumpy.” And who needs that?…”

Which Distractions Can You Afford to Ignore?

I know we all have different opinions, which is why I am referencing this article: proof that there are several ways to look at the same problem.  While I agree that cracking down on petty rules is counter-productive and with later comments that workers are adept at multitasking, I disagree that all workers are that adept or that distraction itself, as a whole, should be ignored.  There are many forms of distraction, not just technology.  A major cause of work distraction is co-worker conversation.  I do not know of many people who can hold a sane, coherent conversation while typing an error-free, cohesive project proposal or email response.  Thus, when that 80% of co-workers are betting on the game and setting up their brackets,endless rivalry and chatter doubtlessly surround it.  That’s hard to ignore even when an innocent bystander.

Thus, I stick with my previous opinion that managers should not set up silly rules about computer use and personal versus business because no one will follow them and it’s hard to police without being Big Brother and running off your staff.  However, I do feel that the other side of distraction- those of conversation and noise- are definitely worth counter-acting with sound masking.  Just by introducing a little low-level background noise, you can cover the unwanted sound and restore a little peace to the office without burning bridges with your employees.  And since hundreds of billions of dollars are lost every year because of distraction, it’s hard to ignore them all with a clear conscience.

Some distractions are worth ignoring, while others- those of noise and conversation- can be counter-acted with sound masking for increased productivity office-wide.

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Reclaiming IQ Loss with Sound Masking

January 18, 2012 By

Distraction & Lost IQ

People get distracted- it’s no secret or surprise.  In almost every arena, we find our attention wavering, especially when we need to stay focused.  Unfortunately, work is no exception.  In fact, workers are especially distracted at work, from cell phones to internet to co-worker chatter.  Workers lose a lot of time to distraction.  And according to  a 2005 study,  these distractions have never been more costly.

  • 1 in 5 workers will interrupt a business or social engagement to respond to a message.
  • 9 out of 10 people thought colleagues who answered messages during face-to-face meetings were rude.  Interestingly, 3 out of 10 believed it was not only acceptable, but a sign of diligence and efficiency.
  • Ultimately, this level of distraction is equivalent to a 10 point IQ loss.

It’s interesting to note how colleagues see these interruptions, what’s much more important is how much the brain suffers from distraction.Trying to balance work, co-worker conversations, internet interests (personal and otherwise), and all kinds of messages can’t be anything other than distracting.

More on IQ loss

In 80 clinical studies, Dr. Glenn Wilson of King’s College London University found that distracted workers lost 10 IQ points, the equivalent of a lost night of sleep and more than two times worse than smoking marijuana (a 4-point loss).  After nursing 3 babies through the night, I can attest to how difficult it is to function during the day without a full night of sleep.  As a manager, who wants the equivalent of a whole office of sleep-deprived new mothers or drugged up addicts?

Sound Masking for Better IQ & Fewer Losses

Businesses lose almost $600 billion a year because of office distractions like the ones listed above.  This is a result of workers finding themselves distracted more than 2 hours every day.  The most commonly reported distraction in co-worker conversation.  Sound masking is the use of low-level background noise, white noise, to cover distracting noises, such as office conversations and common noises.  It serves as a buffer for workers when so much is going around them.

IQ loss and profit loss are not a coincidence.  You can’t raise your employees’ IQ, but you can protect them from distraction with sound masking.

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Tips for Working from Home & Being Professional

January 16, 2012 By

Being Successful at Home

Being successful at what you do is a matter if mindset almost as much as skill.  There’s no denying that you have to know your trade so to speak, but actually making something of it and being good at it depends upon your ability to balance your skills and your time effectively.  This is true regardless of where you work- in a corner office, in a cubicle, or in your own living room.  In fact, 17 million people work from home, and I am one of them.  Getting, keeping, and being good at out jobs is an interesting combination of skills, time management, and discipline.  Over the past 3 years, I have found a few things instrumental in keeping my job even in a bad economy.  There are many who can do what I do, but I think what I’ve found is that not that many know how to juggle home life and work life without sacrificing one or the other since they are the same physical location.  That said, here are some basic tips that I feel apply to most work form home jobs.

  • Set “office hours.”  It’s not fair to your family or yourself to work 24/7.  Just like an office job, you need to set specific hours in which you work, and I do mean work.  Treat your at-home job as a real job and be professional about it.  You can’t take breaks to hang with friends, wash dishes, or even do laundry.   On the flip side, once those hours are over, stop working and go “home.”
  • Act professionally.  Just because you have a laptop and a couch doesn’t mean you should work in your pj’s.  You don’t have to wear suits, but dressing professionally can help you stay in the work mindset and not get easily distracted.
  • Set goals.  Again it’s part of being professional- don’t work aimlessly or without goals.  Dependent upon your job, set weekly or monthly goals that are challenging but achievable.  This will help you stay focused and not run adrift.
  • Block distractions.  They come in a lot of forms, both internally and externally.  If noise of a problem or just catches your attention, try a sound machine or this free white noise generator.  Another form of distraction comes online, as well.  There are quite a few productivity add-ons you can try to get more done.
The key to working from home successfully is treating your job professionally and blocking distractions.
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Free Ways to Boost Your Productivity

January 11, 2012 By

Looking for Ways to Boost Your Productivity?

I’ve said it a lot, but the average worker is distracted more than 2 hours every day.  I am still astounded  by this number, though I’m not sure why.  I work from home, which means I don;t have the usual office distractions {chatty co-workers, copy machines, water cooler gossip}, but I do my fair share of interruptions.  Part of working from home is that it’s difficult to separate work life and home life, especially when you use the same computer for business and pleasure.  It can be almost impossible to turn off the personal side, even when deadlines loom large.  I have been looking for ways to reduce distractions of every kind in order to boost productivity.  I am aware that I am not exactly a technology guru, but maybe you aren’t either.  If that’s the case, it’s possible some of these might be news to you as they were to me.  Check out these great finds for those of us legitimately looking to be more productive.

  • LeechBlock: a Firefox add-on that allows you to block sites so you can avoid their distraction.
  • Customize Google: CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox extension that enhance Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask.com, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam). All features are optional and easily configured.
  • FlashGot: Download all the links, movies and audio clips of a page at the maximum speed with a single click, using the most popular, lightweight and reliable external download managers.
  • StatusBar: View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar – without the download window getting in the way of your web browsing.
  • Flashblock: Flashblock is an extension for the Mozilla, Firefox, and Netscape browsers that takes a pessimistic approach to dealing with Macromedia Flash content on a webpage and blocks ALL Flash content from loading. It then leaves placeholders on the webpage that allow you to click to download and then view the Flash content.
  • URL fixer: URL Fixer is an extension for Mozilla Firefox that corrects typos in URLs that you enter in the address bar. For example, if you type google.con, it will correct it to google.com (asking first, if you enable confirmation).
  • Tab Mix Plus: Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox’s tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager.
  • ScrapBook: Helps you to save Web pages and organize the collection.

And, a final productivity booster for any browser:

Check out these free productivity add-ons and this free white noise generator to get a little boost at work.

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Treating SAD Naturally with Light Therapy & Heated Ergonomic Products

January 9, 2012 By

Dreading January & February?

If you’re struggling to cope this post-holiday season, you are not alone.  Tons of people crash after all the stress of Christmas, even though during the holidays they thought they couldn’t wait to get past it all!  Even though Christmas was also colder and much darker than the rest of the year, too, there is something about January and February that just feels worse.  Maybe it’s vacation being over or less time with family or less to do…or maybe it’s a little more serious.

Millions of Americans suffer from a seasonal form of depression called Seasonal Affective Disorder (also known quite appropriately as SAD).  SAD is thought to be the result of darker days- ie less sunlight- which ends up altering the mood.  Those in higher altitudes can suffer more severely since they have even less sunlight. Usually SAD subsides as the days get longer again in the spring.  However mild or serious the case of SAD is though, it’s important not to struggle alone or feel that there’s nothing you can do.

Warm Up & Brighten Up!

There are several options for treating SAD. I’d like to focus on more “natural” remedies that anyone can try without a prescription and without side effects.  That said, check out these office remedies.

  • Warm up! Winter is cold.  Plain and simple.  If you don’t have access to a thermostat or find that you are still cold, there are some great ergonomic products made just for you!  You won’t need them all, but just using a heated keyboard, heated mouse, or heated foot pad will keep your fingers and feet (the outer extremities of your body) toasty warm and much more likely to keep working well.  Plus, you won’t dread coming to work or feel the need to dress in 17 layers.
  • Brighten up! Whether you don’t like the dark, or, like millions of others, you actually suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), adding light through the use of light therapy is sure to brighten your work space and your mood!  An improved mood usually aides in productivity.  Plus, it’s portable, so you can take it home with you for the long evenings and late-to-arrive mornings, too.  Many people enjoy them in their kitchens.

Don’t dread these early months- make the most of them by staying warm and feeling less depressed even if you suffer from SAD.

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