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Work smarter, not harder

October 5, 2009 By

“Work smarter, not harder”

They say good workers work smarter, not harder.  Yet, today’s workers find that it’s pretty difficult to work smart or work hard when constant distractions plague them.  Whether it’s conversation or machinery, noisy interruptions break concentration.  At the very least, this leads to a staggering loss of focus, but more often than not, the result is fatigue and built-up stress.

So how can you get your employees to concentrate better?

You probably cannot eliminate all interruptions.  You can help your employees work smarter and harder by covering distracting noise. Similar to white noise, sound masking camouflages irritating or even inconsistent distractions with a peaceful, uniform hum.  As a result, rather than starting and stopping work, thus losing cohesive connections and focused energy, your workers can single-mindedly concentrate on the work at hand.

The bottom line is a peaceful, work-friendly environment for your employees.  And, at work, that’s what they need.

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

I’ll take 2 more, please

September 25, 2009 By

Would you like 2 more productive hours in your work day? 

Most people would jump at the idea of getting 2 more hours of productivity a day.  But, what if you could get 2 more hours for each of your employees?  That could add up pretty quickly, don’t you think?  It’s a sad fact that the average employee loses several hours of her day as a result of distractions, many of which are completely avoidable with a simple sound masking system. 

Sound masking restores productivity

Similar to the idea of providing a noisy area with white noise, a sound masking system pleasantly restores a peaceful work environment for your workers.  With our Speech Privacy Systems, treated areas don’t suffer the drone of the hustle and bustle of today’s open offices.  Your employees can actually concentrate on their work instead of the dinging of the elevator or the take-out order of the guy 3 cubicles down. 

That means more productivity from each employee.  Who could say no to potentially hundreds more hours of output every day?

 

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

 

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

Mum’s the word

September 21, 2009 By

Mum’s the word

If only that were true. Then your employees would regain the 2 hours they lose every day to mindless distractions. As it is, open office environments present a host of noisy distractions that even the most zealous worker would find impossible to ignore. Could you tune out Nancy’s proposal story, Bob striking out again, or the rumor that someone brought cookies? Now add in beeping computers, the AC switching on and off, toilets flushing, papers rustling, and doors slamming, and you get a good picture of what your employees face every day they step into the office.

So, what can you do about it?

One website devoted to distractions suggests that you simply have to accept the fact that interruptions such as these are a part of the day. We do not agree. While some interruptions are inevitable, many of the distractions that today’s workers complain about are completely fixable with sound masking. Similar to the concept of white noise, sound masking cancels out unwanted noise, but without the unpleasant sound of static. Help your employees and your bottom line by looking into a simple solution.

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

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

Are your employees slaves to sound?

September 17, 2009 By

Slave to sound

It makes sense to cut costs where you can, especially in this declining economy.  That’s why you have a very efficient cubicle office.  The downside is that without doors, each of your employees is a slave to every word and sound that is emitted in that office…whether they want to be or not.  In fact, more than 70% of surveyed workers said that they could be more productive at work if there were fewer distractions. 

Sound masking

A Cornell study found that, “as sound levels increase, the complexity of the task one can complete generally decreases.”  This means that as the office comes to life, your employees’ ability to concentrate dies. Fortunately, the article didn’t stop there: “the most prevalent way of dealing with excessive noise is through the introduction of an artificial masking noise.”  Like white noise, sound masking cancels out the typical, yet highly distracting sounds found in every American work place, without the aggravating buzz. 

While you can’t make your employees play the quiet game, you can control the role that auditory distractions play in your office.  Contact us to see if a Speech Privacy System is the right fit for your distracted employees.

 

Mardex, J. (2004).  Auditory, visual, and physical distractions in the work place.  Retrieved August 14, 2009, from  http://www.scribd.com/doc/13038258/Auditory-visual-and-physical-distractions-in-the-workplace

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Do actions really speak louder than words?

September 14, 2009 By

Actions can speak louder than words

Did you know that the average worker fritters away more than 2 hours of his or her 8-hour work day? That’s because the average office noise speaks so loudly that your employees can’t take action because they are so incredibly distracted by what’s going on around them.  Whether it’s their own cell phones buzzing or the guy in the cubicle next door making his weekend plans, today’s work force can’t seem to keep their minds on work.

Sound masking

A simple solution for noisy distractions is sound masking, which buries the off-putting clamor that inevitably accompanies open offices. Rather than just providing noise, a Speech Privacy System takes advantage of direct-field technology to provide uniform sound masking to your work space. It is precise and no-maintenance. Once installed, there is no need to budget for tuning or other maintenance. 

By investing in a Speech Privacy System, your company can provide the ideal work environment, one that enables your employees to concentrate on their work rather than limitless distractions.

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

Distracted at Work

September 7, 2009 By

A little goes a long way

Whether good or bad, it’s often true that a little goes a long way. This is especially true of sound. Whether it’s a co-worker’s squeaky chair or the slam of office doors, today’s employees are complaining that increasing noisy distractions chip into their productivity, thus affecting their ability to turn out good work. A simple solution is sound masking.

What is your goal? 

Sound-masking cancels sound so that your employees can concentrate on their work and not on someone or something else.   As you choose a sound-masking system for your office space, your goal is to maximize your employees’ ability to work by camouflaging typical, but noisy distractions. With this in mind, you want a system that provides consistent, appropriate levels of sound that enable the workers in the building to ignore what could keep them from working efficiently.

How does it work?

Speech Privacy Systems provides a direct field sound masking system for any new or existing building.  Our direct field system is designed to raise the background sound level of a treated area in order to make speech less intelligible.  The more uniformly the sound is delivered to your facility, the more effective the system.  Unlike other options, our system is mounted in the acoustic ceiling itself, thus delivering the most uniform sound masking available to date.

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Do you work at Dundler Mifflin?

September 3, 2009 By

Time flies when you’re wasting it

Have you ever watched “The Office”? Between pranks, personal calls, and inter-office dysfunctional dating, not a whole lot actually gets done. In a given work day, yes, a sale or two are made, but almost in spite of the workers and the distractions they both cause and fall victim to. It’s every worker’s dream and every manager’s nightmare. 

Reclaiming time

Even in a booming economy, loss of focus and attentiveness is never okay. Given our current economic crisis, hard work has never been more essential. So, how can you reclaim that invaluable time? 

You can’t control the stock market, but you can control how many distractions you allow your employees to face in a given day. Phone calls have to be made and machines have to run, but not every worker has to stop working to listen to it. By installing sound masking technology, you minimize the constant disturbances every office has so that your office doesn’t resemble “The Office.”

Filed Under: Blog, office noise, Sound Masking Tagged With: ,
August 27, 2009 By




Cutting costs doesn’t mean cutting corners

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: , , , ,

White noise generators and sound masking, the key to a productive office environment

August 12, 2009 By

Most of us experience distraction at work. The funny thing about this is that we usually feel most distracted when we need to finish a report or when we are rushing a presentation. The slightest noise veers us off course. Sometimes we just wish that we can shelter ourselves from such distractions so we can get the job at hand done as soon as possible. But the reality is that the workplace is really littered with noises that we just can’t eradicate.

Nothing can be worse than being unable to focus when you really need to, so cubicle workers and office dwellers need all the help they can get in order to compose their thoughts efficiently and without distractions. This is where sound masking and white noise generators come in.

White noise generators and sound masking is the technology that discreetly tunes out background noises that may prove to be a distraction by altering the ambient sounds locally heard by office workers and cubicle dwellers. By introducing white noise into the environment, it tunes out the other sounds heard in the space it is applied. White noise is commonly used by for song recording purposes when sound levels must be at their highest and most acute, but another application is the drowning out of other distracting noises in the area.

In sound masking, a new sound is introduced in the environment to drown out the unwanted sounds. So this is very different from white noise generators. For some, sound masking can be the use of music, or reading aloud etc. it differs from person to person, and from job types to job types.

There are new technologies that make the most out of white noise generators and sound masking; in fact, there are even cases in which both are combined to completely block out unwanted sounds. However, no matter what the approach, the effect can be greatly felt. The noises that may prove distracting can be drowned out creating a more relaxed and serene working environment.

By eliminating distracting noises in the work place, cubicle dwellers will surely enjoy increased productivity and decreased distractions. White noise generators and the masking of certain sounds will be a sure way to get a serene working environment that is conducive to creativity!

White noise generators are an office employee’s best friend especially when an ambient sound in your workplace distracts you from getting the job done. You know the usual office chatter, keyboard tapping and the mouse clicking; can surely veer you away from concentrating on your work. Sound masking also helps as it supersedes the distracting sound with another ambient sound that is more conducive to get the job done.


Filed Under: Business, office noise, Sound Masking

Sound Masking Helps Workers Focus by Reducing Office Noise

August 5, 2009 By

Back in your school days, did you ever have to slog through your required reading while there was a party going on at a neighbor’s place? If you did, then you know what it’s like to work distracting surroundings. And it also applies to the office environment. Some studies show that noise levels in an office can result in lower levels of productivity in workers. The Data Entry Management Association has found that bad acoustics in the office can result in up to a 27 percent increase in data entry errors. In recent years, noise levels have gone up in the average office. Cubicles and offices are getting smaller and placed closer together, so that it’s hard to tune out the sound of your colleague making a call, or just tapping on his keyboard. Phones and faxes are everywhere, adding to the din of of the workplace. All this has triggered dramatic improvements in sound masking.

Now, this practice isn’t new. The ancient Romans used indoor fountains in homes to mask the noise outside. You’re probably familiar with this phenomenon yourself: have you tried to have a conversation with someone in another room while you’re in the bathroom with the water running? This, in principle, is how sound masking works. Every noise (a conversation, for example) travels at a certain frequency. The human voice is travels at a high frequency. To make it inaudible, you need another sound to offset it: not necessarily a louder sound (which will just drown it out), but another sound with a low frequency that "cancels out" the other sound at the listener’s ear. Specialists use this principle to apply masking to your office. With a series of speakers usually mounted in the ceiling tiles themselves, a barely-noticeable sound is generated throughout the workplace. This sound is soft and non-distracting, and it will mask much of the noise in a busy work environment.

Not all offices are alike. Sound masking technicians will need to asses how to mask your office noise based on the size and shape of the room, which has an effect on acoustics, and on the usual activity that goes on in the work area, as certain offices are naturally more noisy than others. So try and consult a specialist. There are several companies out there that offer sound masking services. They can help you design your office in such a way as to ensure optimum acoustics, which will lead to greater productivity. They can also set up active masking systems for you, and make sure that your environment can help you work harder and focus better.

Today’s average office has gotten much noisier. Sound masking technology is now available to employers who want to help their workers focus and increase their productivity. With effective masking systems, a soft, unobtrusive low-frequency sound is generated by speakers throughout the office, which reduces much of the noise generated in a workplace. Specialists can also consider factors like the size and shape of the room and the usual office noises that can affect productivity.

Filed Under: Business, Sound Masking
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