On a scale from 1-10, how engaged do you think your employees are on a normal work day?
On a scale from 1-10, how engaged do you think your workers are?
“I get so easily distracted at work that I lose focus and can’t concentrate. I actually welcome the distractions because I would rather play than work! It’s a good thing that I am unemployed. I have no work to be distracted from!” (taken from a real blog!)
While most people won’t celebrate unemployment in this economy, most probably would agree that distraction at work is not only common, it’s your worst enemy. Businesses like yours lost an estimated $700 billion in 2008 as a result of distractions, conversational distractions the biggest contributor.
Sadly, distractions are part and parcel to working collaboratively in a multiple-office work space and certainly among the cubicle farm. However, distractions don’t have to be as devastating as hundreds of billions of dollars a year. In fact, as a manager you can simply forbid your employees to speak or disconnect any phone that rings. Just kidding. Just like distraction, noise is also a part of every office- it simply needs to be managed. Many businesses opt to install office-wide sound masking systems to help cover intrusive distractions.
Instead of forcing your employees to cope on their own (such as googling “distracted at work” or using headphones to drone out interruptions, both of which ironically further distract said worker ), take this serious problem into your own hands. In this economy, every dollar counts- there really isn’t time to play table hockey.
Can you really blame a worker for being unproductive here?
Cubicles
This set-up does not exactly inspire one to work. Talk, yes. Eavesdrop, sure. Trip people as they walk by, absolutely. Work, no. While efficient in terms of a corporate budget, cubicles are horribly inefficient in terms of worker productivity. For instance, the average worker is distracted more than two hours every day. When your work day conists of 8 hours, losing one-fourth of that time seems ridiculous.
Get rid of the cubicles?
You don’t have to tear out the cubicles or remodel to fix the sound leaks inherent to this type of office. In fact, many workers have been creative on their own- they wear headphones to work or try out free white noise generators or purchase their own white noise machines. The problem with headphones is that an employee’s favorite music is rarely conducive to work either, and individual sound masking units only help that one worker (and not the hundreds who are still untreated and therefore still working only six hours a day). Many businesses have opted to treat the entire office with sound masking that is mounted directly in the ceiling itself. This type of technology (direct field) delivers consistent, uniform sound that covers the intrusive noises so common in the typical cubicle-ridden office.
As a manager, it’s your job to get your employees to work. Times are tough, money is tight. But a simple investment in sound masking could help you reclaim your company’s portion of the $700billion lost to distractions in 2008. Don’t you think it’s worth it?
Is this focus?
It’s play-off season, and one can’t help but admire players’ focus…focus as they throw, run, receive, block, sack, intercept. Focus as they give everything they have for 6 points…focus as they sit on the sidelines and wait to start again.
Are you focused? Is your work force focused? Probably not as much as you’d like. In fact, the average worker is distracted more than 2 hours a day. Think about that- every worker you have multiplied by 2, and that’s how many potentially productive hours your office loses a day.
It’s a new year and a good time to restructure, reorganize, and rethink problem areas before too much time gets wasted. It’s easy to blame your employees for their lack of focus, but regardless of the role they play, you can minimize the level of distraction and maximize productivity by implementing sound masking. Better than simply trying to block noise by changing the aesthetics of the office through the addition of walls, for example, sound masking is an invisible covering solution tucked away in the ceiling. (For more information on the ABCs of acoustic treatments, go here.) The end result is that sound masking enables workers to be more focused, or actually engaged in their work, rather than distracted by anything and everything they hear.
Just like it only takes one moment of distraction to change the result of the game, it only takes one distracted worker to bring down the whole office. Make a power play and reclaim that lost energy.
January 9th, 2010 in
Blog | tags:
distracted,
distractions,
focus,
Sound Masking |
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January 1st is the beginning of many self-improvement schemes.
It’s a new year…a time that lends itself to new resolutions. Here are 2010’s top ten resolutions (in no particular order):
- 1. Stop smoking
- 2. Get Fit
- 3. Lose Weight
- 4. Enjoy Life More
- 5. Quit Drinking
- 6. Get Organized
- 7. Learn Something New
- 8. Get Out of Debt
- 9. Spend more time with Family
- 10. Help Others
Interestingly, most new year’s resolutions aim in the self-improvement direction. Who thinks to himself, “I’d like to be less productive and weigh more this year. And, less time with friends and family would be great.” I’m wagering no one. I’d also bet that the average man or woman resolves very little about work productivity. However, if said average person wants to get more out of life, get organized, and spend more time with family, it helps to have a game plan. In fact, this site suggests:
Success is not an accident, it begins with a well-conceived plan. You can and will achieve more in the next year than you have in the past ten with a disciplined plan of action. By investing your efforts into a New Years Resolution, you give yourself a launch pad for starting your new year and your new life.
Resolutions at work
If you’d like to help others at work (#10), one idea is to enable them to work more productively and efficiently. Distractions, namely conversational ones, are the number one production eaters. One way to deal with them is to hunt down the chatty cathys and destroy them. Or you might consider sound masking, akin to white noise in that it is the addition of low-level background sound that covers, or masks, intrusive, distracting noises. The end result is more engaged workers…which leads to more productive and less stressed workers. Win-win (or win-win-win as the great office manager Michael Scott would say) for everyone.
More stress, less problem-solving, and fewer ergonomic adjustments does not inspire creative, efficient work.
A Cornell study found the following to be true (emphasis mine):
The environmental psychologists found that the workers in the noisy office experienced significantly higher levels of stress (as measured by urinary epinephrine), made 40 percent fewer attempts to solve an unsolvable puzzle and made only half as many ergonomic adjustments to their workstations as did their colleagues in quiet offices. Typing performance, however, was not affected.
With a cut-throat economy and the need for creative solutions, now is not the time to increase stress, while simultaneously decreasing the ability to problem-solve and make needed adjustments to one’s workspace. If you need your employees just to type, then you don’t need to worry about acoustic treatments, so that’s good news. Otherwise, you might want to consider making acoustic adjustments so your employees can make the adjustments necessary to get their work done. Interestingly, the same study reported (emphasis mine):
“In terms of practice, our findings are potentially important, because if worker motivation is lower under open-office noise because of its uncontrollability, various design options could be adopted. For example, when concentration is required, workers might use a quiet, enclosed room or sound-making devices that they would control. These kinds of measures might help alleviate the harmful effects of open-office noise on workers.”
There are a variety of sound masking units and systems currently available on the market. Some can be installed office-wide and others can be installed for individual use and adjustment. Either way, sound masking is a relatively simple and cost effective measure to take for you and your employees to get the most out of each work day.
I’ll take a mocha frappucino and 2 more productive hours, please
Did you know that some workers have to actually leave work to be productive? They find that leaving all the office distractions behind and working from home or even at Starbuck’s. Phenomenal- having to escape work to actually work. Now why is that? Well, the average worker in an open-style office:
- Is distracted more than 2 hours a day
- Gets interrupted more than 70 times per day
- Struggles to stay focused more than 30 minutes at a time
- Suffers from stress and fatigue
- Experience high levels of stress
- Made 40 percent fewer attempts to solve difficult problems
- Make only half as many ergonomic adjustments to their workstations as did their colleagues in quiet offices, resulting in an increase in repetitive strain injuries (such as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome) and workers’ comp claims.
Go figure they’d have to leave the cramped, not to mention distracting, quarters of the cubicle farm to be productive.
So what can you do about it?
Your job as a manager is to minimize distractions so your employees can maximize their work. You have several options: the quiet game, addition of walls and sound-absorbing paneling, or covering sound with sound masking. I think we can agree that the quiet game is out, though always a fun choice. Adding walls and paneling is expensive, doesn’t always line up with design aesthetics, and also contributes to VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) and/or the collection of dust mites or allergens. That leaves us with sound masking- an invisible noise solution (like white noise) tucked away in the ceiling. Most sound masking systems are easy to install and very low-maintenance.
In times like these, every hour counts. Survey your options and help your employees return to work.
If your business is struggling, you’re not alone. Many companies are laying off up to a third of their employees. So, yeah, the economy stinks, but it doesn’t have to kill your business. So, whether you have a huge or tiny work force, you need to be efficient because it’s the efficient companies that thrive. Here is one way to look at being efficient as it interplays with being effective:
"Efficient" is defined as working without waste or using a minimum of time, effort and expense. But, the definition is silent about the goals of the operation. A person can be very efficient at what they are doing but still not get to where they want to be because they aren’t doing the right things. That’s where "effective" comes in. "Effective" means "having the desired result". Once the desired overall result is defined, the tasks leading to the result can be isolated and these tasks can then be completed efficiently….
So, while your business’s specific goals will determine how to be effective, being efficient is a little more universal. In fact, the average worker wastes 2 or more hours a day because he is distracted by conversations, ringing and/or buzzing phones, and who knows what else…A loss of 2 hours per employee is not exactly efficient. One option might be sound masking. Most people can’t work in ceaseless clamor, but at the same time, they can’t be productive in silence either. Sound masking is like white noise in that it provides a low-level "hum" that can help workers to tune out irritating distractions that keep them from being productive. Many companies and small businesses have found that plugging the leak of conversational distractions is more than worth the initial investment.
If you’re like many managers, you’ve had to cut your staff this year. It’s easy to assume that you can’t maintain, much less increase, productivity with the staff you have left after lay offs. So, if time is money, then you need more time. Sound impossible? What if you could reclaim hours of lost time?
- The average employee is distracted more than 2 hours every day
- That same employee is interrupted more than 70 times per day
- 80% of surveyed employees said that these distractions limited their ability to focus
It’s no wonder that being distracted that often curbs productivity. What is shocking is that only 20% of managers were aware of the reported distractions and their effects.
How can you increase your productivity?
If your employees are distracted hours on end, then might be time to consider un-distracting them. You probably can’t ban cell phones or loud shoes, but you can reduce the effect these annoying distractions have on your workers. One option is sound masking. It’s like "white noise" in that it adds low-level background sound to reduce the intelligibility of surrounding noises. The result is that most workers are able to tune out distractions and focus on work.
Times are tough. There’s no question about that. The problem is that a struggling economy simply does not allow for less productivity. Your clients still expect your very best- and if you can’t give them your best, they’ll go to someone who can.
Distraction=Disengagement
In one study of 11 surveyed buildings, 80% of workers felt that the noise levels distracted them to the point of not being able to get their work done. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the average worker is distracted more than 2 hours every day, thus making him a disengaged employee. A study by the Towers-Perrin Group found a 52% gap in one-year operating income, when comparing companies with highly engaged employees versus companies with disengaged employees. High engagement companies improved 19.2% while low engagement companies declined 32.7% in operating income over the study period. Furthermore, according to an American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) study, workers in offices with even small acoustic treatments:
- Were 48% more focused on their work
- 51% less distracted, resulting in
- 10% fewer errors and a
- 27% decrease in worker stress
While it’s understandable that office distractions drastically reduce a worker’s ability to concentrate and work attentively, it’s your job to find a way around them. By implementing sound masking technology, you have the ability to override those noisy distractions in order to enable each worker to realize his or her potential every hour of every day.
Distractions at work are an all-too-familiar occurrence. In fact, our beloved best friend and infamous distractor, the Internet, provides many helpful tips for dealing with distractions, most of which are based on the fact that distractions are inevitable. One wesbite did suggest that there are 3 options for dealing with distractions:
· Running
· Hiding
· Fighting
While distractions may indeed be an inevitable part of an open office, your employees do not have to accept them as timewasters. Let’s take a look at that thrid option: fighting. The best way to fight distraction is to tune it out with sound masking. With the gentle swoosh like that of an HVAC system, sound masking allows your workers to do just that- work- instead of getting caught up in distractions more than 2 hours every day. The best thing about sound masking is that it covers noise, yet is barely perceptible itself.
If you’d like to improve your bottom line, give sound masking a chance.
