Most distractions at work are annoying...and they all cost something.

Regardless of the time of year or the weather outside or the deadlines looming, most workers find themselves distracted more than 2 hours every day.  A 2-hour loss of productivity is quite a hit in this economy where every minute counts.  It’s essential that we keep our minds on task and our heads out of the clouds.

If you ask the average worker what distracts him or her, you’d get a variety of answers, most of which are external distractions (meaning not their own fault).  In fact, surveyed workers say that all they want is a chance to do distraction-free solo work, work that doesn’t get constantly interrupted by seemingly unnecessary meetings or office chatter.

Sound Machine (aka white noise machine)

A simple, inexpensive solution for distraction is use of a sound machine.  Sound machines have many advantages and few disadvantages.  Sound machines come in a variety of shapes and sizes and offer a host of features that are usually adjustable for individual users.

How does white noise work?

Sound machines use white noise to help the brain tune out unwanted noises.  The result is two-fold: The brain is literally tricked into not perceiving various noises.  By not hearing or processing distracting sounds, the worker stays on track and disciplines his or her mind not to wander.

The cool thing is that while they help you get past intrusive noises, the white noise machine itself isn’t so loud that it issues a equally disturbing noise.  In fact, the worker in the cubicle next door is usually fairly oblivious to it even being turned on.  Plus, the user can choose what type of white noise to use from a myriad of nature sounds or a gentle hum like that of an HVAC system.

Why Go with Individual Machines?

White noise machines are much more efficient than headphones for covering office noise.  White noise usually keeps the mind focuses, whereas listening to music may end up becoming way more of a distraction that the office noise.  On the other extreme, while many businesses opt for office-wide sound masking, sometimes they find it prudent to treat small offices or individual cubicles with white noise machines instead.  This way, only some areas are treated, which might be all that is needed.

Do your employees struggle to stay focused or to meet deadlines?  Most workers are distracted more than 2 hours every day.  It could be co-worker chatter, phone calls, constant computer correspondence, and the list goes on forever.  Regardless of the cause, most workers feel frustrated by the end of the day, having accomplished little on their to-do list, knowing that tomorrow will likely be no better.  For some, it’s a monotonous cycle of chasing a seemingly elusive goal or deadline, while for others, it means extra nights and weekends and less time with family and friends.  You can see the problem.

2 Tips for Increasing Focus and Productivity

Part of increasing productivity is making the office more work-friendly.  Here are 2 easy ways to do just that.

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  It's important for workers to feel like they have time to work and not to be distracted.

  Time Blocking.  Some go-getter, self-motivated employees will do this for themselves, but most will simply get caught in the rut of feeling unproductive and therefore living a self-fulfilling prophecy.  You should encourage time blocking for your staff.  Whether it’s an office-wide plan or open to individualization, allow your employees the opportunity to set certain boundaries on when they’re going to work on what.  For instance, it may be that the first hour of the day is spent checking and prioritizing emails and messages.  Then, the next 2 hours are spent isolated in a conference room for a specific project.  Or, it could be that certain teams need to meet at a mutually agreed upon time and they set up in a private room.  Whatever the routine is, every employee needs to know that he or she will have time to get to their actual work.

• Sound Masking.  It’s one of those counter-intuitive things, kind of like children sleeping well at night often makes them more likely to sleep well during the day. Similarly, adding noise to a noisy office actually helps your brain focus.  By adding soft unstructured noise to the office, the brain is able to focus on that consistent noise instead of the millions of diverse, and therefore distracting, sounds surrounding them.  The result is more engaged, productive workers.

Regardless of the economy, workers are distracted.  So, in these tough times, loss of productivity hurts even more. Enable your workers to get focused by allowing them freedom to schedule out blocks of time and by decreasing office noise.

Instead of hiring a company masseuse, a few effective ergonomic adjustments could be made. (Although a masseuse would be nice....)

Some common reasons for lack of productivity are  distractions. In fact, studies have shown that distractions cause up to 2 hours a day of lost productivity which costs  companies $759 billion a year. So, one of the ways that would (hopefully) make a noticeable difference is to cut down on those distractions.

Ask your workers what is distracting them and then think of ways to help them overcome those. Is office noise and conversations constantly breaking their train of thought? Installing sound masking could help with that. Are constant emails and new email notifications a problem? Some software that minimizes that would help. Perhaps by the end of the day your employees shoulders and wrists are aching from sitting in front of the computer all day. A few ergonomic adjustments could go a long way in solving that and allowing them to focus on their working instead of tight muscles.

You won’t know how to implement effective solutions unless you know what the problem is. So, go ahead, ask your employees how you can help them work better and with less stress.

Office Noise- it's a love/hate relationship for most.

Have you ever really listened to all the noise that takes place in your office?

Some of your employees can work through that no problem, like your sales guys, for instance- they were born to multitask, God love ‘em. However, your writers and editors cannot- each clickety-clack, ring, and new conversation distracts them from their detailed work. It’s not their fault- certain types of work require intense concentration.

The above example was actually pretty low-level background noise- you and I both know that most offices can and do escalate more than that. The problem here was that it was inconsistent- it lacked uniformity. Each different, distinct noise presented a new distraction. Surprisingly, though, low-level background noise is not such a bad thing if used correctly. In fact, many workers use white noise to provide a consistent, uniform hum to cover all the little inconsistent, irritating sounds so prevalent in an open office (like above). Similarly, a good number of companies and entities have employed sound masking units to provide uniform coverage for entire offices. The result has been increased productivity and less distracted (read that happier and less stressed) workers.

• water cooler gossip
• internet/emailing
• cell phones/texting
• loud coworkers

Chris Yeh, a Harvard Business School grad, writes:

Learning how to deal with distractions is every bit as important to your business as learning to sell. If distractions cost you just one hour per business day, that’s over 250 hours per year, or six full 40-hour weeks. Think you could use the additional income from an extra six weeks of work per year? Or: would you want to take an extra six weeks of vacation per year?

Interestingly, most workers lose 2 hours a day to distraction, not 1.  That’s 12 weeks per year per employee.  A bit unsettling to say the least. Unfortunately, most distracted workers don’t realize how distracted they really are.  And if they do, they are ill-equipped to deal with it, assuming that it’s an inevitable part of work.

Are distractions really inevitable?  Yeh suggests three possible (and amusing) courses of action:

1. Run
2. Hide
3. Fight

These options allow you to either avoid or face distractions head-on, but they assume a work from home environment.  Since most workers still commute to work, let’s look at another option: sound-masking.  With the addition of low-level background white noise, sound masking can be easily installed in your office’s ceiling tiles and evenly distributed throughout your office.

The long and short of it is that most employees won’t choose to deal with distraction on their own, either out of hopelessness, fear, or apathy.  The result is billions of dollars lost every year to pretty easily resolved distractions.  Many businesses have turned to sound masking for resolving office noise issues.  Have you considered what your business could do with more productivity?

Note that work does not trump anything.

If you google  distracted at work, you might be surprised at what you find.  While you hope your employees are committed to their jobs and focused on their tasks, one glance at this site will set you straight.  Based on the number of websites and blogs devoted to passing time during your work day, it’s a fair guess that many workers choose to be distracted by email, iPhones, texting, messaging, coworkers, etc.  On the other hand, many of your workers do want to concentrate on their work, only to find themselves held hostage by office noise or the target of the distracted coworker previously described.

Regardless of how many of each kind of worker you have, office distractions are a given.  In fact, the average worker loses more than 2 hours every day to them.  Don’t be alarmed- there are many courses of action you can take to prevent office noise from killing productivity.

According to Associated Content, here are few active steps you can take to minimize distractions:

• Know yourself and what distracts you
• Change your atmosphere if necessary (turn down music, for instance)
• Limit computer distractions to certain times of day or a certain number of times (such as checking your email 3 xs/day)
• Don’t take calls unless convenient for you; you can call back
• Shorten conversations with coworkers, and if that doesn’t work,
• Nicely confront distracting coworkers

Unfortunately, these steps are only effective for the self-motivated, and self-aware worker.  If the worker does not care about the time frittered away to distraction, neither will he care to implement time-saving steps.  In that case, it might be wise to install a sound masking system office-wide.  These units are particularly helpful for open offices.

Whatever route you choose, know that you are working in the best interests of not only your workers, but also your company.

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 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.

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. 

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.