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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Most people use sound masking technology to cover unwanted noises for the purpose reducing distractions to boost productivity or to achieve speech privacy on the work place via a sound masking system like the VoiceArrest.  Home users and frequent travelers often use sound masking in the form of a portable sound machine for better sleep and improved relaxation since they aren’t held captive to neighbors’, kids’, or other guests’ schedules with the aid of a little white noise.  Interestingly, there is a third reason to use sound masking: sound therapy.

Sound therapy is the use of white noise to naturally treat tinnitus, or “ringing in the ears.”  Tinnitus is a frustrating condition millions suffer from in which you intermittently hear “ringing” that can range from soft to buzzing to a persistent, sharp sound in one or both ears.  You never know when it will hit or how long it will last or whether you’ll be able to concentrate at work through it.

What Exactly is Sound Therapy?

Sound therapy is an easy to use, affordable solution for tinnitus that provides relief for any user.  The use of white noise covers the sound spectrum so that you can work or even sleep without the discomfort of tinnitus.  It’s as if the tinnitus has been muted because your brain literally can not process that sound in the midst of the white noise surrounding it.

A common question that frequently arises is how does trading one sound for another solve anything?  Good question.  It may seem counter-intuitive, but white noise covers the sound spectrum in a  peaceful way.  It is not sharp, painful, or even irritating.  It need not be excessively loud to be effective either.  Rather, the very nature of the sound itself provides relief. And if the idea of white noise doesn’t appeal to you, there are plenty of nature sound options available that are even more peaceful, such as a gentle stream, ocean waves, or even a waterfall.

The bottom line is that if tinnitus is affecting your life at all, sound therapy is the most readily available and usable resource you have.  Plus, it’s affordable and many models are portable, making them readily available to travel with you.

This is the week for making New Year’s Resolutions.  Don’t worry if you haven’t made any yet- there’s no rule they have to be done on the first.  There’s also no rule about what they have to be about.  Personal resolutions might start with being healthier, greener, happier, etc.  All good goals to shoot for.

But what do you resolve this year for your business?  You can’t write resolutions for all your employees, nor would you want to.  But what do you hope for this year?  What would you like to see better?  Sure, more profit would be nice, but how do you get there?  Simply by saying you want it?  Unfortunately, no.

This year, why not make some specific resolutions for getting off to a better start?  Your New Year’s Resolution{s} mightl look a lot like a mission statement, but they should {hopefully} be a lot less cheesy and a whole lot more effective.  You might resolve to get better ergonomic equipment this year, or to retain repeat business through referrals, or to improve your online presence, or to cut down on work-related stress and/or injuries, or more productivity and less distraction for a better bottom line.  Even the process of thinking through what you want for the next year is beneficial because it makes you evaluate the last year in light of new goals.

It’s truly up to you and your specific business to decide what kind of resolutions to make.  Just take an hour or so to sit down and reflect on the past business year, jotting down the main ups and downs and work from there on what improvements you’d like to make.  However, you’re much more likely to achieve your goals if you focus on a few things that affect everyone, such as distraction, stress, and injuries.  By improving speech privacy or even alleviating work-related stress, everyone office-wide is more able to contribute to the goals and less likely to fritter away hours or call in sick.

There’s something refreshing about January 1st and the newness of a year.  Therefore, make sure you take the time to think through what you want for 2011.

Last time I talked about how much churches could benefit from sound masking for confidentiality purposes since sensitive conversations, including counseling sessions, can travel farther than we’d like through ventilation ducts, under doors, out windows, and through thin walls.  Thus, a church or worship facility could use sound masking technology to provide speech privacy by introducing low-level background noise to cover conversations for the purposes of speech privacy. with the result that no one has to look over his (or her) shoulder during a conversation- and that feeling of trust should always accompany a church.

A few applications:

• Counseling
• Private telephone conversations
• Divorce Care classes
• AA meetings
• Staff discussions

Now I’d like to look at the benefits the same sound masking system would provide for church classes.

Sound Masking to Cover Distractions

Even happy kids are loud kids.

It’s not that churches need to boost their productivity like the average place of business, but they do have noise problems.  Anybody who has ever served in a nursery or Sunday school class knows how loud multiple children can be when together and without their parents.  Babies and toddlers often cry a lot, while older children have more sophisticated means of being heard, such as yelling or screaming.  Whatever class it is and whatever reason the kids are being loud, the volume level can be quite distracting for fellow classes and for those in the worship center.  Plus, nearby parents, especially those of smaller children, tend to hear crying and start worrying.