Sustainability is the word of the day.  Even shows like Top Chef show a concern for sustainability when they ask competing chefs to cook with "sustainable" products- those that are environmentally-friendly, as well as renewable. 

In the business world, you might not think sustainability applies to you.  You’re not exactly cutting down trees or catching salmon.  However, you do have to put forth a product that meets you current and future needs without depleting the resources you already have.  For you, sustainability is using what you have without squandering it. 

So, what do you have?

Your resources are your employees and their time spent working.  And, if you’re like most companies these days, you have already lost quite a few of your workers to a cut-throat economy.  That means your second resource- their work time- is even more crucial.  Thus, it might be horrifying to discover that Average Worker loses more than 2 hours of work day to distractions, namely conversational ones.

Sound masking

Rather than throwing your employees’ cell phones out the window (they’re not exactly biodegradable) or banning personal conversations, you might consider sound masking.  Similar to white noise, sound masking provides low level background noise to render intruding speech and noises less intelligible.  It’s not that your workers need silence (in fact, most complain that silence is even more distracting!), they just need an environment that doesn’t lend itself to unintentional eavesdropping.  Let’s be honest- it’s hard to focus on work when the latest gossip is right inside your grasp. 

In this economy, every minute counts.  Don’t lose another to an easily-resolved problem.