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.