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Office Noise & Masking It {Part 1}

March 8, 2011 By

The Woes of Office Noise

An interesting study was performed on the effects of office noise and distractions.  To save you the time of reading the entire study, here is the abstract which effectively summarizes the results:

A total of 649 employees at all job levels working in open-plan offices on each of the five floors of an office building completed an extensive questionnaire on their work and the office environment. The results showed that a variety of ambient environmental problems were present in these offices. Also, a clear relationship between job characteristics and attitudes toward the office was demonstrated. Employees who enjoyed performing managerial and technical tasks reacted more unfavorably to office conditions than did clerical staff, who generally viewed their work as undemanding. Loss of privacy and increased disturbances were consistently at the source of these negative reactions, and the interrelationship of these problems also emerged from factor analysis of the data. Although the office did create a favorable social climate, this did not offset employees’ negative reactions to work conditions but rather appeared to exacerbate the problems. Consequently, no evidence was found to support the claim for improved productivity in open-plan…

Cubicles are an acoustic nightmare.

Essentially office noise in an open office (ie an office with few walls and probably many cubicles) was a problem for many workers.  And while it created a semi-fun social environment, most workers viewed the excessive noise adversely.  In addition, those workers who saw themselves as less important than managerial staff had even harsher views of office noise and the inevitable distractions that follow.  Lastly, employees did not like the loss of privacy that accompanied open office plans.

None of this is all that surprising.  Office noise is a real problem on two levels:

Feeling held captive by office noise is frustrating and debilitating because it makes workers feel less valuable and therefore de-motivates them to give their best work, even if they could work through the noise.  Fortunately, office noise does not have to rule your office.  Be sure to check back to see what the findings are for masking office noise as a solution.

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Reduce Stress and Boost Productivity with Sound Masking

February 7, 2011 By

Did you know that the average worker loses two hours of productive work each day due to distractions in the office? There are constant conversations buzzing around them – the person in the next cubical is on the phone; the water cooler talk is almost always present; and the discussion between two co-workers in the hall is louder than they realize. Even at their most productive times, they are wasting energy and time trying not to hear all the noise around them. Businesses around the country are installing office-wide sound masking systems to increase privacy and productivity among their employees.

What is sound masking?

Sound masking seeks to “mask” unnecessary sounds with the use of white noise. White noise is sound, or noise, created from all the frequencies in the audible spectrum; it is named after white light which is created from all the colors in the visible spectrum. With today’s technology, white noise is specifically focused on the specifically on the frequency range of human speech.

The first question that comes to mind is how adding noise helps people concentrate better. A great illustration is a flash light in a dark room. Imagine you are in a dark room and someone across the room is randomly blinking a flashlight at you. The flashlight is very distracting and even irritating. But what happens if you turn on the overhead lights? Now you hardly notice the flashlight; the overhead lights have covered, or masked, the smaller light of the flashlight.

Sound masking works on a similar principle. By adding general white noise, similar to the gentle “whooshing” sound of a fan or an AC unit, you hardly notice the distracting sounds around you.

Why use sound masking?

This technology is used all over the U.S. to improve privacy and productivity – at government agencies, medical facilities and standard office buildings. Sound masking has incredible advantages for any office setting, and especially in open floor plans with cubicles. Here are some of the top benefits:

  • 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.

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The Cost of Work Distractions

June 1, 2010 By

The cost of work distractions

According to  a 2005 study,  work 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.

Regardless of how colleagues view these distractions, the most concerning point is the loss of brain function, which isn’t all that surprising.  Juggling work, co-worker conversations, internet interests (personal and otherwise), and messaging of all types is difficult and obviously 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).

This is fairly disturbing information for a manager.  Who wants their workers to work from less than their best?

Sound Masking for Better IQ & Fewer Losses

Businesses lose almost $600 billion/year because of office distractions.  This is a result of workers finding themselves distracted more than 2 hours every day.  The most commonly reported distraction in co-worker conversation.You can’t raise your employees’ IQ, but you can protect them from distraction with sound masking.  Sound masking is the use of low-level background noise, white noise, to cover distracting noises, such as office conversations and common noises.

IQ loss and profit loss are not a coincidence.  It’s time to regain your losses- on all fronts.

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Fighting the ‘Tyranny of the Urgent’ with Sound Masking

April 29, 2010 By

“The Tyranny of the Urgent” was a small pamphlet written by Charles Hummel in 1967. In it, Hummel talks about all the “urgent” things in your life crowding out the “important” things. A current example would be emails and phone calls taking away from quality time with your family because the emails and phone calls are “in your face” and needing to be accomplished right now, while family bonding is something that is important to you, but is not actively vying for your attention.

It can similarly be applied in an office setting. Distractions from coworkers, phone calls, and  unnecessary or extraneous paperwork  could all be examples of ways that urgent things crowd out important things, i.e. actually getting some work done. It can make your workers feel frustrated because they feel like they are constantly busy, but not actually getting much accomplished.  If you, as a manager, can find a way to cut down on some of the urgent things that your employees encounter then you free them up to do the important work.  Not all urgent matters can be cut out–you still have to take phone calls and paperwork still has to be done. However, one way you can cut down on urgent crowding out the important is through the use of sound masking to decrease conversational distraction. 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

By using sound masking effectively, you can filter out the urgent things that are taking away from the important task of working and finishing projects. Fight the tyranny of the urgent with sound masking!

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Continuing the Auditory Distractions Discussion

April 5, 2010 By

Last Monday we looked at a couple points that Justin Mardex made in a paper he wrote entitled Auditory, visual, and physical distractions in the workplace. Today we are going to continue to look at some more of what Mr. Mardex found in his research about auditory distractions.

Sound masking helps your workers to not even hear their coworkers conversations so they can continue to work in peace.

Mardex looked first at at noise level and how that affects a worker. The study he mentioned, which was done by Keillberg and Landstrom, was about the “relationship between noise, distraction, and annoyance.”  They found that there was a correlation between high levels of noise and annoyance, but not distraction. However, predictability was highly correlated with distraction (i.e. the less predictable the noise, the more distracted you are by it.)

Which leads into the next subject, noise variability. Mardex quotes another study which found that “habituating to consistent noise is easier than to variable noise: consequently constant noise is less annoying overall than variable noise. Therefore a sound with consistent qualities…would be much easier to acclimate to than to noise which that was in some way dynamic.”

In another section of his paper, Mardex looks at the differences between speech and other types of noise. He found that there are colleagues, computers, and other types of office equipment are listed as three of the most problematic office noise disturbances. With colleagues, the problem was with conversations, namely the “information content of their speech.”  They also found that “speech intelligibility is at the center of how disturbing a speech related noise is.” In other words, if you can’t understand what is being said, you are not as distracted by it.  With office equipment, the variability of the noise was the problem. For example, the loudness of the paper shredder or the copy machine.

Sound masking could be of benefit in all of the instances mentioned above. Not only is it a constant noise with no variability, it is not loud enough to be annoying, while maintaining a gentle hum loud enough to cover up conversations and other office noise.  The result is an overall reduction in the amount of distractions a worker is subjected to. As we saw last Friday, most workers just want a quiet place to work. Sound masking can go a long way toward creating an environment where people can focus on their work.

How do you think sound masking could help in your office?

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Dealing with Distractions: a cost-effective skill

February 23, 2010 By

Whether you work from home or are a salesman, a manager, or a small business owner, learning how to deal with distractions may be one of the most important skills you acquire.  Every workplace has its own unique distractions, and most have the usual suspects:

  • 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?

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Minimizing Work Distractions

February 15, 2010 By

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.

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